One Way to Succeed (Casas de Buen Dia Book 1) (6 page)

She paused in her digital tour of his businesses to wonder: how much of that $10 million came from Rick’s mommy and daddy? Had he, in fact, made a small fortune by starting with a big one? She had no reason to be cynical, other than her natural tendency to be so. “Give the guy a break,” she told herself, this time keeping her voice to a whisper so Sandra wouldn’t overhear. “It’s no more his fault that he was born rich than it is mine that I wasn’t.”

She moved on from the finances to the personnel files. Besides Sandra and Rick, there was a chief financial officer named James; two construction foremen, Caleb and Gilberto; a part-time marketing guy named Guy; and a part-time maintenance man by the name of Joseph, who appeared to be in charge of keeping the company trucks and equipment in working order. The hotel property management company was run by Brian, who also had a maintenance man, an accounting clerk, and a secretary of his own. Apparently, the accounting functions were outsourced to those various consultants she’d seen on the income statement. That’s too bad, she thought. She could do it for a heck of a lot less money than that.

What she couldn’t figure out from the files was what she was expected to do. If Sandra was handling the phones, the consultants were doing the bookkeeping, payroll and taxes, what was left for her? Surely it wasn’t old-fashioned dictation, buying plane tickets, and arranging his dinner dates, she hoped. She’d never been an admin before, and had never had one working for her.

“Hey!” A huge bouquet of flowers at her door appeared to speak, which wasn’t as surprising as the fact that it also had legs.

Rick stepped around the arrangement he held by both hands and grinned at her.

“I thought maybe you’d like some foliage to warm up this sterile office of yours. I love what you’ve done with it, by the way,” he joked. 

“Thanks.” She stood up to accept the big bouquet and set it on her desk. “I spent all morning on it. I’m glad you like it.” 

“I just want to warn you. I won’t bring you flowers every day,” he said. “You are going to have to do the decorating on your own. I’m no good at it.”

“Ah, shoot! I quit then!” Amy laughed and reached past the flowers to offer her hand. She meant it to be businesslike gesture, but the second his fingers touched hers she remembered how dangerous his touch was going to be. No more handshakes, she told herself.

“I thought maybe we could get started by introducing you to the rest of the staff,” he said. “Is that okay?”

~

Sitting across from Rick in his office an hour later, Amy sought an answer to her biggest question of the morning: what was she supposed to be doing that would take up sixty hours a week?

Luckily, the office walk-through had focused her mind on the business, and she had managed to put aside her inappropriate thoughts about Rick. His office décor helped: it too was all business. A large wooden table, sturdy as the mountain rising outside the window, took up about two thirds of the room. Construction documents and architectural plans lay overlapping and open at one end, and four office chairs were scattered around it. It looked like an effective space for meetings with subcontractors and his construction foremen.

Other than the big work table, the furniture was sparse, and the décor even more so. There were a few framed diplomas and permits on the wall behind Rick’s metal desk, and a wall of bookcases filed with code books and three-ring project notebooks. A small couch was pushed up against the third wall and the fourth wall was filled with a window that looked out at the mountain.

Basically, Rick began, her job would comprise making sure subcontractors’ bids were submitted on time, requesting and securing city building permits, securing bonds for construction projects, completing and filing insurance claims, scheduling meetings with city officials and bankers, completing loan applications, ordering title insurance, and managing a hundred other small details that ensured that the business of the property management company and the construction business were never delayed by a lack of proper documentation. It would take a couple of months just to get her head around all the paperwork and regulations involved, she realized. Sixty hours a week wouldn’t be too much. And it didn’t sound a bit like an admin job.

“Frankly, I’m asking you for a lot more than I’ve had to ask from an administrative assistant before,” Rick said, as if reading her mind. “But, I lost my chief operating officer a couple of months ago, and I haven’t had a chance to replace him. So, I need you to help me fill in the gaps. I can do some of it, but it’s the clerical stuff that I don’t have time for.”

“Got it,” she said. “And are you looking for candidates for COO? Do you want me to work on that too?”

“Well, yes,” he said. “I hadn’t thought of that. I haven’t had the time to even engage a search firm. Yes, please put that on your list.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“Well,” he said, his forehead creasing with concentration. “I don’t think so, but I’m sure I’ll think of more stuff as we get to work. I think you’re going to be a big help. I like a woman who solves problems, not causes them.”

Amy involuntarily scrunched up her forehead at that last sentence, and Rick laughed.

“I suppose you wonder where that came from,” he said. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have said it.”

Losing his chief operating officer was both a blessing and a curse, but finding a new one was nothing short of urgent.

Max had been competent. He had been responsible for the higher echelon duties that Rick had just assigned Amy, but he was also supposed to locate new potential projects, investigate their owners, negotiate contracts with the sellers, as well as with subcontractors and project financiers, and meet with city officials to settle disagreements over design plans and building permits.

He’d been pretty good at managing the business end of the contracts and financings, but he was abysmal at the people stuff. He tended to ruffle feathers, turned off more potential sellers than he managed to woo, and alienated most of the rest of his staff with his perpetual bad mood. Guy, the marketing part-timer, in particular, hated him. Finally, Rick had to ask him to resign, and Max obliged readily. Apparently, he’d been as unhappy with his job as Rick had been with him.

As good as Amy might be at her new job, there were still too many things she wouldn’t be able to do. Now Rick was doing Max’s old job plus his own. It was a classic Catch-22: He had no time to find a new COO because he didn’t have one. Amy had volunteered to get a search started, but until the new guy was in place, he had been working long days and sleeping short nights.

His mother, however, wouldn’t take “I’m too busy” as an excuse for missing his sister’s birthday dinner the next Friday night. The timing couldn’t be worse, he had argued on Wednesday when she called, even though he knew it wasn’t true. He was quickly wrapping up the three renovation projects he had underway, and without any new properties to work on, he was reaching a point where things were going to let up, and he could catch his breath and catch up on sleep.

“You may not say no,” his mother told him over the phone. “Your sister is your only sibling and this family is small enough as it is.”

Rick’s relationship with his mother wasn’t going to be improve just because he showed up for his sister’s birthday, but his mother was right about one thing: he didn’t want to alienate his sister. Other than Elaine and his mother, he had no family. No aunts, uncles, cousins, children, grandparents, or father. His parents had been only children, and his father had died a decade ago.

“Okay, mom,” he finally relented. “I’ll be there. What should I bring?”

“A date,” she said. “Just a date. I’m getting a little old to hold up the conversation on my own. A little fresh blood at the table would be nice.”

“Howard will be there, won’t he?” Howard was Elaine’s boring husband. For an attorney, he didn’t seem to have much on the ball except for an ability to put together a decent fantasy football team.

“Silly boy,” she remonstrated Rick. “You know Howard couldn’t hold up his end of a conversation with a nine-sixty-six.”

Rick had to laugh. His mother was the only woman he knew who invoked heavy construction equipment—like a Caterpillar 966 front-end loader—in describing people.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “But Mom, I don’t have time to find dates. I haven’t been on a real date in two months. I don’t have time.”

“What do you mean ‘real’ date?” she asked. “Is there something else? Are you talking about lunch meetings? Random sleep-overs?”

“Both.”

“Your life is shit, young man,” she’d retorted. “Then bring your new secretary with you. I want to meet her anyway. Then you won’t have to worry about finding a date.”

“Mom, that wouldn’t be cool,” he said. “She an employee, not a girlfriend. I’m not going to make the same mistake you and dad did.”

“Rick, I’ve told you. You have no idea what you’re talking about with your father and me. When are you going to leave it alone?”

It was a sore subject for Rick: the way his mother had humiliated and rejected his father, taking over his business. But mother and son never got into it deeper than his vague accusations and her vapid denials. Any further discussion would probably tear them apart, and as much as Rick hated her for what had happened to his father, he was frequently shocked at the realization of how much he loved her, too.

He quickly brought the conversation back to the birthday dinner. “Well, even if I told Amy it’s all business, she could still think it was something else.”

“You’re the boss, Ricky! Explain it to her. I doubt she’s as head-over-heels over you as you think. Women rarely are.”

She was probably right about that, Rick admitted to himself. He hadn’t had a serious relationship since Beautiful Betty left, and he couldn’t really blame it all on the lack of time. He was busy, yes, but if he had been nicer to all of those women whom he was paired up with at social events around town, he probably could have had his choice of dates for his sister’s birthday party. But as it was, he had trouble trusting any of them in any capacity.

That’s why Beautiful Betty had looked perfect five years ago when he met her: she had absolutely no interest in his business. That didn’t work out so well, either, of course. As soon as they were married, she wanted to travel. She wanted him home by five every evening. He didn’t have time for either, and it wasn’t long before, jealous of his love for his work, she began to entertain herself with other men. At first, he thought she was just trying to make him jealous, but then she’d met Tommy. What a stupid name for a grownup, he thought at the time, not taking him seriously. But then, Betty announced she wanted a divorce, and Rick realized that marrying a woman with no aptitude for business might have been a mistake too, but at least he hadn’t lost his company to one like his father had.

Women might work out in other people’s businesses, but he didn’t want any of them running his. If his mother hadn’t run away with his dad’s business and Beautiful Betty hadn’t taken far more of his assets than he thought she deserved for only two unsatisfactory years of marriage, he might have felt differently. But in his experience, women were either scheming to become the boss, or scheming to spend his money as fast as they could. He had now reached the point that he didn’t even want women in his personal life.

Sex, of course, was something else. He had no trouble finding an adequate supply of that, or ginning up an adequate demand. A late-night drop in at one of the classier Palm Springs nightclubs was nearly always sufficient to locate a willing bed partner. There were enough tourists interested in a great looking one-night stand that he had no need to strike up permanent liaisons with local women who might become albatrosses or stalkers. Or get him mentioned on the society and gossip pages.

The weekend before he’d slept with two different women, one from St. Louis and one from Miami. It was business as usual—he picked them up after midnight when everyone was getting a little desperate for a sleeping partner—except for one thing: Amy’s image kept intruding. He actually had to avoid looking the women in the face, focusing instead on their breasts, their narrow waists, and smooth thighs. Otherwise, he was surprised over and over again, in the middle of love-making, to see that he wasn’t with Amy, but with some stranger who was unwittingly standing in for her. It had a negative consequence: he realized he was enjoying the sex a lot more than they were.

~

Having only two days to get the week’s work wrapped up—and one of them shortened by his mother’s invitation—put a fire under Rick’s butt. He really needed to fill in the project gap looming ahead of him, and he headed out Thursday morning to look for prospective properties.

While the rest of the country had slowly come out of the Great Recession caused by the mortgage debacle, Palm Springs had seemed to leap out of it. Downtown, cranes and bulldozers quickly devoured an ugly, cockroach-ridden old mall, making way for a new retail and residential complex. Despite a serious drought that brought long-term water supplies into question, new housing projects sprung up seemingly overnight, turning dusty gray sand dunes and dry mesquite into pretty plots of palm trees, black asphalt mazes, and Tuscan-inspired patio homes.

The real estate boom, of course, ushered in opportunity for corruption as well as profit. City hall had been raided by FBI investigators looking for evidence of collusion or worse between city officials and developers. And what had once been a steady supply of old, decaying small hotels for renovation had dried up. The properties were still there—they just had been priced out of reach of a small business like Rick’s that needed to make a profit on every project.

With Amy quickly assuming many of the minor contract and permitting issues that had been soaking up his time since Max left, Rick hoped he would finally have enough time to take on Max’s old duty of filling the pipeline with potential renovations. Max had preferred to sit in the office, make phone calls, and scour the Internet for available properties. Rick, however, preferred to do it the old fashioned way: on his bicycle.

He closed his office door, changed into shorts, and called Amy on the intercom. Her office was right next door, but he was trying to avoid face-to-face meetings with her, wanting to hammer home the impersonal nature of their business relationship. Asking her to go to his family’s estate for dinner on Friday night was risky enough, given how attracted he was to her. He needed to make it perfectly clear that what looked like a “date” was anything but.

“Amy, I’m heading out,” he announced into the square box.

“For how long?” Her voice crackled over the old device.

“All morning. I’m going to look around for prospects.”

“What?”

“What, what?”

“Jesus, Rick. Do we have to use this stupid thing?” He could hear her snap the box off. Five seconds later, he opened his door and nearly ran over her.

“Rick.” She had a way of saying his name that signaled exactly what mood she was in. This one was all business, just like her posture: hands on her hips, feet apart in what could only be called a power stance.

“Yes?”

“We can’t keep using that stupid intercom. It is so inefficient. Half the time, I can’t understand what you’re saying.”

“I don’t have time to come to your office every… every… every time I need to tell you something,” he argued. He realized he was stammering in the face of her unyielding posture.

“Then let’s start using messaging,” she said. “Or texting. Something other than squawking over that box. Really, dude. We have to yank this office out of the dark ages.”

Rick couldn’t think of what to say. His mind was too busy assessing the powerful effect she was having on him—especially on his anatomy. As she turned on the spot and strode back to her office, Rick felt his body heat up. From the back, she could have been a model for the hourglass figure that adorned the restroom signs in his little hotels. From the front … well, he couldn’t let himself think about her front.

Now, he had to worry about his ability to sit on the bike seat. He headed to the restroom to wash his face in cold water. He let the water drip off his chin as he looked in the mirror. He was surprised by the wild look in his own eyes.

~

Riding around the streets of the Movie Colony, the neighborhood just north and east of downtown, Rick remembered why he loved this town. It wasn’t for its crowded nightclubs; or for its artsy, gay-infused culture; or its thriving business scene. It was for the quiet, palm-lined streets, barely improved beyond jagged-edged strips of asphalt, which had never been finished with concrete curbs or gutters. It was for block after block of humble ramblers once favored by the Hollywood stars who fled to the desert in the California winter to get away from the rain and the chill of L.A. while staying within an hour of the city as required by their studio contracts.

Nowadays, the rich and famous had moved farther west into the Las Palmas neighborhood, where sprawling mansions hid behind tall oleander and ficus hedges, depriving a casual bike rider from even a glimpse at the stately edifices. And, more and more, even the more modest neighborhoods were succumbing to the bulldozers and backhoes that cleared the way for mini-mansions. Shady yards and grapefruit trees were displaced by Mid-Century Modern knock-offs that spread from property line to property line, ensuring their owners there would be plenty of room for exercise equipment, sixty-inch TVs, and gourmet kitchens with islands and prep sinks that would rarely be put to use.

At the edges of the neighborhood, some small inns and hotels lay decaying, some still attracting enough less-rich and less-famous tourists to stay alive until some over-financed investor came along to buy them out of their misery and start the gentrification. Inside those edges, Rick saw opportunity. Some small, decaying houses sat on land zoned for small inns and hotels, and their owners didn’t know it. In many cases, the houses were empty—the Midwestern owners who bought them in the sixties and early seventies had died, and their heirs hadn’t caught onto the trendiness of their parents’ old winter playground. They simply held onto them, in spite of the burden they carried in property tax payments.

Rick braked to a stop five or six times, pulling the little notepad out of the back pocket of his shorts and jotting down an address. Like Max, the real estate agents he had hired for this kind of prospecting were too lazy to get out of the office and canvass. They preferred to peruse other real estate agents’ listings from the comfort of their air-conditioned offices to actually walking or riding the streets. Once a property was listed on the MLS, anyone could bid on it, and that meant the asking price would climb into the stratosphere in a matter of minutes, if it hadn’t already started there.