The Brute & The Blogger (3 page)

T
ino had out smarted her, but she wasn’t giving up or giving in that easy.  He wanted her at his side day and night for a month? 
Well, we shall see about that
! Honestly, Ebony didn’t know what had made her angry, her boss strutting through the crowd like some oversized Teddy Bear, handing her off to her mortal enemy like she was a peace offering between feuding countries or Tino out smarting her.

She started up her loaner car to a puff of smoke out the tailgate, a wheeze from the engine, and sputter, but she was off.  She drove through town in case she would break down in her green scootum mobile versus taking the interstate arriving at Boehner Enterprises smelling like a pine scented bad idea.  There were so many pine air fresheners in the vehicle, Ebony wondered if something had died in there. As she walked to the front door of the building, she felt as if inside, she was about to die a little as well.

To her surprise, the office was located in what used to be a building supply company. Inside the glass doors, were wood floors with lots of plants, bright colors and a bubbly blond receptionist. 
I bet he is sleeping with her
. “Hi, I’m Ebony Miller.  I am here to see Mr. Boehner.”

The blonde stood, and her breast greeted Ebony first. She had a small waist, tight little hips and way too much wiggle in her walk. “I’m Tish, Tino’s assistant.  Follow me,” she told Ebony as her high heels clicked along the wood floor. It was uncertain which was busier, the office or Tish’s handful of bottom in that skirt as she teetered across the room.

Contractors were coming and going.  Guys in suits were sitting in meetings.  Young men were reviewing pages of paper and in the center of the office space was a 3D rendition of the latest project. This monstrosity was probably going to tear down an orphanage or something. She resisted the urge to take out her camera and snap a photo, but in her heart she knew it was some community about to be made over. 
Well, there goes the neighborhood
.
Figuratively
.

Tino’s office was in the back in a corner.  Ebony was almost disappointed to see that there were no mini putting greens on the floor or deer carcasses mounted to the wall. She had anticipated the 3D model being in his office but hid her surprise at the non-descript work space.  There wasn’t even a high school football trophy to remind him of the glory years. What did shock her was the music paying in the background.

“Ms. Miller, welcome,” he told her as he thanked his assistant.  “Tish, did you get her a work space set up already?”

The blond told him with far too much enthusiasm, “Yes, I did.  I also have a tablet for her, an email address set up and temporary passwords to the Wi-Fi.  Did I forget anything?”

Tino moved closer to her, “no you are awesome as always.”

“Thanks Boss,” she said as she bobbed away.

To his credit, he didn’t watch her walk away.  “Have a seat Ms. Miller.”

Ebony was frowning. One at his music selection and two for the entrapment. He did not miss her discomfort. “What is wrong now?  You just got here and you are ready to tear me apart.  Maybe this isn’t a good idea...maybe there is just no nice in you.”

“There is plenty of nice in me. What is not nice is your music selection.  Is that Milli Vanilli?”

He could not help himself, he said it before he knew it, “Girl, you know it’s true.”  When she didn’t smile, he picked up the remote and clicked the button, loading in ‘Rumors’ by Club Nouveau.

She was even less amused by that song choice. She exhaled loudly feeling the tension creep up her back. He clicked the remote again and Brick House came on.

“Are you kidding me?”

“What? This is my jam,” he told her as his head started to bob to the beat.

“What next Tino, you are going to show the black lady that you have a couple of moves?”

He stood up, “I have a lot of moves Ebony Miller.  I also have a lot a rhythm.” Tino started moving across the floor. He looked smooth, but she wasn’t going to admit to it. Her imagination began to flicker as his hips swayed, and his perfectly toned butt moved from side to side.

Holding up both of her hands she asked, “What is the point of all of this exactly?  I am not certain what you hope to accomplish by having me here.”

His mouth was twisted to the side as he rounded the desk and took a seat. “Ms. Miller, I intend to show you that the truth is subjective.  We often believe what we want to believe and to make it plausible, we find facts to support what we think.”

“Is that what you think I do? Find facts to support what I believe.” She told him with some animosity in her voice.

“Of course you do.  You look, make an assessment and assume you know all the answers.  You are judgmental snob,” he said flatly.

Ebony’s mouth opened to hit him with something Tino knew was going to be nasty, but he held up his hand as Tish came back in, “I’m sorry to interrupt Tino, but I wanted to make sure you didn’t forget about tonight.”

“I remember,” he told her.

“Do I need to do anything special...or is it all taken care of,” Tish wanted to know.

“I think everything is pretty much set,” he told her with a smile.

“Great!  I am going to take off now so I can get everything ready for tonight.  See you then,” she told him as she waved and closed the door.

The whole scenario was boring her.  “I can’t do this.  There is no way I can remotely see myself working with or besides you for the next month.  This is just not a good idea.”

He was calm as he looked at her, “why?”

“What do you mean, why?  You stand for everything I am against...I....” She grabbed her purse and rose to leave.

“Sit down!”  His voice was stern.

“You don’t know what you stand for Ebony Miller.  You think you do.  You think you have all the answers and know everything and what you know isn’t enough for you to launch a terror campaign against me or my company.  You are here so I can show you just how wrong you have been.”

“How gracious of you...” she added snidely.

“Actually, it is. Now take a seat,” he said with firmness in his voice.

They were both breathing hard and staring at each other with intensity in their eyes, but before either could say another word, Tish came back to the door.  “I meant to ask if you had a chance to pick up Mom & Dad’s present for tonight. I am going to the Mall if you need me to get it for you.”

He smiled at her, trying to calm his breathing, “I have it already.  And it’s wrapped too.”

She smiled.  Apologized again and left.

The look on Ebony’s face was worth the headache he had gone through. He could not let it slide, “Let me guess, you thought she was some little honey, I liked to spend time with after hours?”

Ebony dropped her head.  He was right.

“Ebony, you are wrong about so much.”

“That may be Mr. Boehner, but this little stunt is not going to make me like you. You also can’t make me stay.  I don’t work for you.”

That creepy smile was back, “that is where you are wrong.  You do.  The nonprofit which employs you is my company. Which is the only reason you haven’t been fired.”

V
ery seldom was Ebony Miller left without words, but Tino had done just that. Her only response was, “Say what now?”  It hastened her low crawl from Stupidville when he dismissed her to spend the morning with someone named Jeremy.  In the afternoon she was assigned to work with a lady named Montrice.  In the interim, she found that she also had to relearn how to work with herself.

He had been right, which pissed her off. She did rush to judgment.  There was absolutely no resemblance between him and the blonde assistant, and she most definitely did not look like his sister.  She didn’t even look like she could have been a distant cousin. 
Maybe one of them is adopted
.

An apology was stuck in the back of her throat, making its way upwards when she opened the door to leave, she heard him mutter under his breath, “Try not to terrorize anyone today.  Oh, and keep the monkeys chained up.”

It was official.  She could not stand that man!  However, success was the sweetest form of revenge and she was going to give his entire staff diabetes before the month was over.
I can be sweet
. Starting after she told him, “And you try to not to throw any little old ladies with canes out on the street, you big brute!”

Both Tino and Ebony arrived at the same dreadful conclusion; it was going to be a very long month. Her assignment was to spend a month learning his business and actually blog about it from the inside. He wanted 12 posts about his business over the next 6 months.  Posts, which had to be approved by his communications director before being uploaded to her site. She could also post nothing else about him or his company or it would result in a defamation suit.

He had strong armed her into getting what he wanted. No one strong armed Ebony Miller.  Especially not Tino Boehner.

J
eremy Pevtin was a short little man with roaming eyes.  The little dark beads darted about the room, leaving the Ebony’s face, shifting to the door, back to her boobs and again to the door.  She was starting to believe that at any moment the man was going to jump up, fondle her breast and sit back down like he had not done anything. He stood up to grab a pen and Ebony clutched her purse to her breast.  Her eyes were wide with suspicion.

“You are safe here Ms. Miller,” he told her over large bucked teeth that caused him to have a lisp.

“I’m sorry.  I am a bit jumpy,” she told him.  “So what is it you do here?”

“I am the head project manager of Boehner Enterprises,” he told her with pride.  As if any of it mattered or made any sense to Ebony, but she plastered on a sweet smile, pretended to be dumb and asked him to explain.

Two hours later she was impressed.  Not only with him, but also with Tino.  The two of them had started the company when they were in college and working construction jobs in the summer.  Both were sophomores at the University of North Carolina when they found a small cottage that had been abandoned.  After doing some research, they were able to purchase the property by simply paying the taxes. “It was a lot better than living on campus,” he told her.

Each evening, they would work on the property until the bathroom, kitchen and living room was habitable, and then they moved in.  It took about three months and all the extra money they had but it paid off. “We got a friend who was a landscape architecture major to come and design a simple yard plan, and it increased the value of the house.”

Several people wanted to house and the offers poured in. “We got the house for three thousand in back taxes and sold it for a hundred seventy five thousand dollars.  We are also left with a bunch of money that had to be reinvested, so we bought another house, in a better neighborhood that had gone down.”

The profit was lower, yet the investment was solid. “That is how we began.  By the time we were twenty-one, we had way too much money, and Tino is very practical.  He wanted to give back to the city, so we purchased some properties in the run down areas of town, fixed them up, and they sold fast.  So we bought the whole block, soon we were revitalizing blighted areas.”

Ebony snapped a few photos of him with her camera phone. “I’m sorry, you still have not told me what it is you do here. 

“I am the no-nonsense guy who lays out all the strategies of what we buy and where.  I manage fifteen to twenty rehab projects, those are the houses that need to be fixed up and sold. I oversee fifty contractors.  My area of expertise is single family homes, multi-family residences.”

“So you are telling me that you guys are nothing more than glorified house flippers?” Ebony asked in disbelief.

Jeremy frowned which was something that he should never do.  He looked like a cross between a rat and a circus act that was locked in the back room in a cage. In a dark room.  That was fed through the bars.  With an extra-long stick.

“We started that way, but over the past 10 years, we have learned something important,” he told her as he looked up at the door.

“And what is that?”

“There is nothing more fulfilling that seeing a family buy their first home, especially when they thought they could not afford one. Especially anything as nice as what we rehab.”

It was a bit of an eye opener for Ebony on two fronts.  He was checking the door because he really didn’t want to spend any more time with her than he had too.  He was also eyeing the front of her blouse because she had spilled coffee on herself and never noticed. It occurred when the transmission of her beautiful green loaner changed gears on its own.  This was twice in one morning that she felt lower than the scrotum on an earthworm.

Ebony ate lunch by herself in the employee break room.  She had a sandwich, a bowl of soup and her note pad. She was pretty oblivious to what was going on around her but when he walked up behind her, she immediately knew he was there. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, but she refused to say anything to him unless he spoke to her.

What had drawn his attention was his workers.  Someone had made a comment about the new cute girl and the men would be flocking like bees to the new honey and he wanted to stave off their advances.  Why it mattered to him was an oddity, but he wanted to make sure she did not paint his company as a place where women did not feel safe.  He wanted Ebony to feel safe, not only in his business but around him.  But Tino could not help what came out of his mouth when he saw her in person.  “What are you having there a bowl of eye of newt mixed with bat wings and spider webs,” he asked as he took a seat and opened his lunch bag.

“No, I am mixing my latest potion to give you an uncomfortable rash,” she said as she bit into her sandwich.

“It doesn’t have to be this way between us Ebony,” his words were meant as an olive branch, but his eyes read something deeper.

Her scowl answered his question.  “Is that your plan?  Lock me in here with all of your ‘look what I built by the sweat of my brow crap’, then use that to soften me up?  For what?”

His eyebrows shot up, “You are some piece of work Ebony Miller!”

Tino walked away and left his lunch on the table. “I have lost my appetite.”

So much for giving him diabetes.  This was not going to last for a month. First chance she got, Ebony was going to update her resume. She definitely was going to need a new job.