by Madyson Grey
Just then she heard the gate buzzer sound, so she knew that Rafael was home. She got up and went downstairs to greet him and have supper. What a lot she had to tell him tonight! She let him get in and go wash up for supper before bombarding him with the tales of her day. After supper, she got out her laptop and showed him the photo of her uncle Mac. He read through the messages she and Mac had exchanged, and thought he sounded like a decent man.
Victoria told him all about the letters she had found from Mac and what the problems appeared to be. She told him all about meeting the building superintendent and how thoughtful he was, and that she told him they would be around to check on things.
“Speaking of visiting all of the properties,” Rafael said, seeing a chance to get a word in edgewise. “I printed out a list today of all of the properties, their addresses, building superintendents, if any, and lists of all of the tenants in each building. Everything is organized by building and location, so that when we start, we have all the information at our fingertips.”
“Excellent!” Victoria exclaimed. “When do you want to start?”
“I’m thinking next week,” he said.
“Works for me,” she said. “Did you bring the list home with you?”
“No, I left it at work,” he said. “If we start from the office, all of our gas expenses are tax deductible. So when we do this, we’ll have to go to the office to pick up the list, and then leave from there.”
“Oh, tricky,” she said. “I really have a lot to learn, don’t I?”
“You’ll figure it out as we go,” he said.
“Wanna go get into the pool for a little while?” Victoria asked.
“It’s getting cool out there, isn’t it?” Rafael said.
“The water’s warm,” she countered. “Anyway, it’s still seventy-two degrees out there.
“Oh, all right,” he said, with exaggerated resignation. “If I must.”
“You must,” she said with a flirty grin. “If you get cold, I’ll warm you up.”
“Last one in’s a rotten egg,” he said, dashing for the back door.
“Hey, wait up!”
They raced to the bathhouse where the bathing suits were kept. Changing out there kept anyone from entering the house dripping wet. Rafael won because he didn’t have to put on a bikini top, which Victoria declared totally unfair.
“You didn’t have to put one on,” he said with a wicked grin. “None of the neighbors can see in here.”
That was true. The back yard had been landscaped long enough ago that the trees and bushes that formed a living hedge were plenty tall enough to keep prying eyes away, unless they were monkeys.
“What about Lena?” Victoria protested. “She could be watching us from the house.”
“I’m sure she’s seen you naked before. After all, she has changed your diapers, hasn’t she?”
He laughed as Victoria splashed him and then tried to dunk him. She was no match for his size and strength, however. Even when she jumped onto his back, she couldn’t push him under. They played and swam, floated and relaxed until the sun went down and the air did cool.
When Victoria saw the light go on in Lena’s apartment, she swam to the end of the pool that was closest to the bathhouse. From there, the small building shielded that end of the pool from the upstairs apartment. Catching Rafael’s eye, she slowly peeled off her bikini top and gave him a come-hither look.
He lost no time in swimming over to her and answering her silent appeal. He made short work of shucking her bikini bottoms as well as his trunks, and soon they were joined as one.
They swam and played a while longer in the gathering darkness. Victoria kept herself under the water just in case there was anyone out there who could look in on them. But soon they decided it was high time to go inside and get ready for bed. They had a full day planned for tomorrow, so they needed to get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow they would go house hunting again.
Saturday morning after a nice breakfast of pancakes and eggs, Rafael and Victoria set out to do some serious house hunting. They told Lena she could do as she pleased that day, because they wouldn’t be back home until suppertime.
“What do you want for supper tonight?” she asked.
“Enchiladas,” Rafael requested.
“What else?” Lena wanted to know.
“I don’t care,” Rafael said. “Anything.”
“Spanish rice,” Victoria said.
She loved Lena’s Spanish rice.
“Well, you do know that my Mexican cooking won’t taste like your mama’s,” Lena said to Rafael.
“I don’t care. I’ve eaten lots of Mexican food in lots of different places, and I like it all, so just go for it,” he replied.
“OK, if you say so,” she said doubtfully.
The two took off in the Ferrari with the top down. It was a gorgeous fall day. A great day to be alive. Victoria had her laptop along so she could look up houses for sale as they putzed along, driving up one street and down another. She found one that looked promising, so she gave Rafael the directions on how to get to it. They drove by it slowly, and it was nice, but it didn’t speak to them, so they went on to the next one that she found.
“Maybe we’re gonna have to break down and go see a realtor,” Victoria said, after the fourth place that didn’t suit.”
“Yeah, maybe so,” he said. “I was hoping we could just find one on our own without being drug around to a bunch of places the agent wants to unload rather than what we want to see.”
“You’ve got a point there,” Victoria said. “We’ll just keep looking. We don’t have a deadline. Something is bound to turn up sooner or later.”
“Did you bring the stuff we got for my mom on the trip?” Rafael asked a few miles later.
“Yeah, I remembered,” Victoria said. “You want to head over that way now?”
“Sure,” he said. “It’s almost lunch time.”
“Oh, you!” Victoria laughed.
She socked him lightly on the shoulder, and he pretended to be injured.
“Hey, why don’t we take her out to lunch somewhere?” Victoria suggested.
“Good idea,” he said. “I don’t think she goes out very often.”
“Well, let’s go someplace good then,” she said.
“We will.”
Twenty minutes later, Rafael parked the Ferrari in front of his mother’s house. Manuela welcomed them to come inside. Rafael handed her the gift bag with the things in it that they had picked up for her along their trip. She was delighted with not only the gifts, but with the fact that they had thought of her. And when Victoria told her they wanted to take her to lunch, she was really tickled. They would have to take Manuela’s car, as the Ferrari only seats two.
Over lunch, they told her all about their trip, all the places they had gone, and all the cool things they had seen and done. They also discussed Mateo and the robbery. Manuela nearly cried, she was so distraught over her older son’s behavior. Victoria felt so bad for her. Mateo was in jail, having been sentenced to two years. None of the stolen items had been recovered as of yet.
After they took Manuela back home, they continued their house search for the rest of the afternoon. They even looked around a little bit in Manuela’s neighborhood, as it was a decent middle-class area. Victoria’s thought was that if they had just a rather ordinary place, no one would suspect them of having the kind of money they did, and so they wouldn’t be targets for theft. Rafael thought that was something to take into consideration. However, being raised poor, he was enjoying living it up in a big fancy house. Victoria, on the other hand, had gotten to where she enjoyed living as an ordinary, working girl, where she was just Vicky, not Victoria Thornton.
They were both agreed that any place they bought had to have a swimming pool. Or at the very least, space to put one in, if everything else was perfect.
Suddenly Victoria hollered, “I found it! This is it! This is the perfect place.”
“
Don’t give me a heart attack,” Rafael growled. “I am driving you know.”
“Sorry,” she said contritely. “But this is the perfect place. Let’s go look at it.”
“Where is it? Tell me how to get there,” he said.
“It’s over in Westlake Village, but it sits all by itself with a lot of bare land around it. It’s cool. And it has a pool.”
Victoria gave Rafael turn-by-turn directions until they arrived at the place. It was at the end of a dead end street and sat up on top of a little knoll. It was perfect. Well, it could use some landscaping, but the house was nearly as big as their own, plus there was a large vacant parcel of land next to it that Rafael said he would buy, too, if they got the house.
Rafael called the agent who had the house listed to ask if they could see the house. The agent said he could be there in twenty minutes. The house was vacant, as the owner had been transferred across the country, so they would be able to look it over thoroughly.
Since they now knew no one was there, they drove on up to the front of the house, got out and walked around, looking at the yard, the pool, and the grounds. The agent finally arrived and let them in the house. They were smitten. It was love at first sight. There was a “maid’s quarters” suite that went off the kitchen down a short set of steps to the lower level where Lena would have her own suite of rooms. The kitchen was to die for, and the master suite windows overlooked the bare tract of land rather than down over the subdivisions that sprawled out on the opposite side.
The realtor informed them that there was about two hundred acres of vacant land out there. It wasn’t currently for sale, but he would contact the owner to find out if he would consider selling all or part of it. Rafael asked what the market value of the property might be if it were for sale. The realtor didn’t know exactly, but he said that he would guess in the neighborhood of twenty million as is.
Rafael told him to tell the owner that if he would sell, he would give him twenty-five million. Cash. The realtor looked at Rafael as if he had just said he dropped in from Mars. Doug Bush was accustomed to dealing with wealthy people, but this kind of money in cash was a little out of his realm. But if Rafael had the money, he had the time.
“I know that this is farther from your office than we had planned,” Victoria said to Rafael, “but if you set things up like you’re talking about, maybe it would be all right. What do you think?”
“I think this house has our name on it. Or at least it will just as soon as we sign papers,” he said.
Doug Bush was stunned again, although he did his best to hide his shock. He hadn’t made a sale this quick in his entire career of fifteen years. He wondered if this sale would be cash, too. The asking price for the house and one acre that it sat on was a cool 5 mil. Ten percent commission would be $500 Gs. Not bad for ten minutes’ work.
“Are you sure you want the place?” he asked Rafael. “Do you have any questions about it?”
“I do,” Victoria said. “Does everything connected with the swimming pool work? The heater, filters, pump, and so on?”
“According to the information I have here in the listing the pool is in perfect working order,” Bush said. “The house is ten years old. The roof was seal-coated last year with a twelve-year warranty. The heat pumps were completely gone through last fall. Everything listed is in mint condition.”
“Let’s walk through it once more,” Victoria said. “Just to be one hundred percent on it.”
“OK, but I know it is,” Rafael said.
They walked through the master suite that had a bedroom area, a sitting area, a huge walk-in closet, and a full bath with Jacuzzi tub, a glassed-in shower that had multiple shower heads, and a double sink vanity that was at least six or seven feet long. The wall behind the tub was all glass brick, which let in a lot of light, yet was thick enough to not be able to see through under any lighting conditions.
There were two other bedrooms in that wing plus another full bathroom. It was a split-level house with this wing sitting six steps above the main floor. The main floor consisted of a large entryway, a formal living room and dining room, a large kitchen that opened into an informal eating area and the family room.
On one side of the entry hall a set of eight steps went down to the lower level, while the other steps went to the other level. This lower level was designed as a daylight basement, and contained a modest-sized recreation room, the laundry room, and pool access with a “drip room” where one could come in from the pool to dry off without messing up the rest of the house. It also contained the “maid’s suite,” with steps that led directly up to the kitchen. It had its own private entrance to the outdoors, and a door that led into the four-car garage.
They met the agent back up on the main level.
“So, how shall we do this? Do you want to do the paperwork first, and then go to the bank? Oh, no, we can’t do that. I forgot that it’s Saturday. And the ATMs don’t give out this kind of cash,” Rafael said with a sideways grin. “I guess that part will have to wait until Monday morning. That work for you?”
“Oh, yeah, that works for me,” Doug Bush affirmed. He hoped that he was displaying a sincere smile, not the gloating one he was feeling. That wouldn’t be professional.
“We can get all of the paperwork done and out of the way, and then we can meet Monday at your bank for a cashier’s check,” Doug said.
“That works for me,” Rafael said.
“Well, I’ll just go out to the car and bring in my laptop, and I can do all the paperwork right there on the kitchen counter.”
Twenty minutes later, the forms were all filled out, and the wheels of progress were turning to place this house under the names Rafael Raul and Victoria Marie Rivera. They had just bought their first house together.
Chapter Nine
They were ecstatic as they drove home, laughing and giggling over their new house like a couple of kids with a new toy. They began making all sorts of plans for what to do with the unlandscaped part of the property, whether to buy all new furniture or to take what they wanted from their current home, and whether or not to repaint the outside of the house a different color. Victoria wasn’t too crazy about the drab brown that it was currently. But that could wait.
“I sure hope that Lena will like it there,” Victoria said. “I know this will put her farther away from her parents. I almost wish that we could move them closer to her.”
“Yeah, and it puts us farther from my mom, too,” Rafael added. “I was kinda thinking the same thing. I bought her the house she’s in. I could sell it and move her over this way closer. If she wants to, that is.”
“We’ll have to talk to her, and let Lena talk to her parents, and see if they are even interested,” Victoria said.
They drove straight home, stopping only at a grocery store to buy a sheet cake and some ice cream. They had the baker decorate the cake with a little house and swimming pool (blue icing), and had him write on it “We bought a house!”
“He probably thinks we’re lunatics,” Victoria said as they walked away from the bakery to get the ice cream while they waited for the cake to be done.
“Who cares?” Rafael said, laughing. “It’ll give him something to tell his wife when he gets home from work tonight.”
“We’ll have to get hot on advertising our house for sale,” Rafael said.
“You know what I’d like to do? Except I’m not sure they could afford it,” Victoria said.
“What’s that?”
“I’d like to give the house to Uncle Mac to make up for my mother cheating him out of his share of their parents’ estate. But I don’t know if his income is great enough to keep up the taxes and other expenses on the place.”
“That would be a cool thing to do,” Rafael said. “I’ll betcha I could do a background check on him and find out what his income is. And he’d never have to know it.”
“Oh, could you?” Victoria asked eagerly. “Can you do it at home this evening?”
&n
bsp; “Sure.”
“Good, let’s do it then. That reminds me, Monday morning I have got to make an appointment with Mother’s attorney Mr. Kyte. I need to see what it will take to settle her estate.”
“Yeah, don’t forget!”
A little while later they walked into the kitchen carrying the cake and other groceries they had picked up. The kitchen smelled wonderful with the enchiladas heating in the oven.
“Mmmm, smells good in here,” Rafael said appreciatively as he sniffed the air.
“Hi, you two,” Lena said, looking up from the skillet where she was stirring the Spanish rice. “How’d your day go?”
Rafael just opened the cake box and held it out for Lena to see. She looked up at him with a puzzled look at first, and then looked down at the cake and read the inscription. She gave a squeal and clapped her hands, spattering bits of rice and tomato sauce on the floor because she forgot that she had the spoon in one hand.
“You really found one?” she asked, eyes glowing with joy.
“We did,” he affirmed. “It’s over in Westlake Village, and it’s a beaut.”
“We hope you will like it, too, Lena,” Victoria said. “You’ll have your own suite just like you do here. And your living room has a sliding glass door that opens onto the pool area, so you can go swimming any time.”
“Sounds wonderful,” she said. “I can’t wait to see it. When do you take possession?”
“Well, we could have today, if it wasn’t a weekend,” Rafael said. “But we have to wait until Monday when the banks are open to pay for it. Then we’ll get the keys to our new kingdom. You can even go with us Monday morning if you want to, so we can go right over and show it to you.”
“I know you’ll be farther away from your parents now,” Victoria said. “Do you think they would want to move over closer to us, if we helped them out?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Lena said doubtfully. “They have lived in that house for nigh onto forty years now. And I doubt that Dad would take financial help from anyone. But I’ll talk to them and see. They might surprise me.”