“Ah, you ordered my scotch.”
“I hate it when you make me drive all the way out here,” Des sighed. “We have a perfectly good office to talk business in.”
Gabriel waved off his complaint, taking a sip from his scotch. “I was hungry. Besides, there’s no point sitting around the office waiting for the phone to ring. Anybody worth talking to has my cell number. Are there apps on the way?”
“The porcini tartlets and the cheese thing you like.”
“Oh, fromage fort,” Gabriel exclaimed, clasping a hand over his heart. Des rolled his eyes. “My arteries are clogging already, but it hurts so good.”
“You have a problem.”
Gabriel paused in the middle of spreading his napkin over his lap to meet Des’s gaze. “And you will, too, if you don’t pick up the pace with the Paragon Plaza project.”
Des’s mouth tightened. He’d known Adrien would follow up. He knew their business and did his job well enough to sense when their client was reaching the end of their rope. “Did they call again?”
Gabriel nodded and pushed his scotch out of the way so their returning waitress could lower a plate of mushroom tarts in front of him. He winked at her as she finished up and disappeared again. “It wasn’t the assistant this time but Adrien himself.”
Oh, shit.
Des and Gabriel had been running Calogistics, their settlement facilitation company, for over seven years. After Des had dropped out of med school during his intern year, he’d fallen in with Gabriel, the uncle of one of his classmates. A contract lawyer, Gabriel had made a name for himself in the California business sector long before Des came into the picture, but he’dbeen looking to expand his horizons. He’d seen in Des the potential for something different, and different had been exactly what Des needed. So he’d signed on, and in the years they’d been working together, Des had come to know that the only time their affluent clientele wanted to chat was when there were papers to sign…or when they were angry.
Frowning, he took a tartlet and eyed it skeptically. “You gave me a month. I know this one’s taking longer than expected?—”
“Because you’re dragging your feet, Des.” In the time it had taken Des to pick up one tartlet, Gabriel had devoured three, plus one of the cheesy bread things that had materialized on their table. “I don’t know what your problem is, but you need to get over it, post-haste.”
“Nobody says post-haste anymore,” Des grumbled.
“Tout suite, then. You know this is a big one for us. We can’t lose it.”
Des hesitated, setting his tartlet down. He didn’t know how to make it any clearer to Gabriel that he took this project seriously, that he wanted it to succeed. “It’s a big one for me, too.”
This deal was the one he’d been working toward for so many years. He wasn’t hurting for money, and never had been, but he’d come out of that disaster with Madilyn with something to prove. His family had been so disappointed when he’d dropped out of med school. As far as they were concerned, there was nothing as worthwhile as medicine, and certainly nothing that would set him up with a financial future like surgery. The Blakes worked for what they had, even when they had enough that they didn’t need to. The Paragon Plaza project was the first one Calogistics had signed that, upon completion, would give Des a bonus bigger than his dad’s substantial annual salary. When the deal closed, he’d have proven he could be just as successful as a Chief of Surgery without all the baggage and long hours.
Gabriel sighed, setting down a half-eaten fromage fort. “I know. But that month is down to three weeks. So what’s the hold up? What can I do to help?”
For a moment, Des considered telling him about Cami. About how there was a beautiful blonde who worked at one of the stores they were helping shut down. About how he liked her, but she thought he made sex toys for a living.
He didn’t.
“Lenny Seaver doesn’t want to sell, is all.” He shook his head, waving his hand as though dismissing the problem. “We might need to increase the offer, but I’m still coming up with a plan of attack.”
“Two stores haven’t signed yet. Who’s the other holdout?”
“That would be Rodger.” Now that the conversation had turned away from Sex on the Beach, the tension eased from Des’s shoulders. It was an uncomfortable situation, one that he was still figuring out how to deal with, but he couldn’t disappoint Gabriel on this. He couldn’t botch this like he’d botched his medical career.
“The guy with the family-run convenience store?”
“Right.” Rodger ran the store closest to the road. He was the last hold-out besides Lenny, and Des was seeing him later this week. “He’s been stalling because one of his sons wasn’t on board, but I’ve got an appointment with Rodger on Monday morning. He’ll sign.”
Gabriel grinned. “That’s what I like to hear.” He pushed the plate of cheesy bread toward him and Des reluctantly took one. “Then you just have to get Seaver on board. How long do you think that’ll take?”
Des forced a casual shrug, attempting to look more concerned about the fromage fort than about Lenny selling her store. “Not much longer. A couple weeks.”
“Des—”
“I know. Adrien wants this finished.” Truth be told, so did Des. This situation was making his vodka taste more bitter than usual. “But if I push too hard, she’ll shut me down. She wants to sell. I can feel it. I can’t figure out what’s holding her back.”
“So you’ll find out what it is,” Gabriel nodded, “and fix it. Or I’ll have to fix it for you. We don’t want to lose this client.”
