Chapter One
Caldwell
I really needed to get a place of my own, I thought to myself as I went over my schedule for the day on my tablet…and found myself looking on real estate sites. Maybe I, also, needed to lower my expectations since what I wanted wasn’t within my budget thanks to a lying, cheating ex-partner. I was tired of people coming into my life with their own agendas, using me to get what they wanted, and then walking away, leaving me to pick up the pieces—throwing me back to square one. I wanted things to get back to where they were heading before having to sell my house to be rid of my ex-partner. And I wanted them to accelerate fast forward in a positive manner. Then again, maybe I just needed to be patient and be thankful that my dream business was still afloat with some creative finagling…and I had a free place to live.
“Oh my God, I’m dying.” Those were not words I wanted to hear first thing in the morning before I was able to grab a cup of coffee. But, unfortunately, I was privy to them whether I liked it or not since I was staying at my brother Ashton’s house for the time being. Fortunately, I was wise to his melodramatic ways since we were little boys. He was deathly ill whenever he had a tiny sniffle or a cough.
I rolled my eyes as I always did, doing my best to ignore him as per usual. God help him the day that he is really sick and I leave him to suffer in real pain. He would have our mother to blame because she was one to always play into his act and was forever coddling him—falling for his every whimper.
“Yeah, okay,” I remarked casually as I plopped a coffee pod into his fancy coffee-making machine. “Remember I am not mom, you can’t play me…” And just then, Ashton stood up from his nearby stool and puked all over me. “Fuck! Are you kidding me?” I stepped back in an attempt to prevent any more of his grossness from reaching me. Not that it really mattered at that point, he got me good the first go round.
“I told you,” he whimpered, wiping his mouth and moving toward a roll of paper towels on his concrete kitchen counter. About the same time as he was heaving over his sink, his cell phone was ringing on the island next to the stool he had just vacated. “Dude, can you answer that.”
Fuck! Next, he wanted me to be his secretary. “Says ‘Hot House Daphne’ and I’m not talking to one of your booty calls. You can call her back when you’ve got your head out of the sink or bowl…you should be in the bathroom.” He was grossing me out using the sink, but it was his house. Who was I to tell him what he could or couldn’t do in it…or wherever he wanted? But, it was still gross.
“She’s not a booty call,” he replied, splashing water on his face while I was stripping off my fucked up t-shirt—trying to clean up—and kicking my soiled shoes out the backdoor. “I keep putting things off with that woman. I was supposed to go over there for a bid and then I was going to send someone else. However, it’s not the right thing to do since Harrison recommended me to her. If I don’t get over there today or at least this week, she is most likely going to call and request someone else.” I could hear the anxiety in his weak voice. “What does her text say?”
Tossing my balled up shirt in the trash can, I moved to the island and tapped Ashton’s phone screen. “Says ‘today’ all in caps with three question marks and one exclamation point.” I heard him sigh and groan.
I knew Harrison was not a connection you wanted to break. Especially not for my brother whose main business was doing custom woodwork for older homes. Harrison Mulder bought old homes, renovated them, and sold them for a huge profit. He, also, kept a few and rented them out to college students or young professionals. “Great kid!” I could still hear my father saying about Harrison.
Ashton had stepped up to the plate when our father passed away a few years back while I was off running around Europe learning all that I could about art and life. He had already been working for my father since we were in high school. Even I worked on jobs with my father, but it was never something I wanted to do as a lifelong career. My brother was a natural—just like my father—but our father still insisted that he go to college. He told him that he needed business smarts not just technical or creative skills. So he did as my father requested and got a business degree and during that time he also got a contractor’s license.
Ashton was definitely ready to take the reins of Tate & Sons Construction and keep it going for years to come. Neither of us was ready for our father to be gone and it was even worse for our mother. She wanted absolutely nothing to do with the business or the house that we had grown up in. She wanted to get as far away from the reality of their life together being over. We couldn’t blame her, she was heartbroken after losing the love of her life after forty-one years together. Wanting to do everything we could to make her transition easier, we wished her well and helped her move down south to San Diego. She found a condo on the beach and secured a job as an executive secretary—saying she was too young to retire. I was sure she was running circles around the younger workers and probably teaching her boss a thing or two.
Our parents had ran the family business together as a team after my father had taken it over from his father who decided to retire to a desert community surrounded by golf courses. Fast forward, in the hands of my brother, the business was actually doing better than it ever had as he incorporated amazing finish work and more full-service construction options.
Shit! Watching Ashton hang his head as he attempted to put his work boots on, I knew I couldn’t let him down even though he hadn’t really asked.
“You can’t go meet with the client. You probably have some major virus that’s going around. Fuck! I shouldn’t even be around your ass, but what choice do I have?! At least I got a flu shot. The damn thing better work! But if it doesn’t and I catch your shit, you’ll be doing shit for me!”
“Thanks, Bro,” he answered, holding his stomach and looking like he was about to blow again. “Her address is on a clipboard in my truck…keys are on the bulletin board in my office.”
“Under Hot Daphne?” I raised an eyebrow.
“I haven’t seen her. It says Hot House and her name…” He gagged and I nearly did too. “…You’ll know what I mean when you see it…gotta go…” Thank God he was finally running for the bathroom.
Off to get the keys for his truck and a clean shirt and a pair of shoes, I heard Ashton yell from down the hall, “You’re going to be the best daddy someday.”
I shook my head. “Shut the fuck up and get some rest. I’ll bring you back some wonton soup, orange sherbet and ginger ale.” Our mother’s remedy for sickness was always comforting and did the trick. From the sound of him emptying his gut, he was going to need it. “Drink some water!” I yelled out before I headed out the door to my brother’s monster work truck.
I hoped he didn’t mind me using it because I sure as hell wasn’t transferring tools to my car—not that much would fit. “Okay, let’s see what we have here,” I said out loud to myself, grabbing a metal clipboard sitting on the passenger seat. The address sounded familiar for some reason, but I couldn’t pinpoint why until I got on the road and rounded the corner onto the client’s street. “Holy shit!” I exclaimed when I saw the house. Not just a house, but one of my dream houses of all time and my brother’s client’s name made sense.
Got it…Hot House! Daphne. Not a Hot Chick. Punctuation made a difference.
I could not believe that I was going to have the pleasure of touring a 1937 Streamline Moderne (or Art Moderne) home. The structural elements I knew well from an American Modern Art class I took in college. We had studied the transformation to its late Art Deco architecture during the Great Depression. A time when things were being streamlined, hence the name for the movement. Simplicity with a little funk is how I liked to describe it. I loved the whimsical elements—curving form along with long horizontal lines in the overall look of the homes that typical featured flat roofs, light colored stucco with colored metal casement windows that cranked open outward. A nautical theme was often present with the use of portholes and railing that looked like something you’d see on a cruise ship’s deck. This one was off-white stucco with turquoise metal windows and railing around a curving balcony along with glass bricks near the front door that had a porthole in it.
My heart was racing as I knocked on the turquoise door and it went absolute fucking wild when a hot woman appeared before my eyes. Long blonde hair, blue eyes that I swear sparkled with flecks of green, and perfectly straight, gleaming white teeth like ones seen in a toothpaste commercial. Ashton’s title for the client and her house were one hundred percent correct! And at that very moment, I decided that it was time to give back in honor of my father’s memory.
My job! My brother was not getting anywhere near the woman.
Claimed, I envisioned sliding her up and down on my erection—that was on the verge of making an appearance—after I closed the front door and took her up against it, hard and deep.
“I’m Daphne.” She extended her hand right into mine. “You must be Ashton.” She smiled and took her hand back to wave me in the door. I stood dumbfounded until I had enough air back in my lungs to enable me to speak up.
“Actually, I’m Caldwell Tate, his brother.” My feet finally moved forward to follow her inside. I was entering my fantasy house and yet I could not look beyond her shapely figure that included an ass that looked biteable…and spankable—something told me she had spunk.
“Tate & Sons…I guess the ‘s’ denotes that there are a few of you.” She giggled and began pointing to the floors, walls, and ceilings as we moved deeper into the house, but I was only catching a few words. Why couldn’t I focus on the architecture and forget about the beauty in need of work?
Oh, I wanted to take care of her needs for sure.
“So as you can plainly see, there are a lot of little things and a few big ones that need to be done to bring back the lost elements thanks to the last owner’s ex-husband and his own crazy ideas…revenge.” Finished speaking, she stood looking at me, apparently waiting for my input—I had nothing.
Stupidly, I put my foot in my mouth and said “no problem” to whatever she had asked for as we had concluded touring the house. “I can get the work done on the house…the restoration.”
“Perfect!” She nearly jumped up and down with excitement or enough that I enjoyed the bounce of her nice breasts. “When will you be able to start?”
“Immediately,” I answered, bringing my eyes back to hers. Shit! What was I saying? I had to look at my own schedule. And shouldn’t I be giving her an estimate for what she wanted done? Surely she had a budget…whatever it was I’d meet it. Did she mention one? Did I agree to it already?
What the hell, I’d pay for all of it…work for free even because I was pretty sure that I had been hired as I walked to the truck after promising to return the following day.