Cami hesitated. Then, “Yes.”
“Great! Send him in.”
“You don’t even know what he wants,” she protested, but Lenny hand-waved her concerns away.
“Who cares? I could use a little eye candy. Now, get back to work, you free-loader.”
Lenny had been the first person she’d met in Santa Monica. Cami had arrived here last June with only a backpack of dirty clothes to her name and an address scribbled on a scrap of paper. It was the last known address of the father she’d never met. Instead of her father, she’d found Lenny, who was warm and inviting and funny, and didn’t have any family of her own. It took Lenny all of half an hour to offer Cami a job at Sex on the Beach and heavily discounted rent on the apartment above the store.
Cami rolled her eyes, but there was a fond smile on her face as she returned to the sales floor. She really needed to have a discussion with Lenny about office propriety.
Des had set his briefcase down so that he could use both hands to lift an unboxed dildo for inspection. It was one ofthe pieces that got the most ogling from customers—over a foot long, it was hefty and thick, and its orange-to-gold gradient was particularly eye-catching. It was scaly and tentacle-esque in a way that Cami found intimidating, but most of her customers didn’t seem to feel the same way.
“Should I box that up for you?”
He startled and whirled around, long fingers curled around the dildo just under its ribbed head. Then, once his bright eyes landed on her, he relaxed, laughing. “No, thank you. I was just admiring the heft of it. I could take this home and swap it out for my barbells on arm day.”
She nodded along. “I don’t think anyone is prepared for the amount of muscle mass you’d gain.”
He replaced the dildo where he’d found it, scooped up his briefcase, and looked to her expectantly. “So? Is Ms. Seaver available to see me?”
The formality of his speech when she’d just found him fondling a tentacle dildo made it difficult for Cami to keep a straight face. “She is. Right this way, please.” She led him the whole fifteen feet to the back office and its badly painted white door, a piece of paper taped to it that said OFFICE in pink highlighter. Then she gestured for Des to enter, and, when he did, closed the door after him, though not quickly enough to miss hearing Lenny exclaim, “Ooh, youarepretty!”
She’d have to talk to Lenny about laying off the Tinder at work.
As the doorswung shut behind him, Des offered his hand to Lenore Seaver to shake. She high-fived him instead and then gestured toward what could only be described as a pouf,crocheted out of the same hideous seventies yarn that made so many Grandma blankets in decades past. He eyed it skeptically, but lowered onto it, shifting a bit to find a comfortable position. He set his briefcase on the floor next to him.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me, Ms. Seaver,” he started.
She waved a hand dismissively. “It’s Lenny. What can I do for you, Mr. Fancy Pants?”
A smirk threatened at the corners of his mouth that he did his best to smother. “It’s Desmond Fancy Pants, but you can call me Des.” He withdrew a business card from his pocket and passed it to her over the chaotic mess of her desk. On top of a mouse pad and next to a mouse that wasn’t connected to anything sat a coffee-stained mug that proclaimed in bold allcaps: WELL, WELL, WELL, IF IT ISN’T THE CONSEQUENCES OF MY OWN ACTIONS. “Also, I think you’re very pretty too.”
His mind’s eye flashed back to the blonde at the front counter. Cami. Startlingly pretty, with the cutest little mid-western accent.
But not why he was here.
“Sadly, we can never be,” Lenny told him, flicking his business card at a pile of—was that her laundry? “I’ve sworn to never love another after the death of my dearly departed Joey.” She sighed dramatically, then leaned back in her chair and interlaced her fingers over her stomach. “Well, that was fun. What can I do for you, Des?”
He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. This was the part he was good at. Really good at. This was why Gabriel had approached him when he’d wanted to start Calogistics in the first place.
“You’ve been running this store for about five years, is that right?”
Lenny nodded, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. That wasn’t a promising sign. When he’d approached the pizza place a coupleof doors down, the owner had lit up like a July 4th drone show at the prospect of offloading his business.
“I’m with a company called Calogistics. We’ve been retained by Adrien International Holdings to facilitate the purchase of this entire plaza, including Sex on the Beach.”
Lenny remained silent, studying him as he lifted his briefcase onto his lap, clicked it open, and pulled out the offer letter he and Gabriel had drafted for Adrien. This time, when he passed it across to her she didn’t immediately fling it at her pile of sweatpants. Maybe she was more interested than he’d thought.
“This is just the initial offer. We are open to negotiation, of course, and you’re welcome to have an attorney look it over. We’ll be approaching each of the store owners in Paragon Plaza with similar offers. Mr. Adrien is very interested in purchasing the property as a whole.”
“Why?” she asked, glancing at him before picking up the reading glasses that dangled from a gaudy string thing around her neck and sliding them on her nose. She skimmed over the offer letter.
“Mr. Adrien hasn’t disclosed his plans for development, but properties like this are usually turned into apartments or hotels. Probably something along those lines.”
Adrien was a big shot businessman based out of Toronto and didn’t like to explain himself to the people he hired, even when they were the ones spending his money. Truthfully, Des found him insufferable, but the bonus he’d been promised if he closed this deal was more than his father earned in an entire year. If he pulled this off, and he knew he could, his dad could never again insinuate that his career was a waste of time and potential.
Lenny finished reading over the letter and laid it on the desk. Then, removing her glasses, she leveled her gaze on him. “It’s a nice offer, but it’s a no. Sorry.”
