“How do you know I have money?”
“Everyone knows you,” the clerk said, dipping her head demurely and fluttering her eyelids. It looked like gesture his grandmother might have used, flirting with jazz musicians back in Chicago in the 1930s. Where did that come from? The clerk couldn’t have been more than twenty.
She held out her hand to introduce herself. “I’m Taylor, Mr. D’Matrio. I’m so excited to meet you.”
~
Rick hated his celebrity. It was impossible to hide, impossible to do anything that the rest of the world wouldn’t know about within hours. It kept him sequestered inside his house until late at night, except when he was required to suck up to financiers and city planning officials over drinks and dinner, or at a philanthropic, artsy function that would land his photo on the society pages of Palm Springs Life magazine.
As he slipped behind the wheel of his car and pulled back out onto the quiet street, he fantasized once again—for the millionth time, it seemed—about disappearing. He could cash out, take the money he’d made over the past decade, buy some tropical island, and sink into the library of books he’d collected and never had time to read.
Of course, that wasn’t the Rick the public knew. Since his divorce from Beautiful Betty, everyone knew him as a playboy, always a different angel on his arm, on his way to some society event. Since he was never seen with the same woman twice, rumors had started to circulate that he was gay, and the women he was seen with were his hired eye-candy, meant to throw off the conservative builders and financiers he depended on to complete his projects.
Odd, he suddenly thought, odd that the waitress who helped him rescue Busker that morning had acted like she didn’t know him. Was she new to town? Is that why he’d never seen her before? And why did she keep popping up in his mind’s eye, as if she were as memorable or as beautiful as Beautiful Betty had been?
He tried to dissect the image floating in his memory. What was that hairdo? It reminded him of the way girls who played intramural sports in college used to wear their hair: like they didn’t care what it looked like. Her waitress uniform did little to improve her figure, but from what he could remember, it didn’t need much help. What was it that made her stick in his mind? What was this strange obsession?
As he finished up his take-home paperwork and prepared for bed that night, he settled on two answers: First, he was going to visit her tomorrow to let her know what happened to Busker. And second, he was going to spend enough time with her to figure out why he couldn’t get her out of his mind.
~ Three: Amy ~
There was no reason for Amy to think the driver of the car that hit the dog would show up at the diner the next morning, but somehow, she wasn’t surprised when he did.
“Oh my god, that’s Rick D’Matrio!” Katie hissed loudly right behind Amy’s ear as she stood behind the cash register, taking money from a regular.
Amy looked up.
“Oh, really? And who’s that?”
“It’s the guy who hit the dog yesterday!” Katie was employing her usual theatrical flourishes. “Don’t you remember?”
“Yes, I remember that,” Amy said, shaking her head dismissively. “I meant who is Rick D’Matrio?”
“God, girl, don’t you read Palm Springs Life?”
“Uh, no.”
“Not even the society pages?”
“Especially not the society pages.” Amy had started avoiding any kind of society pages—newspaper, magazine or online—about a year ago, once they started picturing Rob frequently and prominently, always with a different beauty on his arm, smiling at some charity event he hadn’t bothered to tell her about.
“Well, I’ll have to fill you in later,” Katie’s voice had dropped to a whisper as the driver who hit the dog and left Amy’s knees weak entered the café and walked toward them.
He was just as lovely as Amy remembered. But today, he had on trust-funder clothes: a bright Reyn Spooner print shirt and cargo pants. Ah, probably a truster after all, Amy thought. Maybe he wore a suit yesterday because he had a meeting with his mama’s financial advisor.
Amy wasn’t sure where the chip on her shoulder came from that made her dislike, distrust, and disrespect people—especially men—who came from moneyed families. But as she carried a menu to the counter to offer it to Rick D’Matrio—if that’s who it really was—she tried to tamp down her disfavor. The guy didn’t deserve her prejudice; lots of people wore Hawaiian shirts and khaki pants. Besides, she really liked his look.
“Hey!” Rick smiled up at her and met her eyes. “Remember me?”
“How could I forget?” she answered, rewarding him with the “I’m a waitress who needs tips really badly” smile she’d learned to apply even when she knew she wouldn’t like the tourist or the rare nasty regular she was waiting on. Why did everyone seem to think she had such a short memory? She wasn’t even blonde. It did seem odd, though, that he didn’t assume she remembered him, she thought. Maybe he had less of an ego than most the valley’s trust-funders she had met over the past two years.
“Well, uh… I came to tell you that Busker is doing fine.” Rick accepted the menu but kept his eyes locked on hers. “He has a cast on his leg and he’s mending. He is at the Valley Emergency Pet Service if you want to visit him.”
“Busker?” Amy asked. She found his dark eyes distracting, and fought to keep her voice even. “How did you find out his name?”
“I didn’t. That’s just what the girls in the vet’s office named him. He’s apparently quite the charmer. He already has them wrapped around his little finger. Or, I mean paw. Well, whatever.”
“Are you paying for it then? Are you going to keep him?”
“Uh, I don’t think so,” Rick dropped his eyes to the menu and suddenly seemed at a loss for words. “I, uh, I don’t… I mean, yeah, I’m picking up the tab. It’s not bad. But, no I don’t think so.”
“Don’t think so what?”
Rick looked up again and smiled, as if amused by his own stumbling delivery.
“I don’t think I can keep him. I work too much. And you know, I’m … well, I’m not very good at things like that. Well, at much of anything, really.”
Now he stared at the menu some more, avoiding her eyes as if he was unsure of himself, and it surprised Amy. How could he be so poised and charismatic one moment, and so shy and self-deprecating the next? He was an enigma, and usually, that wasn’t a good thing in men. If you couldn’t figure out who they were, they probably didn’t know either.
“Oh, okay,” Amy decided not to push him further into rhetorical nonsense. “You want some coffee?”
Rick nodded, and Amy turned away. Katie was motioning none too subtly for Amy to meet her back in the kitchen. Amy obeyed.
“Are you serious? You really don’t know who that is?” Katie asked again in her harsh whisper.
“You told me Rick something.”
“He’s like this super-hot developer in town!” Katie’s whisper practically squeaked with excitement. “Like eligible bachelor No. 1! And wow, who would have guessed it? He’s even better looking in person!”
“My god, Katie, calm down!” Amy said. “He just stopped in to tell me what happened with the dog.”
“The dog? Really? The dog?” Katie seemed incredulous. “But is he going to ask you out?” Katie reached up and fussed with Amy’s hair, and Amy swatted her hand away.
“No,” she said. “I think he wants a cup of coffee. Get back to work, will you? Sheesh! Sometimes you seem a little more like twelve than thirty.”
“And you seem more like eighty than twenty-eight!”
“Just because I don’t fall over every gorgeous man that walks in the door?”
“Well, that’s a relief.” Katie smiled. “At least you recognize that he’s gorgeous.”
“Well, I’m not blind,” Amy said. She turned on her heel and walked back out to the front of the restaurant.
“Decide on something?” she asked Rick.
/>
“Yeah, just coffee,” he said, putting down the menu.
Amy imagined that the café’s fare was probably a huge step down from what a “super-hot” developer usually had for breakfast. She reached behind her for the coffee pot, filled a mug, and set it in front of him. Somehow, Katie’s over-the-top reaction to Rick’s presence had cooled her head. She leaned forward with her elbows on the counter.
“So, you’re Rick the ‘super-hot’ developer, Katie tells me,” she said, pointing to her friend who was busying herself at the other end of the counter, trying to pretend she wasn’t watching.
“Yes,” Rick smiled. Her casual demeanor seemed to help him regain his poise. “And, all I know about you is that you’re the super-hot waitress who likes dogs. Likes them well enough, that is, to run out into the street to save one.”
“Well, he seemed harmless enough.”
“Yes, he was. But tell me more. I’m Rick, and you are…?” Rick held out his hand, and Amy straightened up to take it. He held it a second longer than necessary, but she pretended not to notice.
“Amy Prentiss. Waitress in search of a real job.”
“Isn’t waitressing a real job?”
“Sure, if you’re happy with minimum wage, no career advancement, and coming home with volatile kitchen grease in your hair every afternoon.”
“So what is your real profession then?”
Amy pondered the question for a moment, backing up against the wall behind the counter and crossing her arms in front of her chest.
“Trouble is, I’m not sure,” she said. “I’ve been an accountant, a public relations director, and fairly recently a hotel manager. Small hotel, that is. I liked that job, even though it didn’t require a degree in accounting. But some jerk bought the place and closed it down to turn it into one of those cutesy, trendy inns that cater to the young, rich hipsters from L.A. I lost my job and this was all I could find in short order.”
“What hotel was that?” Rick looked concerned.
“The Hotel Corona. People used to pose in front of the sign, holding their Corona beer bottles. Over there on the other side of Palm Canyon Drive.” She jerked her head in that direction. “You probably don’t know it. It was kind of a dive.”
“Yes, it was a dive.” Rick laughed. “And I’m the jerk who shut it down.”
~
There wasn’t much Amy could say to redeem herself, and although she tried, she just ended up stuttering. Rick, demonstrating a thoughtfulness she didn’t deserve, rescued her by throwing a five-dollar bill on the counter, assuring her he wasn’t insulted, and making a quick exit for what he said was an imminent meeting at the office.
Luckily, the lunch crowd was a bit larger than usual, and Katie and Amy were too busy to fuss much over what she’d said to Rick. Now that summer was ending, and the earliest of the snowbirds had returned, business was picking back up again. Fall and early winter were actually the best times at the café: busy enough to make the days pass quickly and earn decent tips, but not too busy. Most of the Canadians didn’t come back to the desert until the middle of January, and that’s when things got really crazy.
Amy had no time at the café to kick back and browse through Monster.com or Indeed.com, so she went straight to her computer when she got home from work. She started by entering key words that might lead to jobs that satisfied her personal interests: books, dogs, wine. As usual, nothing worth leaving her job at the café for popped up.
She went back to the beginning and entered “accounting” into the search field, and then sorted by salary. That way she could filter out the entry jobs that were really little more than data entry, and the retail jobs that claimed a degree in accounting was essential to selling t-shirts and candy to tourists. If she wasn’t going to make at least $40,000 a year, then the job probably wasn’t going to advance her career the way she needed it to.
Twenty-five jobs popped up on the Indeed list. Before diving into the details, Amy got up and headed to the kitchen for sustenance and courage in the form of a glass of wine. She opened the wine refrigerator and surveyed her choice of vintages. The fact that she had a wine refrigerator and a big enough wine inventory to provide options was, she had to admit, a residual benefit—one of the few—of her long relationship with Rob. She was still living in his condo, paying rent that was far below what he could get on the market. He offered her this deal so that he could be sure it was occupied, taken care of, and not subjected to the usual renter’s neglect and abuse. For him, the unit wasn’t a bad long-term investment as long as it stayed as pristine as it was when he left. Further, he expected he would occasionally want to use it as a vacation place, a desert get-away.
To be fair, she deserved to keep it, and not just because she’d put up with his disgusting philandering over the last year they lived together. She’d also made it the near-museum piece it was by combining just the right balance of textures and colors, perfectly proportioned furniture, and an eclectic and tasteful collection of sculpture and art. Given the building’s stucco exterior, red tile roof and arched doorways, she’d stuck with a neo-Spanish Colonial kind of décor: leather sofa, dark pine dining furniture and plenty of warmly hued rugs, offset by the light tile floors and pale taupe walls. It was both bright and warm at the same time. Decorating was only an avocation, not something she’d been specifically trained or educated in, but Amy was good at interior design. Even Rob admitted it. Of course, in design-obsessed and gay Palm Springs, good designers were a dime a dozen.
Walking through the condo, back to her small office off the master bedroom, Amy laughed at that notion. Of course she was a good interior decorator! Weren’t all women? Wasn’t nesting something that came naturally to them, even if they never intended to make space in that nest for children or grandchildren? Maybe not all women, but all of her female friends seemed to have the design touch to some extent or another. That’s why careers in interior design paid horribly, Amy thought: Anyone could do it well enough to make a house a home.
Sitting back down at the computer, Amy was tempted to take a detour off the job search path. She succumbed, opened the Google search page, and entered Rick D’Matrio. First, she scanned through the images, including some that were clearly not they guy she’d just met at the café. Then, she settled down and did some research.
There were plenty of old news clips about him. The grandson of an old Chicago architect and the son of a road construction contractor, he had grown up in Palm Springs, attended Stanford and got a bachelor’s degree in business administration—cum laude, of course—and an MBA. But, she was surprised to find out, he didn’t return to Palm Springs to run his daddy’s business. It appeared that his father had started his company back in the 1970s, but he left it sometime in the 1990s. At that point, Rick’s mother, Janet D’Matrio, had taken over the business as CEO and had expanded it beyond Riverside County to become one of the largest heavy construction contractors in Southern California. The news articles and websites she found, however, didn’t indicate what happened to Rick’s father. Perhaps he died? But if he had, wouldn’t there be an obituary somewhere?
She couldn’t find any indication that Rick had ever worked at D’Matrio Construction either, or if he had, he hadn’t been rewarded for his good choice in parents with an executive position. Perhaps Rick’s hotel renovation company was a spin-off, a little business off on the side that kept the young man from messing up his family company’s excellent track record and hefty profits. Perhaps his mother or father had decided he wasn’t qualified or trustworthy enough to allow him to help manage the real company.
Rick’s company, Casas de Buen Dia, had been incorporated the year after he graduated from college. There was little news or mention of it until about five years ago, when he received some awards for a small hotel renovation in North Palm Springs from an architectural preservation society. After that, the news items multiplied quickly, as did his awards, and now it appeared the business had more than succeeded—it had thrived un
der Rick’s management.
Or maybe his CEO title was just a front. Maybe his parents helped him hire good people and set him up with enough cash and credit to make mistakes that would have sunk a less-well financed trust funder. The unsophisticated way business was reported in the local press, there was no way to know just how successful he really was, or whether he was still being supported by his parents.
Amy’s cellphone vibrated, making the desk where it lay buzz, and she realized she hadn’t taken it off of vibrate since she left work. During the day, she always turned off the sound so she wouldn’t be distracted. Customers hated to see their waitress catering to her own affairs when she could have been warming up their coffee or removing a dirty soup bowl from their table.
Amy picked it up and didn’t recognize the number. She debated whether to ignore the call, as she usually did after five at night, knowing that it was probably a telemarketer getting around her “no-call” designation. But, it was a local caller, and she hoped it might possibly be someone responding to one of her job applications.
“Amy?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Rick. I hope it’s okay to call after business hours.”
First, her heart jumped. Yes, she admitted again, she really was attracted to him. Whatever his business success. Whatever money he got from his parents. Probably all women were moved by him, given his physique, his pretty face, and his natural charisma.
But why wouldn’t it be okay to call her at night? she wondered. If he was going to ask her out, it would have been more inappropriate to call during business hours, wouldn’t it? But then, why had she jumped to the conclusion he was going to ask her out? Maybe he was calling to see if she wanted to adopt Busker. Or whether she wanted to help him pay for Busker’s vet bills.
“Amy? Are you still there?”
One Way to Succeed (Casas de Buen Dia Book 1) Page 3