Sold As Is

by Holley Trent

  Sold As Is

  Holley Trent, author of My Nora

  Avon, Massachusetts

  This edition published by

  Crimson Romance

  an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.

  10151 Carver Road, Suite 200

  Blue Ash, Ohio 45242

  www.crimsonromance.com

  Copyright © 2013 by Holley Trent

  ISBN-10: 1-4405-6357-8

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4405-6357-7

  eISBN-10: 1-4405-6358-6

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4405-6358-4

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art © 123rf.com

  To my big sister Dee-Bo: a woman who would offer me the shirt off her back (and kindly inform me of the brand because I’m that clueless).

  Hat tip to author Melissa Blue who critiqued this story while it was still in the “hot mess” stage.

  Also, props to the very hip Nicole P. because … well, because.

  — HT

  Contents

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  About the Author

  More From This Author

  Also Available

  CHAPTER 1

  The sparkly pink Miata displayed on a rotating turntable on the corner of Archie’s A-1 Autos’ overstocked lot wasn’t what made Aaron Owen stop. It did make him slow down, though. And when he slowed down, he saw the woman. As small as she was, she was easy to miss amongst all that steel and glass. She stood next to the turntable holding a giant price decal, and staring at the car as if it was diseased. He couldn’t read the price tag, even at thirty miles per hour, and didn’t really care to. The Miata wasn’t what he needed. The woman, though — she was worth a closer look.

  He needed five cars quick. Originally, his plan had been to pick them up at auction, but one of the things that made him so damned good at his job was his willingness to think outside the transmission box. That little saleswoman was going to cut him a deal. He could feel victory in his bones. And, yeah, while he was negotiating, he’d get a good look at the petite hustler. She had to be a hustler with a body like that and selling an inventory that shitty.

  Aaron Owen knew shitty cars better than anyone. He’d be out of a job if he didn’t.

  • • •

  Mandy McCarthy didn’t know the difference between a dipstick and a decklid and gave not one iota of care to the fact. She didn’t see the point of learning all that damned terminology when all she needed for minimum competence of her crappy job was to read the vehicle specs right off the inventory reports. Why else would they be taped to the drivers’ side windows? Her stepfather, and owner of Archie’s A-1 Autos, insisted that maybe if she did know something beyond bare minimum she’d actually sell a damned car. She wasn’t so sure about that assertion because the inventory at AA1A was probably the most questionably roadworthy in all of Eastern North Carolina. Even she wouldn’t buy there and she got a discount.

  Not since high school had she dreaded Monday mornings so much. Back then she’d hated for weekends to end because Mondays meant horribly petrifying things such as geometry quizzes and the start of new physics units. As an adult, Mondays meant staff meetings at work followed by a lecture from her mother at home.

  How old am I again?

  She blew a huff of air upward to shift her too-long bangs away from her eyes and slunk lower in her seat. She thought perhaps the wall of testosterone seated in the chairs in front of hers would muddle Archie’s radar for a while. She hoped it would, anyway.

  “Sales are in the toilet,” he barked.

  She twisted her lips to one side of her face and started to chew at the inside of her mouth. Eager to avoid the man’s gaze, she turned her focus up to the water stain in the drop ceiling. Archie’s stare held a sort of intensity that always made her regret being born a little bit. The unblinking thing conveyed her absolute worthlessness: her lowliness. There were probably worms with higher self-esteem than Mandy when tasked with facing the pompous blowhard.

  “It’s August. We should be selling a car a day at least. People are trying to put their kids in vehicles to take to college and they come here because I’m such a nice guy,” he continued.

  She clamped her lips together tighter to muffle the scoff she could feel rising up in her gut. Yeah, Archie was nice, all right. He financed everyone. He’d also repossess on the thirty-first day after a missed payment — didn’t matter if the customer only had three or four payments left. “People should pay their bills,” was his party line.

  He slapped the desktop and Mandy yipped.

  “What are we going to do about it?”

  No one said anything for a while. The only noise in the room was the sound of the overworked box air conditioning unit in the window as it hissed and whined: no match for the late-summer heat. She shifted her lips to the other side of her jaw and started to chew that side, too.

  Note to self: should you ever get a job in retail management again, don’t be a dick.

  Archie leaned a bit sideways to see around Frank, the tow guy, and narrowed his eyes at her. She’d made the rookie mistake of looking down at exactly that moment.

  Shit.

  Archie pressed his lips together tightly as if he were forming the “M” in her name, but she didn’t give him a chance to expel the words.

  “Maybe if you listed the vehicles on the business website you’d get more people interested in coming to look at them in-person. We’re kind of in the middle of nowhere, and you’ve got to give people some incentive to come out here. I mean, if you actually want to sell cars, that is.”

  His face shifted from its usual florid tones to darker pink, to red, then burgundy. He jabbed a finger in her direction and sucked in a deep breath.

  “Maybe we can do a big summer sale!” her stepbrother Mike suggested with far more enthusiasm in his voice than she was certain he felt.

  She felt her blood pressure began to ease down to a healthful level.

  Thanks for the diversion, buddy.

  Mike was her redheaded knight on the proverbial white horse, and had been since she was in ninth grade. He could never stomach her getting in trouble; even now that she was twenty-seven and he twenty-eight.

  Although it was the same thing Mike suggested every week, she was off the hot seat for the moment. Archie wouldn’t snap at the golden boy. Not with all the money he made him.

  Mike rolled his cane back and forth over his lap. “We could call it a clearance event or something. Or maybe we can offer them some token gift with purchase. I don’t know, like a license plate frame? Collegiate tee shirts or something?”

  Archie shook his head and laced his fingers together atop the desk. “We just had a sale. What else you got?”

  When Mike’s response wasn’t immediately forthcoming, Archie started rotating his big block-
shaped head toward Mandy.

  “Referral discounts!” Mike offered right as Mandy began to tap her foot impatiently against the floor.

  She cocked her head to the side and stared at the man her mother had once told her to call “Daddy.” Mandy would rather chew glass. Hell, she didn’t even call her own father “Daddy,” but that was another matter.

  Tap-tap-tap. Her foot bounced faster against the worn carpet.

  How could a man so damned ugly sire sons as handsome as Mike and Don?

  She snorted and pinched herself for thinking uncharitable thoughts. Archie was married to her mother, for better or for worse. It was just that “worse” part Mandy found so goddamned offensive.

  “Referral discounts?” Archie actually perked up: his lips straightening into a flat line instead of forming an upside-down U. “What’s that about?”

  “Uh … ” Mike stood, being careful to bear the bulk of his weight on his good leg, and hobbled around Archie’s desk to the whiteboard.

  She could feel the knots in her stomach untie with every degree of rotation Archie’s desk chair made counterclockwise toward the whiteboard.

  Mike picked up a dry-erase marker and scribbled some frenzied calculations that actually made some sense. He was pulling out all the stops for his dad.

  What the Hell is he up to?

  As if he’d snatched her thoughts out of the psychic ether, Mike turned around and gave her a discreet wink before concluding, “They’ll think they’re getting access to exclusive inventory and lower prices … even if it’s not true.” He added that last part in a near-mumble.

  The room filled with that tense quiet once more. A minute passed, then two, with no words as Archie stared at the board behind him. When he lifted his shoulders into a shrug, Mandy blew out a sigh of relief.

  “Okay,” he said. “Call our contact at the paper and see if we can get a sixteenth-page ad for Thursday.”

  Mike gave Archie a thumbs-up and limped back to his seat. While his back was still facing Archie, he rolled his eyes for Mandy’s benefit. She covered her mouth and coughed to disguise the smirk that would have made Archie bark like a leashed dog that couldn’t reach a squirrel.

  “All right, that’s it for this week,” Archie said.

  Maybe that fortune cookie was telling the truth last night. Today’s going to be a good day!

  Archie took a loud slurp of his coffee and nearly choked. “Goddamn, that’s hot!” He wagged his tongue outside his mouth a few beats to cool it, and snapped his fingers at the departing staff to still them at the door. “Frank, I need you to go pick up a Camaro in Suffolk. I’ll get you a check.”

  Frank, a scruffy bass guitarist whose recreational activities included stretching his earlobes and shotgunning tallboy cans of cheap beer, gave Archie a long blink. “Gas?”

  “Same as always.”

  “Yeah, you keep saying that but it don’t show up on my paycheck.”

  Archie jammed his plastic coffee stirrer straw between his teeth and chewed while giving Frank a blasé look. “Maybe you aren’t reading it right. Bring in your pay stub and I’ll explain it to you.”

  “I know how to read a pay stub. I’ve been reading ’em since I was fourteen.”

  Frank stood immediately to the right of Mandy, in perfect position for the surreptitious warning yank to his waistband. He was trying to finance his band’s next tour, and wouldn’t be able to manage that without income. Unfortunately, Archie was usually in a firing mood on Mondays. She’d hate for the victim of the week to be someone she actually liked.

  He gave a thumb’s-up behind his back as if to say, “I’m cool. Good looking out,” so she let go of his belt loop.

  The hinges of Archie’s chair groaned as he leaned back. That damned demoralizing silence permeated the trailer once more as he rocked to and fro, staring down his pockmarked nose at Frank. Finally, in a rasp just above a whisper, he asked, “You accusing me of cheating you?”

  Mandy gave one more pre-emptive yank to Frank’s belt loop.

  “No, I ain’t saying that. I’m sayin’ maybe you haven’t been paying attention is all,” Frank hedged.

  There you go. Don’t poke the rattlesnake, Frankie.

  Archie jabbed the straw back between his teeth and chewed. He rocked. He stared.

  Frank stared back, but couldn’t sustain the intensity. He looked down at his shoes.

  Mandy sighed.

  “You need the address to the facility?” Archie asked.

  “No. It ain’t moved.”

  “Good. Why don’t you go smoke a cigarette and I’ll have a check ready by the time you get back.”

  Frank shifted his weight, grumbled something incomprehensible under his breath, then hauled up his pants.

  Mandy stood to follow him out, and they made it as far as the door to the customer hospitality lounge when Archie called her back.

  “Mandy, wait. I’m not through with you.”

  “Ffff-frack!” she spat in a whispered tone.

  Mike, leaning against one of the Naugahyde sofas, caught her near swear and wagged his index finger at her. “You’re gonna lose, girl.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “I have one more week. You haven’t caught me yet and you won’t.”

  The corners of his mouth turned up into the grin that made all the ladies at the track swoon. “Just a matter of time.”

  “Keep dreaming.” She re-tucked her silk blouse, rubbed the wrinkles out of her pencil skirt, and with an artificial calm turned around in the doorway to face Archie. Solo.

  Mind over matter. He’s just a bully. A big, ugly bully.

  She straightened her spine and put her shoulders back the way she’d been taught in poise and manners class as a child. Apparently, a lady could find courage as long as her posture was immaculate. Mandy preferred her fortification to come from Madeira or Scotch, but that was hardly appropriate before noon.

  Mind over matter. He’s nothing. He’s just a speck of dust in the greater universe. He has no power over you.

  She returned to her previous seat, crossed her legs at the ankles, and folded her hands onto her lap.

  Ready as I’ll ever be. “Yes, Archie?” She held her breath.

  He sat upright and laced his fingers atop the desk. “I gave you this job as a favor to your mother.”

  She pulled her bottom lip in between her teeth and bit down into it in spite of her red lipstick. It was the only way she’d keep her tongue from wagging.

  He apparently expected a retort, and when she didn’t give him one, he cracked his knuckles. “All right, then. Let’s not hash words. I don’t know what you did all day at the last job you had, but the fact you were there for six years says you must have actually sold something, right?”

  Jackass. “Nine years, Archie. I managed a clothing store. That’s a bit different than selling cars.”

  He guffawed. “Selling is selling. I sold animal feed. I was the best — ”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She allowed herself the eye roll she’d been saving it up all morning. “You were the best animal feed salesman in the entire Southeast, blah blah blah.”

  Archie ignored her snide tone, or at least pretended to. “That’s right, girlie, animal feed doesn’t have a lick to do with cars but I’m a master at selling both. Know why?”

  People would probably do anything to get you to go away, you evil troll. Oh, that’s not nice. I’m sure trolls remember to put the toilet seat down. She managed a wry smile as she shook her head. “No, Archie, I don’t know why.”

  “It’s because I know the rules of selling. Number one is that everyone lies. The second is you should never stop at the first no. The third is — ”

  She put her hands up. “Okay, I get it. Sell harder.”

  “That’s right.”
He pounded the desktop.

  That time she didn’t even jump.

  “Stop trying to put yourself into everyone else’s shoes, and instead, act like you know what’s best for them. I believe in giving people a fair shake, but you’ve been here six weeks and haven’t sold a thing. Even your mom has sold a car and she doesn’t even work here.”

  “Maybe you’ve forgotten, but you haven’t paid me anything, either. I work on commission, just like Michael, and just like Don did before he moved on to … ”

  She was going to say “greener pastures” but thought better of it. Archie wasn’t worth the fight.

  “Don’t matter. I’ve got expansion plans, girlie. I need the best of the best working for me before we even think about breaking ground.” He leaned forward so his eyes were level with hers.

  She didn’t flinch, possibly because a small part of her knew where the discussion was headed. Histrionics weren’t going to make the situation easier, so she stared right back at him through her heavy bangs.

  “I’m going to a base-plus-commission pay structure for my best employees. Right now you’re not one of them.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  He clucked his tongue as he thought and rocked side-to-side in the chair. “Okay, I’ll tell you something. No!” With a snap of his fingers, he hauled himself up to his feet and walked around to the front of the desk.

  She pressed her back further into the chair, but didn’t look away.

  “No, no, no. I’ll remind you of something you may have forgotten. Remember what your mother said? If you’re not working, you can’t stay at the house. You agreed to those terms.”

  What choice did I have?

  At the time of the agreement, she’d been hard up and two weeks from eviction. Asking her mother for help had been her last resort. She’d been denied unemployment benefits, had drained her meager savings, and for once, Mike didn’t have cash to loan her. He was going through his own shit. Bad luck all around.

  She’d actually been floored after laying it all bare only for her mother to respond to her with a noncommittal “I’ll have to call you back.” And she did — the next night, with Archie’s restrictions.