by Lisa Daily
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I say.
“Who knows you better than we do?” asks Michael.
He has a point. I agree to go on two more dates, one picked by each of them. And in return, they agree not to pressure me anymore about losing my GHV if the dates they arrange flame out. No pun intended.
On Friday morning I get up early to make the rounds on all my job sites—to meet with clients, check on progress, and develop next steps. I’m meeting with Olivia Vanderbilt Kensington to discuss the wildlife fundraiser, although I wish I wasn’t. She’s called and emailed me multiple times a day since our first meeting early in the week, although only half of her communications pertain to her actual event, the rest being everything from complaints about her housekeeper to her frustration with homeless people. I’m not sure that she actually has the opportunity to encounter many homeless people on her five-minute drive from tony Longboat Key, where she lives, to the Ritz-Carlton, but I suppose anything is possible. From the way she speaks, you’d think there were roving bands of homeless hooligans causing mayhem, peeing on the bougainvillea, and attacking tourists. Come to think of it, maybe when she says “homeless people” she probably actually means the tourists who flood our city every winter, enjoy our beaches, and eat in our restaurants during the balmy months when every other place in the country is buried under three feet of snow. That wouldn’t surprise me a bit.
After Olivia, I head over to a new psychology office where I’m staging the environment to evoke feelings of calm and trust. And finally, last stop of the day, I’m heading to the client I’m most looking forward to seeing, Daniel Boudreaux and his floating restaurant-to-be.
I arrive at the Ritz-Carlton to meet Olivia for breakfast.
Heading into the restaurant, I see Olivia has already set up camp at a table in the back. I wave when she looks up to meet my eyes, and she looks at her watch.
Am I late? I take a quick peek at my phone as I head toward the table. Nope, right on time.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d make it,” she says, shuffling the papers in front of her.
“Here I am,” I say, sitting down at the table, “nine o’clock as scheduled.” She sniffs and returns to her papers. Goodness, she’s hard to like.
“I’ve been thinking,” she says, “and I’m simply devastated, but we’re going to have to change the dinner menu. The emerald tablecloths are going to make the fish look ghastly.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” I say, trying to use my most soothing voice, the same voice I’d use if I were trying to talk a crazy person out of a tree.
“Of course it is,” she snaps. “And I’m going to need feedback from you on my wardrobe selections right away,” she says. “These things take time.”
Oy. This again.
“The green is lovely,” I say, “as is the silver,” I continue, as she scribbles notes on a tiny Crane notepad.
“I’m not dressing to match the tablecloths,” she says.
“It’s really not necessary,” I say. “Wear whatever you’d like, save for red. Red is a color of power and we’re asking your guests to help the powerless so the messaging is wrong. Anything else is fine.”
“Well, I had planned to wear the green,” she says, petulant. “Now that’s impossible because of those tablecloths. Can’t we just change those instead?”
Ah, the real issue.
“What you wear to the fundraiser has far less effect on donations than the color anchor of the event. If you want to raise your donations by twenty percent, this is part of the plan on how we accomplish that.”
She sighs deeply, so that the next table or two might hear her despair.
“Fine,” she says, moving on to show me table settings and flower arrangements, and the seating chart she’s been working on over the last few days.
“You put your biggest donors here?” I ask, pointing to the golden triangle on the map. The guests at those three tables alone can easily put Olivia over the top with her fundraising goal. She nods to confirm. Much of my focus will be on the experience that the guests at those high-priority tables will be having.
“Perfect,” I say. “You’re doing an amazing job and this will be a fantastic event.”
“It must be,” she says. She gathers up the rest of her papers and snaps her portfolio closed. “I have a spa day scheduled, would you care to join me?”
Wow, that’s weird. I’m not sure if this is just her being polite, or if it’s an awkward attempt at friendship. I didn’t think she really even liked me, and Olivia Vanderbilt Kensington hardly seems like the type to pal around with the help.
“Thank you, that’s so kind of you to offer,” I say. “Unfortunately I’ve got client meetings booked all day.”
“Perhaps another time, then,” she says. The expression on her face doesn’t change at all, and it’s hard to tell whether she could care less, or if her facial muscles are just chemically paralyzed. Botox is as common as seagulls in Sarasota, but most of the women I know who use the dermatologist’s little helper still have full range of expression. Except squinting, of course.
She gathers up the rest of her things, bids me goodbye, and sort of floats out the restaurant door. Must be something they teach future debutantes at cotillion.
I quickly transcribe my handwritten notes into the color-coded client files on my iPad. I love the cloud, despite the fact that I don’t actually understand how it works, because it magically syncs all of my client files and checklists. For someone like me who prides herself on organization, the cloud is the greatest invention since the label maker.
My next stop is the new psychology practice I’m designing. For once, it’s nice to work with fellow psychologists who trust the science. There’s far less hand-holding than with some of my other clients. We’re in the final stages of construction and I can’t wait to see the progress—including two innovative outdoor therapy rooms, tropical gardens especially designed to treat women with self-esteem issues, eating disorders, and anxiety. Interestingly enough, male brains don’t respond to nature cues in the same way. As far as I know, the outdoor therapy gardens are the first of their kind. The innovation has the potential to bring me not only new business, but some significant recognition within my own field as well. The research backing the concept is solid, but before now, no one had ever put it into practice in this way. Sarasota has the perfect climate for this particular element, because the weather is quite pleasant year-round. For the steamier summer months, there’s a retractable shade as well as cooling space vents. Besides the fact that it’s just pretty amazing, and will be a real differentiator for the practice, I believe the space has a huge potential to help people feel better about themselves. The more time women spend in nature, the stronger their self-worth becomes. I love that I can help make a positive change in people’s lives, even in a small way, long after my work here is done.
Pulling into the parking lot of the therapy office, which is jammed with painter, contractor, and landscaper trucks, I pull into the last available space and put the top up on my Mini. The last thing I need is a two-inch layer of construction dust covering the interior of my car. Grabbing my shoulder bag, I head inside.
The entryway is gorgeous, with high ceilings and soothing pale blue paint. Although it hasn’t been moved in yet, the furniture in the lobby will feature small seating clusters with soft, tactilely pleasing fabrics and round edges, so that patients will immediately feel at ease upon arriving.
“Hey, Doc,” says Joe, my contractor. “It’s coming together, right?” Joe is a small guy in his late fifties, with graying hair and a clipboard permanently fused to his right hand. He’s worked with me for the last few years and really gets what I’m going for. Plus, he’s a total perfectionist, which I love in a contractor. It means every detail is right without me having to spend all my time at the site, which saves me dozens of hours over the course of a project.
“Hey, Joe. It looks amazing,” I say. “I can’t wait t
o see it all done.”
“Ready for the tour?” I nod, and he hands me a hard hat. “We’re pretty well done out here in the lobby except for the finishing, but the small offices are still being drywalled. I was just about to do the inspection.” I follow him down the hallway and we step into the first therapy room. The drywalling is complete, the windows have been put in, but none of the finishing work has been started yet. The work looks good, Joe’s crew has done a fantastic job as always—but my eye goes to the ceiling and it feels wrong.
“Hey, Joe, what’s the ceiling height in here?” I ask. He checks his clipboard and looks up. “It’s supposed to be seven feet nine inches, but these look like nine feet.” In an instant he has his measuring tape pressed to the wall.
“I think you’re right. Yep, nine feet,” he says. “Sorry about that, Doc, I’ll get this taken care of right away. New drywaller, he just finished this room an hour ago.” I know Joe would have caught the error if I hadn’t, but I was hoping the problem was just in this one room. We didn’t have much of a cushion with our deadline.
“Thanks,” I say. “Remember, it’s twelve feet in the lobby, nine feet in the hallways, seven foot nine in all the therapy rooms.”
“Got it,” he says to me, and then pulls the radio from his belt. “Nate, can you meet me with the client at the room you just finished?”
“Sure thing, boss,” says the voice on the radio. Joe marks the drywall with a pencil while we wait for Nate the drywaller.
Joe and I discuss other details on the project, and Nate appears in the doorway a few minutes later. Totally worth the wait. Nate looks like a supermodel with a tool belt. He’s tall, very tall, maybe six-four, with light brown hair, striking green eyes, and full lips that make me wonder what it might be like to just hurl my laptop bag on the floor, throw my arms around his neck, and kiss him.
Whoa, Alex, I think. First, completely inappropriate—Nate is an employee. Second, Darcy and Michael were right: if I don’t get this whole sex thing out of my system pronto, I’m going to end up acting like a complete lunatic the second I find myself within fifty yards of any decent guy with long-term potential.
Still, it can’t hurt to look a little. While Joe reviews the specs with him, I quickly scan Nate from head to steel-toed boots. White T-shirt speckled with paint, revealing finely muscled arms and just a peek of well-toned abs when he raises his hand to mark the wall. Dark jeans that look like they were designed with his body in mind. Like all jeans were designed with his body in mind. Sigh. If TLC ever gets a peek at Nate, he’ll have his own show in a reality-TV minute.
“Doc?” says Joe. Oh gawd, I must have zoned out.
“Um, yes.” I say. “I was just thinking about the, er, project and the, um.… ceiling height issue.”
“So sorry about that,” says Nate. “My bad. I made the assumption since the hallway height was the standard nine feet that the offices would be as well. It’s no problem at all to fix it, I’ll get it taken care of today.” He’s looking directly at me as he apologizes, and I can feel myself getting lost in those gorgeous green eyes. Like some kind of smutty hypnosis.
“Great, great,” I say, trying to tear myself away from his gaze. “Try not to bump your head.” I laugh awkwardly. “On the ceiling.” Awkward pause. “Because you’re so tall.” Jeez, that was smooth. What am I? A gawky middle schooler, or an accomplished professional woman who owns her own business?
“I’ll try.” He grins. “Not to question your judgment or anything,” he says, “but you do know that seven-nine is a very low ceiling height, right?”
“I do know that,” I say. “But lower ceiling heights are conducive to intimacy, connection, and emotional safety, which is what we’re trying to evoke for the patients here. If the room helps patients to open up more, they can be helped in fewer or shorter sessions, and get to the real work of therapy much faster. The main and outdoor therapy spaces have higher ceiling heights, of course, because we don’t want the people who work here to feel boxed in, and the outdoor therapy spaces have a different objective.” The doctor is in.
“Cool,” Nate says. He smiles at me and I smile back, unable to be the first to break our mutual gaze.
“Doc, tour?” interjects Joe, and I can feel myself blushing.
“Thanks, Nate,” I say, following Joe out of the room.
“Feel free to check my work anytime,” he says. I don’t respond as I trail Joe down the hallway, but I can’t stop myself from thinking of all the ways I could do just that.
As Joe mentioned, the rest of the therapy spaces have been framed out, but not yet been completed. Joe opens the door on the left at the end of the hallway, and we step down into what will soon be one of the outdoor therapy spaces. The landscapers are outside placing plants and digging the holes for the large royal palms. I scan the space, and seeing some inappropriate greenery, I pull a pad of sticky notes out of my tote and begin marking the plants that have to go.
Nicky, my landscaper, appears from behind the small fountain that is being installed. A stout, swarthy New York transplant, he’s straight out of Central Casting if you are looking for a Mob Guy #3—but the man loves plants and flowers, and despite his gruff demeanor, he’s a sweet, sensitive artist whose chosen medium is foliage.
“Hey, Doc,” Nicky says. I generally prefer to be called Alex, but Joe the contractor always calls me Doc and so the rest of the crew just follow his lead. “Whadya think?”
“It looks amazing,” I say. “I love what you’ve done with the color, it feels like an oasis out here. You’re a vegetation virtuoso.” He smiles widely, proud of his artistry.
“Got any notes?” he asks.
“Literally,” I say, laughing as I hold up the pad. “I stuck Post-its on a couple of small varieties you have on the ground over there.” He cracks up because I’m such a stickler for those kinds of details, and he takes great pleasure in endlessly teasing me about it. We’ve worked together for so long now that he doesn’t need to even express the joke in words anymore. Anytime I hand him a spreadsheet, a color-coded map, or tagged greenery I want moved, he skips right to the punch line. I don’t mind, I know my control freak tendencies can be comical at times. I also know it’s a big part of why I am where I am. It’s all in the planning.
I laugh along and let Nicky have his fun, and then continue: “I see where you’re going with this, but we can’t have any plants with sharp edges, so none of those spiky ones over there, and definitely no cactus.”
“I love the flowers on those,” he says. “We need a pop of color.”
“I know,” I say gently. “The color is gorgeous, and I’m totally up for it if you want to replace them with something softer. Think breezy, round, feathery, tropical oasis.”
“Done,” Nicky says, with a finality that seems better suited to confirmation of a Mafia hit than a flower selection. But I have total faith in him, the man is a greenery savant.
27
It’s almost four by the time I leave the psychology office job site, which is looking better by the day. It seems like a wreck now, but I’ve done enough of these jobs to know that we’re in the final stretch and the project will be completed to perfection in a week to ten days.
I have two more stops to make at completed project sites, just to touch base with my clients. Neither will take more than ten or fifteen minutes, which is good because I have a meeting with Daniel Boudreaux at his new restaurant at five and I don’t want to be late. I hate to be late.
I’ve done numerous restaurants in my line of work and I’ve found that the meetings always tend to happen later in the day, I suppose due to the necessary nocturnal habits of those in the culinary industry. I find myself looking forward to my meeting with Daniel, not just because he’s so interesting and his enthusiasm for his work is so contagious, but because I cannot stop thinking about the jambalaya he made last time we’d met. I haven’t eaten all day since my breakfast meeting with Olivia Vanderbilt Kensington and I’m completely famished.<
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Parking quickly at the marina, I walk down the dock to Daniel’s restaurant, enjoying the bay breeze on my skin and watching the sun play on the water. What a gorgeous afternoon. The paint on the outside of the boat has been stripped since my last visit, and is in the process of being refinished, although there are no construction workers to be seen. I board the boat and peek inside the indoor bar area.
“Daniel?” No answer. I walk back toward the kitchen, but there’s no sign of him there either. Checking my schedule on my phone, I wonder if we’ve gotten our times mixed up. Heading back outside to the deck, I walk around the back side of the boat, holding carefully to the mahogany railing. The back deck is larger than the front, with room for probably eight tables, although there is only one for the moment. Daniel is leaning over the railing, shirt off, hauling something up over the side. The sun reveals a glint of auburn in his short brown hair.
“Hey, Daniel,” I say, and he jerks his head back unexpectedly, causing him to lose his footing and go over the railing headfirst. I scream as he falls into the drink, and rush over to the railing where he’d been leaning just a second before.
There he is, grinning from ear to ear, treading water in the bay, with a thick rope in his right hand.
“Hi,” he says. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Oh Daniel,” I say, covering my mouth with my hand in horror. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“We’ve got crabs!” he yells, holding the rope high in the air. “Right off the boat!” He looks so happy I can’t help but laugh. “Come on in, the water’s nice,” he says, trying to tempt me with a playful splash in my direction.
“Thanks, I’ll pass,” I say. “The water’s a little nippy for me this time of year.” The tourists never seem to mind when the water reaches the low sixties, but I’m a warm-weather girl and prefer it when the temperature of the Gulf and the bay are closer to bathwater. Or at the very least in the midseventies. It will be at least two months before that happens.