Chapter Ten

 

 

“I’ve got one chance left. One,” she told Luis over the weak coffee she’d brewed, using the last of the coffee in the apartment. “One! And a week to find it.”

“Can’t believe that bitch stole your number four. That’s not right.”

“I know. But Prescott’s completely inflexible on some things. Drives me nuts.” She, who could change direction on a whim. She pushed her hands through her hair. Part of her lack of focus was simple exhaustion. She’d snatched maybe an hour of sleep in the midst of getting everything ready for the Tokyo meetings. Then, before his plane took off, Rupert had texted her a list of instructions. He wasn’t coming straight home. He was heading to London and wanted her to set up meetings there. Iona had discovered a young fashion designer she predicted was going to be big and wanted to own the label.

“Seriously, he thinks he can buy people,” she wailed to Luis. “It’s my day off and now I have to buy him a designer. And I have to find Prescott a property. And we’re out of coffee.”

“Come on, walk with me. I need to see my abuela. I promised I’d help pack some boxes for them. She’ll feed us for sure. And the coffee pot is always on.”

“Are they moving already?”

“Sure. They bought a place in Mexico. Near family.”

“Did they sell their house?”

“No. But it will go fast. Maybe not for as much as they’d hoped because of the weird lot, but they’ll still walk away with a nice retirement nest egg.”

They walked to his grandparents’ house. Her internal body clock was set to Tokyo time. Her eyes were blurry from looking at real estate listings, both whisper and real. She’d expanded her search in every direction she could think of. All she needed was something, anything, Prescott Chance would say yes to.

The house of Luis’s grandparents had been built by his great-great somebody or other and she wasn’t entirely certain that there’d been much of a building code back then. She’d always loved its quirky lines, but she could see it would be a tough sell, she who pretty much had an advanced degree in real estate thanks to the past few weeks.

A volley of Spanish greeted Luis when his grandmother opened the door in her usual uniform of black skirt, white blouse, black cardigan and the gold cross that always hung from her neck. It wasn’t the usual babble. Holly might only understand one in five words, but she could hear the undertone of worry. Finally, the woman wore down and pulled Holly in for a hug. “Holly, so nice to see you. Come in, join us for cafecito con pan dulce.” Heaven. Luis had been right. The coffee was fresh and the little sweets from the local bakery were exactly what her exhausted mind and body needed.

“Gracias,” she said. “But I’m not sure I should.” She glanced at Luis, knowing he’d be honest with her on whether her presence was a good or a bad thing for his grandmother, but he nodded.

Rapidly, Luis translated what was going on. “The real estate agent had bad news for them. The way the house was built, it never complied with any guidelines. So, if you pull the place down, you have to build much smaller. So, basically, they’re screwed.”

“But this is right in the heart of The Mission.” The home might not be anyone’s dream house, but with the right vision— She nearly choked on her coffee.

Luis stared at her. “What?”

“Challenge. Urban density. Small footprint. Prescott’s always talking about those things but he’s never done one.”

Luis looked at her like she might be out of her mind. “Prescott Chance? Are we talking about the world-famous architect who has said no to properties you and I could only dream about?”

She nodded, her curls smacking her face in her enthusiasm. “See? That’s the thing. Those are the properties everybody shows him because that’s what he’s done before, that’s what the super rich will pay for. But he doesn’t care about that. He designs for his own reasons, a bunch of which I don’t even understand, but he’s very interested in better urban design.” A beat of excitement drummed in her belly. “I think this could be it.”

“Chica, you’ve only got one card left to play. You sure this is the right one?”

“No. Frankly, I’m not sure of anything right now, including what day it is. All I know is that I’ve trolled properties from all over the world and all I could picture was Prescott giving that cold shrug and saying it didn’t speak to him.” She gave her own shrug. “This is crazy and completely out of the box, but I think this one might just speak to him. Whatever happens, I’ll have done everything I could to find the Ruperts a property. And I will never have to look at another real estate listing as long as I live.”

“And neither will I,” he said in relief. It was true, she’d forced him to look at more properties in the past few days than any person should have to. She’d said, “You know, one day you could buy something like this if your startup takes off.” And he’d replied that no matter how rich he got he’d never want an estate that big.

She wondered if Prescott was suffering a similar fatigue from designing only the highest of high end. Maybe he’d like to try something a little more real. And if you wanted a design challenge, this was your spot.

“I need to call him.”

“You’re sleep deprived and desperate. I want you to be sure.”

She wasn’t sure about anything, but there was a tingling in her belly and she decided to follow its promptings. Yes, it might lead to disaster, but most roads seemed to lead there anyway as far as she and the Ruperts were concerned.

“I’m calling him.”

Naturally, she couldn’t get straight through to Prescott. Not even sharing orgasms with the man gave her that access mostly because nobody had access. She called his cell and a computerized voice told her the cell phone customer was not available. She called his office and left an urgent message with the receptionist who said she’d get the message to him the second he was available. Like when he was finished communing with the spirits of his ancestors or working on a design or some combination of both. Whatever he actually did tucked up high in that scarily quiet office.

It was only ten minutes later when he called her, which she suspected had a lot to do with their recent extracurricular activities.

“Hi,” he said, warm and sexy and un-Prescott like.

She felt herself blushing and with a gesture to Luis and his grandmother walked out the front door and sat on the stoop. “Hi, yourself.”

“I was thinking about you this morning,” he said. “I never get distracted, but you are distracting me.”

She couldn’t imagine a greater compliment, though she suspected he didn’t see it that way.

“That’s good.”

“You calling to let me know you want to try it again tonight?”

“Well, yes, now you mention it, I do. But I called because I have another site for you to see.”

He groaned. “No more planes. If I can’t drive there in an hour, I’m saying no right now.”

“You can walk to it,” she said. “In fact, you should come over right now. I’m here.” She gave him the address.

“That’s in The Mission,” he said.

“Yes, it is. You want challenge? You want a small urban footprint? You want to put your money where your sustainable future mouth is? This is your place.”

“I’ve never heard you sound so confident about a place before.”

She was pulling on every bit of self-confidence she had left after almost eight months with Rupert. “I’ve never felt so confident.”

“This is your last site. We’re clear on that, right?”

“Yep.”

There was a pause. “I could use some air.”

She jumped up on the cement stoop and pushed her fist in the air. “Okay, I’ll be here.”

Fortunately, Luis’s grandmother had never heard of Prescott Chance so she didn’t get unrealistic hopes since she didn’t have any hopes at all regarding a friend of Holly’s walking over to look at her home. She was more worried about transporting her household saints and her veladoras, her collection of religious candles, without anything getting broken.

She packed the saints herself, saying a prayer over each, while Luis hefted furniture that they’d targeted for Goodwill.

While Holly wrapped good china, she wondered what she’d done? In that rush of excitement she’d gotten carried away. As usual. If she ever sat down and thought things through she wouldn’t get herself in these messes, like ever making this foolish deal with Prescott in the first place.

But then if she hadn’t met him, hadn’t dared him to push her away, hadn’t challenged him into accepting her ridiculous proposal, then she wouldn’t have enjoyed some of the best sex of her life.

He made her feel things she had no business feeling for a man who lived in a different stratosphere from her in so many ways. They couldn’t be more different. He was rich and she was in student loan debt; he was sleek, sure of himself, self contained, and she was a wild mess of insecurities and dreams. If he got his inspiration from the earth, she thought she must get hers from the wind. It blew in, picked her up and carried her along a little way then usually dumped her on her butt.

Impulsive. That was her problem. Whether she was daring a world-famous architect to design her boss a house or getting naked with same architect without thinking through the consequences at all. Consequences, she thought, pushing a hand through her tangle of curls. Now that she’d slept with him things would always be different.

By the time he knocked on the door she’d bounced from euphoria to terror and back again so many times she was dizzy. Luis had taken her off the good china, clearly afraid she’d smash it all. Instead, she was assigned to matching plastic food containers with their lids, packing the matched sets and tossing those that didn’t have a lid.

She put everything down when she heard the knock. Forced herself to draw in a full breath and walked to the front door. She opened it and Prescott was standing there.

When he gazed at her she forgot that she was supposed to show him the property and sell him on all the excellent reasons why he should consider designing a house here. All she could think of was how much she wanted him again. Her body pulsed with need, a drumbeat that seemed to bang inside her veins. Want him want him want him need him want him need him.

His eyes softened when he continued to regard her and she felt as though he was reading her mind, or picking up the beat of her desire for him. Powerful. It was too powerful.

Desire was fine, but she couldn’t let it become need. That would be a bad idea on every level.

“Hi,” he said at last and she felt as though they’d been standing there staring at each other for a long time.

“Hi.” She didn’t want to blush. That was foolish, adolescent, too much like a girl with a crush. But even as she tried to keep the color from climbing her cheeks, she knew it was too late and she was already blushing.

He didn’t kiss her but the pull was almost stronger because the wanting to kiss and not doing it hovered between them like an ache. “Is this the house?” he finally asked.

House? What house? Oh, right. She nodded. “Yes.” That came out sounding reedy and unsure. She cleared her throat and tried again. This was her last hope. She had to talk him into this place or, since he wasn’t a man who was ever talked into anything, had to present the house in the best possible light so he’d make a decision in its favor.

All her confidence began to dribble away. What had she been thinking? They’d looked at property so gorgeous her breath caught in her throat, and she’d wasted her last hope on a run-down house on a strange-shaped lot. He’d think she was deranged.

And she half thought he might be right.

But, fake it till you make it had helped her through more than one meeting with Rupert when she had no idea what was going on.

She grabbed the threads of her earlier confidence around her. “Okay,” she said. “It’s very different from everything we’ve looked at. But that’s what I like about it. It’s urban, funky. I’m not going to lie to you, this lot is a big challenge. It doesn’t conform, it’s a strange shape, and the shell of the current house will have to stay in order to retain the building envelope.” She gulped in some air, realized she was forgetting to breathe, and forced herself to relax. “But, it’s an amazing location, and, as crazy as this sounds, you can feel the happiness here. Luis—that’s my roommate—his grandparents have lived her for fifty years. They are a big, happy family, and while I’m not into communing with the earth and rocks like you are, even I can feel the good energy.”

He listened to her intently. Nodded. “Walk me around the lot,” he said.

“Oh, right. Okay.” She stepped outside with him and took him on a tour of the entire property. That took about a minute. He didn’t say anything. He could see the property markers the real estate agent had placed as well as she could.

“Hmm,” he said.

Was hmm good or bad? Impossible to tell and she wasn’t about to ask and take the risk of irritating him.

“Do you need some time alone out here?”

He hesitated. “No.”

Oh, dear. He always sat in quiet and silence. Had he decided against her already?

“Do you want to see the interior?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Okay, that had to be good. They went back inside and Luis came out of the kitchen with his grandmother. “Luis, this is Prescott.”

The men shook hands and she could see them sizing each other up. Later she’d ask Luis for his impressions. He was smart about people. Luis introduced his grandmother and to her surprise, Prescott spoke to the woman in Spanish.

Luis’s abuela smiled as though he’d given her a bouquet of roses and babbled back. Cool.

He seemed genuinely engaged with Luis’s grandmother, not simply going through the vaguest of motions to be polite like he usually did when they were viewing a property. She could see that he was enjoying this woman and her home and it occurred to her that maybe Prescott wasn’t distant with everyone, only with people who annoyed him or who wanted something from him that he didn’t necessarily want to give.

Hope, and the sizzle of excitement that had gripped her when she’d first considered this house as a serious possibility, began to resurface.

She began to marshal the same thoughts and impressions that had excited her about this property when she first saw it, wondered how she might give him a tour that would show the place to its best advantage and then, with a flash of insight, realized that the best thing she could do would be to sit back and let Luis’s grandmother show Prescott the house.

This was the woman who’d lived in it for half a century, who’d grown old here, who’d loved and raised children here. Maybe it wouldn’t be the right approach in many cases for the current owner to show the home to an architect, but in this case, when she knew that Prescott went on instinct and some kind of spiritual voodoo to make a decision, maybe this lovely woman was exactly the person who should be showing off her home.

So, she and Luis hung back and let the grandmother talk. Prescott followed her from room to room, asked questions that she could tell even from her limited Spanish were about the light and weather patterns, and it seemed like he was asking about the neighborhood and the neighbors which seemed like a strange line of questioning and maybe she’d gotten that wrong.

The tour took half an hour. And then he sat in the kitchen with Grandma and Luis and Holly while they all drank coffee and ate more of the wonderful pan dulce.

She’d never seen him so charming. Luis’s grandmother clearly fell half in love with him, and to her shock, Holly began to realize that she was half in love with him herself.

They were chatting about Mexico when there was a tapping noise on the kitchen window. Holly glanced up to see an exotic-looking bird staring in at their snack time, his head tilted to one side.

“Oh, Hector,” Luis’s grandmother said, rising from her seat. Then she spoke in rapid Spanish as she opened the window and the bird hopped right in and onto the kitchen counter.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said, as she reached into a handy container and pulled out a handful of raw nuts. “His owners leave the window open sometimes and he comes visiting.”

“Doesn’t he fly away?” Holly asked, shocked that this pretty, colorful bird paid house calls to the neighbors.

“No. He never does. He visits with me, and then he flies back home. He’s a parakeet and very smart.” She sighed. “I’ll miss Hector.”

Meanwhile, the bird pecked away at the food and the older woman chatted away to him in Spanish. Then he half jumped, half flew onto her shoulder and nibbled at her gold earrings. She stroked his breast with one finger and then he stepped daintily onto the finger and was introduced to everyone. He bobbed his head up and down a few times which made them all laugh. Then she opened the window and the little bird flew back home.

How could you not love a place where exotic birds came to visit? She hoped Prescott agreed.

After a pleasant half hour, well, pleasant for everyone else it seemed, when it was all cake and coffee and parakeet visits and smiles and rapid Spanish that she couldn’t follow, and her stomach was so nervous she could barely swallow the delicious cake, finally, finally, Prescott rose as though he had nothing more interesting to do than to sit around all afternoon chatting, but realized that Luis’s grandmother was a busy woman with a house to pack.

Holly was surprised he didn’t grab a box and start wrapping china.

He thanked Luis’s grandmother for her hospitality and kissed her on the cheek. Gave Luis a manly handshake and then said goodbye. She said her swift goodbyes, exchanged a hopeful glance with Luis, and followed Prescott out the door.

Knowing how touchy he was to be talked to when he was communing with nature or the land or the house spirits or whoever, she kept her mouth shut.

He walked to the end of the short path. Turned. Looked at the house. Walked the perimeter once more. Holly followed at a discreet distance, or as discreet as you can be on a small city lot. There weren’t acres of oceanfront or landscaped grounds or forest for her to drop back to. She wanted to be in hearing distance if he said anything, but not in annoying distance.

He stood with his back to her, walked over to an old stone sundial and ran a finger around the edge.

Then he turned and walked to where she was standing. She tried to read some expression on his face but she didn’t think there was one.

“Well?” she said when she couldn’t stand it any longer.

He looked at her then. “I owe you a dinner out in a restaurant,” he said. When she stood there staring at him, he said, “For our date. I promised you dinner and we never got there.”

They’d been preoccupied with other activities as she recalled and dinner hadn’t crossed her mind. When they were hungry they’d ordered in Chinese.

Now, she was torn to pieces by anxiety and he wanted to discuss dating. “Dinner? My entire future hangs in the balance and you’re thinking about dinner?”

He cracked a smile then, as charming as anything he’d shown to Luis’s grandmother and a whole lot more intimate. “To celebrate.”

Her heart began to pound. “Are we celebrating something specific?”

“You nailed it, Holly. I don’t know how you did it, but this is it. This is what I’ve been looking for. Challenge, possibilities, an opportunity to really do a spectacular, sustainable design on a small lot.”

She compared this quirky, mid-city lot with the stunning jewels of real estate he’d turned his nose up at. “This speaks to you?”

“This speaks to me.”

She let out a whoop of joy and threw herself into his arms.