“Everything’s for sale. Find out who owns it and make an offer. It’s a big old Queen Anne and it looks like it’s ready to fall down.”
I heard keyboard tapping over the line and then Julio said, “Okay, I have it. Not for sale. Comparables….” He laughed. “About thirty grand. You gonna tear it down?”
“Nope. Start the offers at twenty-five and keep going up until you have a signed sales agreement. And Julio, I want this done fast. Whatever it takes. Cash on the barrel head. If you can close by the end of the week, I’ll pay a premium—to the owner and you.”
“Jesus, Mick, how bad do you want this place?”
“Bad. I will not take no for an answer. There is no ceiling on this deal.” I heard him whistle softly. I went on. “Who do you know who does property management, totally reliable?”
“I do it myself now. What do you need?”
“Fantastic, Julio. Okay, I want the entire building renovated. Top priority is safety for the tenants. The day of closing, I want a crew in there installing locks, top of the line, on each unit door and the exterior doors. If the doors aren’t secure, replace ‘em. Next up, mechanics, check the plumbing, wiring, roof—everything. Top of the line. Then pretty it up. But first, secure it. I don’t care if you have to put ten crews to work two shifts a day.”
“Okay, Mick, none of that is any problem. If you got the scratch, I can do it all. But I don’t get it. You’re not going to be able to sell it. It’s six units now—you’re not going to be able to charge enough rent to make any of this stuff pay. It’s Addison Hill. No one, I mean no one with money, will move into your building, no matter how safe you make it.”
“That’s not a problem. Just leave the tenants alone. And listen. Julio. This is the most important part. You’re my straw man on this. My name can be nowhere near any part of this deal. Not now, not ever.”
“All right. I’ll keep it under my hat.”
“No, I mean it. This can never get out.”
“Okay, I get it. Your name will not be on it. I swear.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d known Julio a long time, and I knew he could be trusted, no matter how curious he was. We caught up a bit, gossiped about an old classmate who’d been disbarred, and then said goodbye.
There were always a lot of real estate deals going on in this city. But there was no buyer going to bed happier than I was that night.
CHAPTER FOUR
Casey
So, he kissed me. I mean, we kissed. And then I was afraid I would not be able to stop if we kept kissing.
I shouldn’t have kissed him, I know! Mick is still my stepbrother, even though he doesn’t know it. I should be the one to put the brakes on, right? Because I know that if he knew, he wouldn’t be kissing me, that’s for sure. Of course, that’s the thing that makes it so hard to tell him the truth.
A long time ago, when I was still in high school, and he was in law school.... Well, I need to go back even further. When our parents married, I was fifteen, and he was in his first year of law school. He would come home for breaks, and he was like a visiting god to me. So good-looking, so smart, so confident. He was always saying he was about to set the world on fire, and he encouraged me to think the same way. He would say, think of all the things you want to do, and then pick the hardest one and do it. If I was scared to try something, he’d say, that’s how you know it’s worth doing. Can you see why I idolized him?
As I got older, I wanted more from him than just advice. I wanted him to kiss me. To touch me. To rip my clothes off, to force me to my knees.... To do things to me that I could only imagine in the haziest form.
But I was sure there was no way he could be interested in me. I wasn’t beautiful, I was just a chubby mouse who got no attention. When he was visiting his dad, he would talk to me, but when he left, I doubted he ever gave me a thought. He was so much older, so far out of my league. And then of course, I was his “little sister,” as he introduced me when his friends came over. What kind of guy, especially a guy with a bright career ahead of him, is interested in his little sister?
But then, during my senior year of high school, Mick came home for Christmas break. I remember he spent a lot of time with me over those three weeks. He gave me a lovely pair of earrings for Christmas, small but real pearls that I still have. On New Year’s Eve, our parents had a big party. I had a couple of glasses of champagne, but I didn’t really like it, so I stopped. But Mick drank a good bit that night. I was surprised because he rarely even drank a beer. He wasn’t sloppy drunk or anything, but he was feeling good, and he spent most of the party hanging out with me. It was probably because all the other guests were our parents’ boring friends, but I was flattered.
The later it got, the closer he got to me. He started standing so we were always touching a little bit. It was almost like he was flirting, always touching my arms or brushing my hair off my face. When the music got loud, he would pull me close to him and talk right into my ear, holding my head or my shoulder to bring me nearer. The heat of his breath, the occasional brush of his lips against my ear—I was trembling with a growing desire for him all night.
I was so happy that night. It was like, now that I was eighteen, all my dreams were finally coming true. Mick was seeing the real me, and the real me was someone he wanted to be close to. I could almost forget that he was my stepbrother.
When midnight came, all the old people throughout the rooms of our house started blowing on noisemakers, and then a lot of them kissed.
Mick pulled me into his dad’s little office, where all the coats were. He pressed my back up against the wall, and put his arms on either side of my head, leaning on his forearms.
“Now I have you,” he said with a devilish smile.
I remember I couldn’t say anything, but my heart was beating so fast that I was sure he could hear it.
And then he kissed me. Gently at first and then hard. He pressed the full length of his body against me and kissed me like he wanted to devour me. He took his arms off the wall and stroked my sides for a minute, then grabbed my ass with both hands. He pulled his mouth away from mine to say, “I’ve wanted to do this for so long.”