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“You don’t have to,” her mother said.
“I want to. And I’ll get that banister fixed.” Sure, she didn’t possess the soul of a caretaker like Layla, but Alanna had her own talents. She got shit done.
“Well, then, thank you,” her mother said.
Alanna accompanied her sister and mom to the parking lot. She accepted a kiss on the cheek from her mother and a warm, too-long embrace from Layla before both women climbed inside Layla’s SUV. She waved as the car left the parking lot. Through the back window, she could see her sister and mother already smiling and laughing.
Had they laughed once when she was with them?
Pushing that uncomfortable question from her mind, Alanna glanced at her phone again, cataloging all the missed work piling up by the minute. She couldn’t leave all those messages unanswered during a grueling drive back to LA in rush hour traffic. Fortunately, she’d brought her laptop with her.
Alanna smiled to herself. It just so happened, she knew exactly where to go in town for free Wi-Fi and a desperately needed drink.
Ch. 3 Sully
SullivanBrookspushedhisglasses up the bridge of his nose, gazed upon the newest house in his minuscule real estate empire, and smiled. She was a real beauty.
“That’s the shittiest shitting shit heap I’ve ever seen in my life,” pronounced Hue Cairn, local landlord extraordinaire and Sully’s unofficial first friend in Yucca Hills.
Okay, correction. Shewouldbe a real beauty. All the house needed was a little TLC.
“I’m calling it The Ugly Duckling,” Sully proclaimed to his real estate mentor. “I picked her up for a song.”
“If you paid money for that heap of tetanus, you got hosed,” Hue said. The red-headed giant kicked at a clod of dirt.
The house wasn’t really so bad. Sure, the roof looked like it’d gone a few rounds with a pack of wild chimpanzees, the yard was nothing more than stalks of dead grass, and a broken pipe inside had turned the living room into an experiment of uninterrupted mold growth, but the place had good bones. Sully was a patient man. He prided himself on seeing a thing’s true potential… even if that potential was hidden under layers of mold.
Plus, his assiduous calculations didn’t lie. He’d have to put a sizeable chunk of his savings into renovations, but once the Ugly Duckling was ready, he’d be able to rent the house for a solid profit.
“And you’re going to live there?” Hue asked, his words laced with skepticism.
Sully nodded. “I actually moved in yesterday as soon as the mold removal team gave me the go-ahead.”
“Brave man.”
Sully chuckled. “Nope. Just practical. Plus, I had to get out of my last digs.”
Sully’s “last digs” just happened to be the pretty blue ranch house immediately to the right of The Ugly Duckling. NamedCinderellain Sully’s mind, he’d renovated the house just as he planned to do with The Ugly Duckling.
With significant help from Hue, Sully had renovated almost every part of Cinderella, turning the old, tired house into a beautiful rental property. He’d lived in the house during the project to save money. Last month, while painting Cinderella her beautiful blue color, he’d seen an old man hammer a “For Sale By Owner” sign into the dirt lawn of the house next door.
Talk about serendipity. One friendly convo and an aggressive cash offer later, and Sully had snagged his second investment property. And his side-by-side houses were just the start of what he hoped would be a gradually growing real estate portfolio.
“Well, let’s stop staring at the place or it might fall down,” Hue grumbled. “We’ve got some windows to install.”
Right. The two men walked to the house next door. Cinderella was almost ready for the ball. All she needed were a few last touches, including double-pane windows, some landscaping, and a new mailbox.
Sully opened the garage and Hue gave the double-pane windows, still in their packaging, a critical review.
“Yup,” said Cinderella’s brawny and extremely hairy godmother. “Those’ll work just fine.”
The large man easily hefted a window under each arm and walked them to the front of the house. Sully slung Hue’s large tool bag over his shoulder and followed. Hue surveyed the gaping holes where Sully had removed the warped, single-pane windows earlier in the morning.
“When are you planning on putting this house on the rental market?” he asked.
Sully beamed. “I actually listed it this morning. With the windows in, the house will be ready, and I can finish the landscaping over the next week before the tenant moves in. The mailbox is on backorder, but it should arrive before the start of the month.”
Hue appraised Sully. “Just so you know, fixing up the house is the easy part. Finding good tenants…” he scratched at his stubbled jaw, “that’s the hard part.”
