There had to be another hilltop like this one. But for the life of Betsy, she hadn’t the slightest idea where as she started down the hillside.
The next several weeks came and went like a whirlwind. The real estate business continued to boom like never before and Betsy tried not to think about the bottom falling out in the near future. Besides, there was no indication her worse fear would hit any time soon.
So why then did she have this eerie feeling something bad was about to happen? She tried to shrug it off as she went in her office and plopped down behind her desk.
It had been a long morning. And the afternoon ahead looked even longer, Betsy saw as she scanned the page in her appointment book for this October day.
The telephone began ringing off the hook before Betsy remembered Mary had gone to lunch and she was covering the office.
“Good afternoon, The Alexander and Gold Real estate Agency. Betsy speaking…. Doctor Coleman!”
Betsy’s premonition that something terrible was about to happen had been accurate. She listened to the excitement in his voice and began to panic. But she couldn’t lie to him when he asked if Skylar’s house was still available.
“Yes…. That’s impossible. I’m booked solid for the next several days,” she told him when he asked if his wife could see the house this afternoon.
Betsy wasn’t being dishonest. But if his wife wanted to see any other house besides Skylar’s, she’d work her into her tight schedule.
When he mentioned he’d settle for one of Betsy’s sales staff doing the showing, Betsy almost forgot herself and laughed out loud. Instead of giving him some line about her sales force being swamped as well, she was more than happy to give him the truth.
“I’m the only sales force at this agency. So your wife is just going to have to wait.”
“Well we’ll see about that,” vibrated against Betsy’s eardrum. The bang came next when he slammed down the receiver.
Betsy took a deep breath. When she exhaled, a giggle slipped out. “We’ll see about that,” she mocked him as she focused on the sales agreement she had in front of her.
She’d become totally absorbed in completing the contract after several telephone interruptions. Then there had been a customer who walked in off the street to inquire about a duplex the agency had listed. She was finally finishing filling out the contract when she heard the front door open.
Betsy didn’t bother jumping up to see who entered the building. She assumed it was Mary returning from lunch. But within seconds Betsy saw and heard it wasn’t Mary.
“And this is what you call being booked solid?” Skylar’s voice boomed from the doorway.
Betsy felt a cold chill shuttle up her spine at the sound of his voice. But when she peered up and saw him in the doorway, his hands pressed against the top of the frame, warmth filled her. But she couldn’t let him know what seeing him was doing to her, even when she was willing the rock-like shield to surround her.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Doctor Coleman called me,” he said. Only now, his tone was just above that husky whisper Betsy found irresistible.
Betsy was unable to meet his sharp gaze for fear she’d begin to melt. As she looked blankly at the contract on her desk, she said a firm, “I see.”
“I don’t think you do,” Skylar growled, his tone louder. “The doctor seems to be chomping at the bit to sign on the dotted line to seal the deal on my house.”
“Perhaps. But that’s not saying his wife shares his eagerness.”
“And we wouldn’t know that until she has a chance to see it, which she will be doing shortly.”
“What?” Betsy blurted, alarmed.
“If you are too busy to do your job then I guess I’ll have to do it for you.” Skylar’s tone was bitingly critical.
“I am extremely busy. But I was planning to show her your house.”
“When? You know if I wanted to I could save myself a fat commission and sell the house to the doctor myself.”
His words set a fire of anger inside Betsy. It wouldn’t surprise her if he tried to pull something like that. He probably got the idea from Stephanie, who had attempted to do the same.
Instead of exploding with rage as she felt like doing, Betsy was determined to be professional.
“Need I remind you that you signed a binding agreement with this agency? Even if you choose to sell the house on your own, you will still owe the agency the commission agreed upon.”
Skylar had stepped up to her desk. His front teeth clamped together as he growled. “Need I remind you I can have that contract voided for non-performance on your part?”
Betsy inhaled deeply to quiet her anger and at the same time got wind of his cologne. She fought hard to keep from becoming intoxicated from the scent, or from the warmth as his breath touched her.
Stop it, she told herself. You must respond to him. Not physically as she was, but verbally.
“How do you know I don’t have another interested party in your house?”
Dead silence the few seconds before he spoke. “Well if you do, I better have a full priced offer in writing on my desk by noon tomorrow.”
Betsy watched him turn that tall bulky frame of his around and start for the doorway. He hesitated, then looked back at her long enough to give another warning. “Otherwise, it becomes the doctor’s, and you’re out the twenty-one grand in commission, Miss Betsy Alexander.”
Betsy was unable to swallow back the lump of anger that had formed in her throat. And because she was unable to scream at him, she picked up the telephone book, the heaviest unattached item on her desk and winged it into the doorway Skylar had exited through.
A few seconds later Mary appeared in the doorway. “Is it safe to come in?”
Betsy heaved an angry sigh. “I don’t know how much you heard--”
“Most of it,” Mary confessed as she entered Betsy’s office. “You do have another buyer, don’t you?”
“I said I might,” Betsy offered. But that is where it ended. “Now that you’re back, I have an appraisal to do,” she said and left, leaving Mary standing stupefied.
Betsy zipped through her afternoon appointments. But her mind was not on her work. Skylar, his house, and that warning he had finalized his visit with, was at the forefront of her thoughts continually.
Perhaps this was the reason she was driving on the country road that brought her to the base of that special hilltop.
Betsy coasted to a stop where she had so many times before on her motorcycle. And as her eyes found that magical peak, she heard a voice from within whisper. “This is it, Betsy. That round cloud of white that reached up and touched heaven is your dream house.”
“Yes,” Betsy answered with a smile. “It is exactly what I’ve always been dreaming about.”
She remained behind the steering wheel of her sports car staring at her future home for several minutes. During that time, not once would she permit negative thoughts. She would somehow convince the bank to loan her the money.
After all, with business booming again, she was earning enough to make that enormous mortgage payment. But just in case the bank balked, she was willing to sell her Harley and car to eliminate those monthly payments. She’d even give up her steady diet of fast food and sandwiches and survive on bread and water. She had to have that house and refused to lose it to the doctor or anybody else.
She fired up the engine and pulled back onto the road. She did not head for home. Her next stop was parking across the street from her darkened office building.
She unlocked the front door and slipped inside making sure to lock the door behind her. Instead of wasting time booting up the computer alongside Mary’s desk and searching for the right forms, she hurried up to her own office and pulled a blank agreement of sale from her top desk drawer, rolled it into her ancient typewriter and began pecking away at the keys. She filled in name and address of seller and buyer, location of the property that would be transferred.
&nb
sp; It was when Betsy began typing in the purchase price she was agreeing to pay that she hesitated. Instead of offering the full asking price, she added one dollar to her three hundred thousand offer.
“A little added security,” she said to herself and snickered.
She firmly believed if the doctor had already told Skylar he’d pay full price, Skylar would find the extra dollar she was offering an amusing gesture, hopefully enough to make him accept.
Sure, it was risky, but so had been starting a business that was never predictable. Just like letting down her guard around a man had been. And even though she had gotten burned, vowing never to let it happen again, she had felt what it was like to fall in love, an experience she believed would always be a part of her.
She put her signature to the contract and slipped it into a legal-sized envelope.
“You’ll have your full price offer in writing before noon tomorrow,” chanted Betsy as she picked up the envelope and carried it with her to her car.
It was dark outside when Betsy started for home. The thought of personally delivering the contract to Skylar at his home crossed her mind. But she decided against doing so thinking he was probably out somewhere entertaining Stephanie. What she refused to consider was showing up on his doorstep and finding him home alone.
Betsy was up at the crack of dawn. The truth is she never went to bed. First, she gave her apartment a thorough cleaning. The laundry finally got finished. Then, she tackled the stack of reading she had with the hope of it winding her down so she could sleep. No chance of that though.
After she showered and dressed she took a moment to admire herself in the floor length mirror attached to the back of her closet door.
The black heels added three inches to her height, making her shapely taupe colored nylon legs look longer. The snug fitting black sleeveless dress accentuated her curves. It was the gold half sleeved jacket that gave energy to the otherwise plain outfit.
She had taken a few extra minutes to style her hair and it showed. There was more fullness to the short waves on the top. A few strands of bangs dripped over her arched brows, which Betsy felt gave sex appeal. She even went to the trouble of using a dash of blush and eye shadow with the mascara and lipstick she normally wore.
Betsy winked at her reflection and was off, remembering to pick up the legal-sized envelope she had dropped on the coffee table when she came in last night.
There wasn’t a trace of fear anywhere near her when she pulled away from the house and headed toward the most pressing business of the day. But when she turned off the country road onto the private one that went up the hillside, the panic set in.
She flipped off the heater she had needed when she first started out, because right now she was beginning to perspire.
“You have to pull yourself together,” she ordered herself.
A difficult task now that she had spotted old Betsy sandwiched between two larger trucks on the hilltop. The one she recognized as Charlie Webbers, Skylar’s foreman. Apparently another member of the work crew owned the other.
Betsy knew Skylar had given her until noon to have the full priced offer in writing and in his office. But she couldn’t wait until then. And she somehow knew she’d find Skylar working on the house by daybreak. Right now, as she shut down the engine, she wished she had assumed wrong.
Trembling fingers picked up the envelope from the passenger seat. She stepped out of the car and straightened her dress taking a deep breath as she shoved back her shoulders before heading through the front doorway, still minus a door. But Betsy was too busy willing her nerves not to tighten to notice.
She heard voices and hammering coming from the rear of the house and followed them. Her heels clicking as she walked across the hard wood floor. She froze in the doorway to the kitchen.
The sudden silence sent a chill through her. Then the heat. A powerful burst rocketing through her when she noticed at least six pair of eyes on her.
It took her a full minute before her eyes met with his. Out of all the stares her eyes had briefly met as they glanced around the room, his didn’t appear to be undressing her. Instead, they seemed to be demanding an answer for the interruption she had created in his crew’s work.
Well you don’t have to worry, Skylar Blakewood, I’m not staying, she was thinking.
Anger had replaced her fear and she took a few sturdy steps inside. She slammed the envelope down on the dusty countertop and looked directly up into Skylar’s big blue eyes.
“I’d appreciate a response by the end of the day.”
She wheeled around and left without giving him the opportunity to utter a single word.
Chapter Nine
Somehow, but darned if Betsy knew how, she had arrived safely at her office. She even remembered to lock the door behind her when she came in. With what she planned to do next, she didn’t need any interruptions from pedestrians wandering in off the street.
She had an hour and a half before Mary was due in. Hopefully by then, she’d be finished at her desk where she had taken root. She had to open and shut one file cabinet drawer after another before she found the set of books she was looking for.
“This is going to be easier than I thought,” she commented after opening the ledger.
She poured over the figures in the credit and debit columns. She began smiling, pleased from what she saw.
“We’re in better shape than I imagined.”
Again, she began searching filing cabinet drawers. This time looking for lined paper to copy the figures onto. Once she found the paper she put together a profit and loss statement. A necessity when she approached the loan officer at the bank, which she planned to do as soon as Mary arrived.
Once she finished, she kicked back in her seat. Her thoughts drifted off in another direction.
She wondered if Skylar had looked at the contract yet. Of course he had, she told herself. What went through his mind after reading it was a puzzler though.
As of two months ago, Skylar seemed well versed on the financial ailments of the agency. Of course, as a bank board member, he was privy to the confidential information. But right now, he couldn’t possibly know how well the agency had recovered.
He might have noticed all the sold signs on the houses listed with the agency. And he might have inquired into the deposits made to the private account at the bank. But he didn’t know about the second account Betsy had at another out of town bank. The one into which she had socked away a sizeable chunk of cash over the last two months.
It was almost enough for the down payment she needed to purchase his house. She’d use her share of the commission on the sale to cover the difference.
“Don’t be too confident,” the almost forgotten Miss Sensible had returned to remind.
But Betsy didn’t want the pessimistic side of herself to get a strong hold on her. Of course, if it did, she’d be thinking about how unrealistic she was being to consider the bank would automatically give her the mortgage loan based on two months worth of income. She knew better. There wasn’t a lender she knew that didn’t want to see a two year history of a self-employed person’s income and expenses. And the agency had been in business just a little over a year. Most of that time running in the red.
Yet, Betsy was determined to give it a try. She had to. The contract she put her signature to and delivered to Skylar said so in a section of the fine print.
“Gee, maybe I should check for a fever or something,” Mary commented with a smile when she came in and saw Betsy at her desk.
Betsy stood and began gathering up her things. “I’m not sick. I just had something important to take care of.”
“Must’ve been real important to get you in here before nine.”
Betsy knew Mary was probing for an answer. But she was going about it in a round about way. She didn’t want to take the time to explain just now. The bank was about to open. And Betsy wanted to be one of its first customers of the day. But she didn’t feel comfortable keeping
Mary in the dark.
“I needed to work up a profit and loss statement.”
Mary’s eyes instantly widened with panic. “Is something wrong?”
“No. It’s for personal reasons. And I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.”
“Back from where?” Mary questioned in a rush since Betsy was already starting out the door.
Betsy hesitated. “I’ll be at the bank if you need me for something.”
Even though she felt an oncoming but from Mary, Betsy went out the door before she got out the word.
Betsy used the few minutes it took to walk to the bank to rehearse what she would say. She knew if she appeared as nervous as she felt she might as well kiss any chance of getting the loan goodbye. She had to show confidence.
Before plowing inside the two story building, she took a moment on the front door step. A few deep, very deep breaths followed by a silent pep talk to herself and she was ready.
“Morning, Cindy,” she greeted the bank teller at the first window.
“Is it Friday already, Betsy?” the perky young woman asked.
“No. I’m here to see a loan officer. Is there one available? Preferably Helen.”
“I think she’s in her office. Go on back.”
“Thanks, Cindy,” Betsy said and smiled. Only there was a nervous twitch in the way her mouth had widened.
Instead of marching onward to the rear of the bank where Helen Swanson’s small office was located, Betsy hesitated.
“Something else I can help you with, Betsy?” Cindy asked.
“No,” Betsy told her and somehow got her feet moving.
She stopped outside the opened doorway of the dreary office. She peered inside at the older woman who had become a widow a few years ago. A pleasant and intelligent woman who’d worked hard to earn her promotion from head teller to loan officer.
Maybe I should have asked to see Mark? Betsy was beginning to contemplate. The man hit on her every chance he got. She felt confident she could sweet talk him into going to bat for her at the board meeting.
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