Mr. Sokolov moaned.
“Gentlemen,” she said with a nod before turning and walking away.
Grace’s hands shook as she left Sokolov and his leering friend. A mile down the road she pulled over to catch her breath.
No matter how hard she tried to stick her chin in the air and put on a brave face, sometimes the indignant and sexist behavior of the men she had to deal with got to her.
This was one of those moments.
She knew this would be a fact of life when she entered the engineering field. Dealing with the Sokolovs of the world who didn’t take her seriously, and probably called her a raging bitch behind her back the moment she left their sight, was a fact of life.
But damn it to hell, it sucked. Her male counterparts didn’t suffer the same behavior.
She’d lay down money that no one ever stared at Evan’s crotch while he was trying to talk to them.
She needed backup.
In cases like Sokolov, where the disrespect was a 9.5 on the Richter scale, Grace needed a little help from her friends—or in this case—her family.
She picked up her phone and called her brother.
“Well, good afternoon,” Colin greeted her with way too much cheer for what she’d just gone through.
“Hey.” She took a deep breath and tried to collect her thoughts.
“I’ve been home twelve hours. What took you so long?”
That had her smiling. “I love you.”
“I love you, too. What’s wrong?” Her brother knew her.
“When are you back to work?” Colin was a supervisor of the public works department for the county. And even though this particular issue didn’t fall into his department, some of his crew would be called on to build the crossing the city was forcing Sokolov to comply with.
“Wednesday.”
“Okay . . . good—” Her phone rang through with another call. Since she was on the company phone, she needed to take it. “Hold on. I have another call.”
“Kay . . .”
She switched the call over. “This is Hudson.”
“Grace?”
She blew out a breath. “Dameon.” His voice gave him away.
“You don’t sound good.”
“Well, thank you, Captain Obvious.” For whatever reason she had no issue putting Dameon in his place. “Hold on.”
She clicked back to her brother. “Sorry . . . I need you to stop by the mobile home park on Sierra Highway. The one that flooded out last year . . .”
“Is there a problem?” Colin asked.
“You have no idea—” Her phone buzzed, reminding her she had Dameon on hold. “Damn it. Wait.”
She clicked over. “Can I call you back?”
“Is that your way of asking me for my phone number?” Dameon asked.
Grace hated the fact that she smiled. Hated it so much that she put Dameon on hold and went back to her brother.
“The guy was a complete douche. Stared at my chest and called me little lady. I need some backup on this one.”
“What the hell?” Dameon’s voice filled the line.
Grace pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it. “Shit, shit, shit . . .” She switched the call again, put it to her ear. “Dameon?”
Her brother answered. “Who’s Dameon?”
She was going to lose it any second. “No one. Uhm . . . let me call you back.”
She dramatically pressed end to the call with her brother and put the phone back to her ear. “Forget I said that. It wasn’t meant for you.”
“Who were you calling for backup?”
Grace found herself answering on autopilot. “My brother.” She closed her eyes and shook the fog from her head.
“Okay . . . good.”
After blowing out a deep breath, Grace pulled in her emotions. “What can I do for you, Dameon?”
“You can start by telling me who was disrespecting you.”
“What are you going to do? Go beat him up?”
“Maybe.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and pounded her steering wheel with her free hand. “I’ll leave that to my brothers. But thank you.”
“Your brothers would do that for you?”
“Lots of cement boots in the bottom of the ocean,” she said, joking.
Dameon laughed. “All right, then. That makes me feel better.”
“You really don’t have any right to feel anything on the subject.” And she had no right to have butterflies tickling her stomach with the conversation.
“Yeah, well . . . I do.”
What did she do with that?
Ignore it.
“What can I do for you, Dameon?”
“I wanted to set up a site meeting to go over a few things before the holidays suck away all of your time.”
His request wasn’t out of line, even if his flirting was.
“When were you thinking?”
“Friday.”
“This Friday?”
“Unless you were free on Saturday. Then maybe we could have dinner and discuss the project.”
Grace was vaguely aware of the traffic whizzing by her car as she idled on the side of the road.
“I believe I have Friday afternoon free. I’ll have to confirm when I’m back in the office.”
Dameon sighed over the line. “Great. Have your people call my people and set it up.”
She laughed. “I work for the city, Dameon. I don’t have people.”
“Even better. You can call me back directly. Do you have a pen?”
“Why?”
“For my phone number.”
“I have your office number,” she told him.
“I’m leaving the office. I’ll give you my cell.”
She grabbed a pen and flipped open the notepad that sat in the passenger seat. “Fine.”
He rattled off his number.
“I’ll get back to you.”
There was a pause in the conversation. “Try and have a better day,” he said.
“I will.” She hung up and dropped her phone in her purse.
This day needed to turn around . . . fast.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was potluck at the honeymooners’ house.
Grace walked in the door with a bottle of red wine and a grocery bag full of everything needed to make a walnut-cranberry salad.
She didn’t bother knocking since her parents’ car was parked in the driveway.
“Ho, ho, ho,” she greeted anyone within earshot.
She saw her brother first.
Colin kissed her cheek and took the bag from her hand. “You look better than you sounded earlier.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t get me started.”
They walked around the corner to the great room that held a kitchen, a dining room, and a den. Her mom stood beside the sink cutting vegetables, and her dad was playing tug-of-war with Parker’s dog, Scout. “Hey, Dad,” Grace called out.
“Hold on,” he said. “I almost got him.”
From the determination on the dog’s face, her dad wasn’t getting anything. “Good luck.”
Her mom smiled and kept chopping. “Hi, sweetheart.”
Parker walked out of the master bedroom looking just as relaxed as Colin. “Someone got a tan,” Grace told her.
Parker lifted her arms and looked at them. “I almost feel guilty,” she said.
“I don’t,” Colin teased.
Parker blushed and came in for a hug. “We had the best time.”
“I don’t want to hear about your sex life.” Grace’s comment pulled a chuckle out of her mother.
“I can get away Friday afternoon for that issue you have on Sierra Highway,” Colin told her.
“Around three?”
“Works for me.”
The front door opened again, and she heard Matt and Erin walk in.
“Looks like the party started without us,” Matt said before kissing their mom on the cheek.
Grace handed he
r brother the bottle of wine. “Not unless you open this,” she told him.
Matt grinned. “Hello to you, too.”
“Where’s Austin?” Erin asked.
Parker’s younger brother still lived with her . . . and now Colin. Parker had been responsible for taking care of him and her younger sister after their parents died a few years back.
“Working the Christmas tree lot again this year.”
Grace’s gaze moved to the tree in the den that flashed with colored lights and brightened up the room. “When did you guys have time to do that?” she asked.
“We didn’t. Austin and Mallory put it up while we were gone. Wasn’t that sweet?”
Matt had worked the cork free of the bottle and poured some for Grace.
“My siblings never put up a tree for me,” she complained.
“Where would we put it? Your patio?” Colin asked.
“He has a point,” their father said. He’d given up the rope to the dog and sat on one of the barstools at the kitchen island.
Colin handed out beers to his dad and brother, and Matt opened a bottle of white for Erin.
“Is Mallory coming?” Erin asked.
“She has finals.”
Grace had been in Parker’s kitchen enough to find what she needed to make the salad. As they all danced around the kitchen preparing dinner, the conversation swirled.
Out of nowhere, Colin asked, “So who is Dameon?”
Hearing his name brought Grace’s attention away from what she was slicing. “Uhm . . .”
“How do you know about Dameon?” Erin asked. “You told him about Dameon?”
“No, I—”
“I don’t know about a Dameon.” Parker pushed her shoulder into Grace’s arm.
“You’ve been in Maui,” Grace reminded her.
Colin reached over Grace’s shoulder and snagged a tomato. “If Erin knows about Dameon, he must be someone.”
“He’s not!”
“Instant denial is always a sign of a lie,” her father chimed in.
“Give it up, Gracie . . . who is he?” her mom asked.
“Oh my God. Seriously, he’s no one.” Her family was like a dog with a bone.
Silence ensued and all the eyes were on her.
She set the knife down with a sigh. “He’s a guy.”
“We figured that,” Colin said with a laugh.
“A client. He’s a land developer . . .”
Still the room was silent.
Then Erin spoke up. “Who called you from Facebook.”
Now the room started to buzz.
“He did what?”
“Can you do that?”
“Who calls someone from Facebook?”
The questions came so fast she couldn’t answer them all. Instead she stared at Erin. “Thanks, friend.”
Erin lifted her hands in the air. “Hey, I think he’s a stalker.”
That’s all anyone needed to hear.
Everyone started talking at once.
Grace stood back and took a big drink of wine.
It wasn’t until her father asked for Dameon’s last name that Grace ended the conversation. “Enough,” she shouted.
Even Scout stopped licking himself and turned to stare.
“Dameon is not a stalker.” She put her wineglass down. “He is a guy I met completely by accident before I knew he was a land developer and showed up at the office. And before you ask . . . no, nothing happened. We met in a coffee shop.”
“And at the wedding,” Erin corrected her.
“He was at the hotel, not the wedding. And we didn’t meet then. We just . . .” She stopped talking, knowing what she was about to say would get everyone going again.
“You just what?” her mom asked.
“Noticed each other.”
Parker sighed and leaned against the counter, all smiles. “You mean like across the crowded room noticed?”
In that second, Grace remembered him standing inside the hotel watching her.
“Someone is blushing,” Matt teased.
“Am not!” She looked at Erin.
Erin shrugged her shoulders and nodded.
Grace put the back of her hand to her warm cheek. “It’s nothing, okay? He’s a flirt.” She picked up the knife again and started working. “Not to mention it’s completely inappropriate. He’s working with the city on permits and zoning changes for his massive project. It’s a conflict of interest.”
“The denial is strong with this one,” Matt said in a deep Yoda voice.
Grace picked up a walnut and tossed it at her brother.
“Does he wear a hard hat or a suit?” her dad asked.
“A suit.”
There were several sighs.
“Can’t trust a man in a suit,” her dad affirmed.
“Then it’s a good thing he’s nothing, cuz he wears them. Now can we please talk about someone else? Like, hey, Matt . . . when are you going to make Erin an honest woman?”
If there was one thing about her family, it was their ability to dish it out. And since Erin had added just enough fuel to the fire to make Grace squirm, it was her turn to make sure the woman felt a little of the heat.
“Third quarter was shit, and the fourth is even worse.”
Dameon sat with his executive board staring down at the financial report. He ignored the tension crawling up his neck and asked the hard questions. “What’s the projection for the next six months?”
“Damn, Dameon . . . since when do we only look six months ahead?” His CFO and longtime friend, Omar, tossed the report down and stared.
“Since Maxwell bailed and the cushion his bank afforded us went with him. We knew it was going to be tight. The question is, how tight?”
Omar glared. “Our asses are going to squeak when we walk.”
Dameon leaned forward. “But are we still standing?”
“We’re standing, but the ground is shaky. We need the Rancho project to finish and start bringing in revenue if we’re ever going to get the Santa Clarita project going. Even then, I don’t know that we’re going to have the funds for the scale we originally proposed.”
Locke Enterprises had a dozen other commercial projects going. All in various stages from acquisition to construction. Rancho was half the scale of the Santa Clarita project, but the largest of the ones close to completion.
“We need the Santa Clarita project to get us back where we were,” he reminded them.
“We don’t want to be like Fedcon with half-built projects in the middle of the desert,” Tyler added.
Fedcon was a well-known developer that went belly-up in the middle of a three-hundred-home subdivision out past Lancaster. The houses sat in various stages of construction for five years until another developer swept in and made a killing.
“We’re not going to let that happen,” Dameon said. “If anything, I want us to be the ones who come in and take over lost projects that make sense.”
Omar turned to Chelsea, who ran the public relations and marketing departments. While it sounded vast, the reality was that she managed less than five employees.
“I have a suggestion on the Rancho property,” Omar started.
“I’m listening.”
“I know the original idea was to hold on to the properties and triple net lease the commercial space. But at this time, a clean flip might give us what we need to see the black for another year. At least get us breaking ground in Santa Clarita.”
Much as Dameon didn’t like the idea, he had to give it merit. They’d made a significant amount of money flipping properties from the beginning. Only after they started holding on to them in order to generate a steady flow of money did Locke Enterprises start to rise. With that rise meant more staff and bigger budgets.
Chelsea tapped her pen on the papers in front of her. “Another idea would be to bring in an investor.”
“So they can pull out after we exceed the depth of our coffers?” Dameon asked. “I’d like to avoid that
.”
“With the right contracts and lawyers, we can circumvent any of those issues,” Omar told him.
Yeah . . . Maxwell had been more of a handshake deal with very little written down. That’s the problem when you join forces with your college friends who have family money. One bad argument and it was game over.
And over a woman, no less.
“Omar, I need numbers that show our status if we had stayed the course we started last January. Chelsea, I want a list of interested parties as well as the going rate for what we have out there in Rancho. I want reality, not dreaming numbers.” He pointed to the closed door. “There are a lot of people out there that depend on us to pay their bills. And I really don’t want to be handing out pink slips this time next year.” He paused. “And as much as it pains me to even ask for it, I’d like a list of potential investors.”
His team seemed to like that the most since they all smiled at each other.
Dameon called the meeting over, and Tyler and Chelsea left the room.
Omar hung back. “We’re going to make this work,” he assured Dameon with a pat on the back. “We started this with grit and guts.”
Dameon laughed. “We started it at a bar, drunk off our asses.” Omar had been an accounting major and had switched to business finance. Maxwell was the aforementioned trust-fund kid who was taking business classes because his father told him to. And Dameon had already gotten his contractor’s license and was getting a degree in business so he didn’t have to pound nails for the rest of his life.
By the time Locke Enterprises was born, it was money Dameon had earned flipping a dozen homes and one apartment complex that started it all. But the nest egg he’d built wasn’t enough to get to the next level. Which was where Maxwell came in.
Maxwell didn’t like to work. He was a silent investor who met with Dameon and Omar once a month to either pick up or drop off a check.
Until last year.
“I think we need more drunk nights at a pub,” Omar suggested.
Dameon dismissed his thoughts and faked a smile. “Maybe so.”
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