One Way to Succeed (Casas de Buen Dia Book 1) (9 page)

They rode in silence, and Amy started to wonder whether the arguments had killed her libido. Had her passion been drowned out by their anger? Had his? She played the scene in the casita over in her mind to see if she had any desire left.

The memory was more powerful than she expected. Her breath deepened, and her body felt electric. She glanced over at Rick. She waited until they crossed the city limits into Palm Springs before she reached over the wide console between them and put her hand on his thigh.

“Amy,” he said, and stopped. It was a bad sign.

“What?”

“I think you were right. We can’t do this. We are working together, and I think we need to take things slowly. I was wrong to push you tonight.”

“Yes,” she answered quickly and pulled her hand back into her lap. “Yes, you are right. Let’s go slow.”

She turned and looked up at the street lights whipping by.

“If we go at all,” she finally added.

When Amy came out of her office to meet him in the lobby for the trip to the birthday dinner at his mother’s house, the first thing Rick saw was cleavage.

Oh dear!
he thought.
How the hell am I going to keep my eyes away from that?
  He dragged his eyes upward to her face and hair—both just as perfect as the gentle curve of her breasts. If he was going to have to focus on her face in order to get through the evening. It wouldn’t exactly be torture.

He ducked back into his office and grabbed the bottle of Jack Daniels he kept in a desk drawer for toasting deals and project completions. Now he needed it for courage. Keeping his cool around that body and that face while at the same time enduring an evening his mother was going to take some significant amount of liquid fortitude.

“Shot?” he asked, popping back out into the hallway with the bottle in one hand and two plastic Dixie cups in the other. He walked quickly past Amy to the lobby, beating the temptation to glance again at the plunging neckline of her dress. “We might need it once we get there.”

“Aren’t you driving?”

“Yup,” he said, pouring out a couple of shots at the receptionist desk. “One shot is well below my limit. And, anyway, we also need to toast your first week at Buen Dia.”

“A half week,” she corrected him.

“Is that all it’s been?” He poured the Dixie cups with generous shots, and lifted on for a toast. “Then, I look forward to the first full week!”

Later, driving back into town from his mother’s house, he knew the angry arguments over dinner had spoiled things. Could they possibly finish what they’d started in the casita now? The argument with his mother reminded him why he had to keep Amy at a distance. When she put his hand on his leg in nearly inappropriate proximity to his crotch, he knew he had to push her back.

By the time he pulled into the garage and walked around to open her door, Amy had gotten the message. She didn’t look at him when he reached up with his hand to help her climb down from the truck. A minute later, she was gone.

~

After Amy left, he went into the office and sat at his desk, nursing a cup of coffee with a splash of Jack Daniels. He felt bereft, like his body had been ready for her and now every nerve ending was aching with disappointment. Why had he kissed her? He’d had no choice. He had wanted her so badly, he would have had to move out of California if he was going to keep himself away from her.

But now what? In kissing her, and feeling how eagerly she had kissed him back in the casita, had he created exactly the situation he had vowed he would avoid as long as he lived: a romantic relationship at work? He had to get rid of her: not from his life, but out of the office. He wanted her as a girlfriend, not as an employee—maybe even as a potential wife, but certainly not as the woman who would take his business away from him.

He picked up the desk phone in his office and called Kent in San Francisco. It was late, but Kent rarely went to bed before two or three in the morning.

As he waited for Kent to answer, he wished he had a good friend in Palm Springs—someone he could get together with over a beer and talk things through. He had kept his nose to grindstone for a decade now, since starting his business, and other than his bankers, lawyers, and accountants, he had developed very few relationships. Sure, he knew hundreds of people, and all the real estate developers in town knew him. But knowing someone well enough to slap on the back at a social event and knowing someone well enough to confide in about something like his problem with Amy were entirely different kinds of knowing.

“I have a big problem, dude,” Rick said as soon as Kent answered. “You’ve got to help me.”

“You slept with her.”

“Not quite. But I wanted to. How did you know?”

“I’m psychic.”

“Sure. So who’s winning the World Series?”

“My psychic powers are fairly specific. I seem to know how my friends get themselves in trouble, but not much else.”

“I agree with the ‘not much else’ part.”

“So do you want my help or not?”

Rick took a few seconds to organize his thoughts. Just what could Kent tell him that he didn’t already know?

“Okay, it’s pretty simple really. I’ve got to let her go.”

“You mean as an employee or as a girlfriend?”

“As an employee.”

“Isn’t she any good?” Kent asked with a tone that indicated he was playing devil’s advocate, not that he didn’t know the answer. “I thought she was just going to be your secretary. How hard can that be?”

“Actually she’s doing a lot more than I expected. A lot more than her admin job. She could probably be my COO, but of course she can’t. You know why. And it’s been less than a week so far, so who knows? Maybe her enthusiasm won’t last. She’ll run out of steam.”

“So, she’s industrious, efficient, smart, and a hard worker. Not to mention easy on the eyes and sexy as hell.”

“You got it.”

“And of course, you can’t both sleep with her and let her run your business for you.”

“Bingo again.”

“You idiot!” Kent took no time coming to his conclusion about the situation. “You had a rule and you broke it. You’re smart enough to build a business from scratch, no help from your family, but not smart enough to keep your dick in your pants.”

“Well, I did keep my dick in my pants. But I kissed her, and it wasn’t on the cheek.”

“And you want to sleep with her.”

“She’s amazing.”

“You are a sexist pig,” Kent said. “Do you think you can fire the woman, and because you’re such an amazing lover, she’ll still fuck you? You’d rather have a sex toy than a good employee?”

“You’re not helping much.”

“That’s because you’ve already fucked this one up, Rick.” Kent was nearly shouting into the phone. “It’s over. You’ve lost her. She not going to be your girlfriend or your admin. Get over it and try not to make the same mistake again.”

Rick had no response. Kent was right; Rick had to give it up and move on.

“Hey, why don’t you fly up here next weekend,” Kent broke the silence. “Find an excuse to write off a plane ticket, and let’s get together over a beer.”

“Yeah, maybe in a couple of weeks when my projects are done,” Rick said. He could use a weekend out of town.

They talked a little while longer, mostly about things that would take Rick’s mind off of Amy, like Kent’s latest intriguing cases. When Rick finally hung up the phone, he realized not much had been accomplished by calling Kent. He really wanted to find a way to hang on to Amy. As a girlfriend, that was. After all, he was attracted to her before he knew she was any good at business. It was her body, her face, her composure, her warmth that had him whipped from that first morning when he hit the dog and saw her kneel down on the hard pavement to comfort the animal.

Had he been this mad about Beautiful Betty once upon a time? Maybe as libidinous, he guessed. At least at first. The difference was he never came to respect her. He knew why he was marrying her: she was attractive, receptive if not passionate in bed, happy to stay out of his business, and willing to start a family with him at some point in the future. And she was needy: not so much for sex as for constant compliments and entertainment.

Maybe Betty wasn’t dumb, but she sure as hell wasn’t clever or ambitious.

Like Amy was.

Like his mother was.

“Oh, god,” he moaned out loud. “I’m really fucked up, aren’t I? I’m crazy about someone because she’s like my mother?”

Well, he thought, not physically like his mother. At least he could take comfort in that. Amy was tall, athletic, and had the blue eyes and light brown hair of someone of northern European descent His mother was perpetually underweight, even for her short stature. Her skin and features were Latin, and she wore her long, dark hair in a severe bun on top of her head.

Maybe, he thought, just maybe he could figure out a way to make this work.
He was a smart guy. He had, as Kent said, started this business from scratch, not accepting any money from his family. In his more humble moments, he had admitted that he probably couldn’t have done it if the bankers, real estate developers, equipment companies, and just about everyone else in town hadn’t known his mother and the size of her bank account. He had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, even if he refused to eat off of it. His mother had offered to lend him start-up capital, to co-sign loans, to put in a good word with her bankers, and help him lease equipment. He’d turned it all down. As far as he was concerned, hers was tainted money—stolen from his father.

Rick walked back to the garage. He sank into the seat of his Z3 and punched the remote control to open the garage door. As he pulled out, he decided not to give up. He was an attractive guy. He could have a relationship with Amy without promising her lifetime employment. He’d give it a couple of weeks and see if some solution didn’t present itself. Maybe she’d find another job she liked better. Maybe he’d wake up a week from now and find out he wasn’t attracted to her anymore.

“Yeah, right.” He laughed at that last notion and backed out of the garage.

~

Rick got ready for work on Monday morning, feeling anxious. He wondered how he would react when he saw Amy again for the first time after what had happened at his mother’s house. Sinking into his BMW, he decided to postpone it by stopping in on all three of his work sites on the way into the office. He needed time to steer his mind away from her, and he thought a few construction issues might help distract him. 

Zipping through the cool morning air, he kept his eye open for empty lots, run-down houses, and for-sale signs that he might have missed before. The construction work on his projects was wrapping up, and although setting up the hotels for business would take at least another month, his building contractors would be looking for more work soon. He would have preferred to have kept them busy with his business, but it was starting to appear that nothing was going to happen soon enough. He was likely going to lose them to some other developer before he nailed down a new project.

The single-family home was looking good, he noted as he pulled up across the street. The landscapers were already on the job, raking crushed granite over the gentle, fake mounds they’d fashioned into the front yard. Large buckets of palms, cacti, and agave, and a pile of boulders sat in a row along the edge of the driveway, awaiting their placement.

Rick walked through the house, greeting the painters and the finish carpenters who were putting the final touches on the interior. The stark, cold, modern look wasn’t Rick’s favorite, but he had to admit that the choice would probably help the house sell once the owner decided to move on, even if the single bedroom proved a detriment.

None of the crew chiefs had arrived yet, and Rick had no reason to stick around for them. He would be getting their bills and passing his final invoice on to the owner within the week. The only things he had left to do was make a final inspection of the landscaping in a couple of days, and walk through the project with the city building inspector.

What he thought would be quick stop through the drive-thru at Starbucks turned out to take a lot longer than he expected. The snowbirds were starting to arrive already, and he was going to have to start factoring both longer lines and more traffic into his daily plans.

By the time he pulled in front of what was soon to be the Corona Inn, a half-dozen pick-ups were jammed at various angles onto the asphalt slab that would eventually become a concrete parking lot. A crude plywood sign leaned at an ugly angle against the building, declaring that Desert to Valley Builders was the general contractor of the construction site. It was the name of subcontractor Tom’s company; apparently he had given up on getting Rick to post a sign for him.

“Is Tom around?” Rick asked the first journeyman he ran into as he walked into the building.

“He’s just pulling up,” the man answered, pointing back out the front door. Another pick-up was squeezing into a space on the asphalt that was so small, Rick had opted to not try to park in it.

“Hey, Tom.” Rick walked toward the man getting out of the truck, and extended his hand for a shake, even though he wasn’t really in the mood for pleasantries. “What’s with the sign?”

“Well, I asked you for it, but you never delivered, boss,” Tom responded, stopping with his hands on his hips, refusing to take Rick’s hand.

“That’s because there’s no traffic down this street to see a sign,” Rick said, “and there was no agreement for one in our contract, if I remember right.”

Tom shrugged and looked down the street defiantly, as if the conversation was boring him.

“Further, you are not the general contractor, Rick said. “You know I am.”

“What’s the difference, boss?” Tom said, turning a steely eye at Rick.

Rick took a deep breath. There was no benefit in getting in an argument with the contractor. He needed to retain good relationships with anyone who was capable of doing good work and finishing his jobs on time. There was plenty of work around town these days for contractors, and keeping them happy and willing to work with Buen Dia was more important than arguing over a sign.