“What I want, Mr. Sterling,” she says in a measured tone, “is your assurance that this deal is going to be worth my time. I don’t take kindly to being sent on a fool’s errand, especially when it involves a significant investment of up-front capital. My capital.”
I set the macchiato in the center of her desk, then smooth the front of my dress shirt and straighten the lapels on my suit before settling into one of the leather chairs opposite her. Mom glances at the cup, then moves her calculating gaze up to mine. I give her my best charming grin, to which she responds by raising one eyebrow suspiciously.
Shit. So much for currying favor by way of a macchiato. Evidently my thoughtful, caffeinated gesture won’t get me out of whatever I’m here for.
She allows Mr. Sterling the courtesy of the last word before politely saying goodbye and then hanging up. I don’t know what deal she’s working on with Sterling, but I do know there’s little chance she allowed him the last word as some act of deference. In the end, Alessandra Rossi-Mason always has the final say.
She drops her cell phone on the desk, slips gracefully into her chair, and eyes the macchiato before taking a deep breath. I keep my mouth shut and do nothing but sit up straighter, waiting as she takes a sip of the coffee. She lets out a measured exhale and sets the small porcelain cup down on its saucer before fixing her attention on me.
“I need you to go to Colorado.”
It takes a moment for me to process her statement, but when I do, I say the first idiotic thing that comes to mind.
“Me?” I actually point at myself, as if she might need a reminder of whom she’s talking to. She answers by way of another raised eyebrow. My second reply sounds almost as dim-witted as the first. “Why?”
She takes another sip of her coffee. “While I’d like to respond by saying ‘Because I said so, topolino,’ I won’t do that to you. You’re a grown man, after all.”
I give in to a little eye roll. That claim would hold more water if she hadn’t just used an endearment from my childhood. Topolino means little mouse. The name suited me as a toddler, given my penchant for burrowing into small spaces—under beds, behind furniture, and inside storage cubbies—whenever I wanted to eat the cookies I’d absconded with.
After setting her cup aside again, she leafs through a stack of files on her desk, finally pulling one out and sliding it toward me.
“But the real answer to your question is: Tate Marshall.” She sighs. “He’s made a mess out of an acquisition there. I need you to go clean it up and close this deal.”
Ah, Tate Marshall. That explains a few things. He’s our resident slimeball. But for about ten percent of the clients we deal with, Tate has just the right amount of smarmy bravado and greasy charm to become their best friend, even after he’s purchased their property for twenty percent under market value, wrecked their boat, and fucked their wife. For the rest of the more lucid people we do business with, he makes them queasy and/or homicidal.
I happen to think that Tate and his macho bullshit are a waste of good business cards. Unfortunately, he also has thirty years’ worth of allies in the real estate industry, which means it’s better to have him working for us than against us.
That doesn’t explain why I’m now involved in his latest fuckup though. I reach for the file folder, although it’s strictly out of reflex. Mom put it there, so now I’m picking it up because that’s what she expects. I do my best to scan the pages inside as if I’m actually digesting what’s on them, but all I’m really doing is wondering if this is some sort of joke. If it isn’t, then I’m really confused.
My job at Mason Enterprises is simple: I’m the good-times guy. My business card says “Alec Mason, Vice President, Public Relations and Community Impact,” but that’s only because it sounds more professional than “Good-Times Cruise Director.”
My easygoing personality is a big part of why my job here is to make Mason Enterprises look good. It doesn’t hurt that I was also blessed in the looks department, enough that Houston magazine put me on their sexiest bachelor list for the past five years. Those lists don’t make any difference when it comes to how I live my life, but they are good for the PR side of our business—even if that once involved letting a photographer shoot pictures of me shirtless, holding a sledgehammer in one hand and a hard hat in the other.
When I’m not half-dressed between the pages of a magazine, my job entails making sure we throw the best fundraising galas, host the most exclusive grand openings, and charm the hell out of every business journalist between Houston and Dubai. And while my job probably seems like a lot of fluff and flash, our family’s reputation matters to me, which is why I’m the best person for this job.
That said, I’m also the worst person to do anything related to acquisitions. I’m the last guy we should send in to close a deal even when I have all the right college degrees to do the job. But despite that and how I practically grew up in my parents’ offices, I’m not made for the cutthroat dynamics of sales. All that drama isn’t my style—and everyone in this room knows that.
I close the folder and take a deep breath.
“But why? Tate is basically a jackass dressed up in a good suit, so this isn’t the first time he’s blown up a deal. There has to be someone on his team or a regional rep better suited to this. Hell, you could send Marissa. She knows more about how to get a deal to the table than I do.”
“Send me where?”
Mom glances toward the open doorway at the interruption. My sister strolls in, wearing a white T-shirt, jeans, and work boots, carrying a hard hat in one hand and a set of rolled-up site maps in the other. Our dad is a few paces behind her, dressed the same way, sans the hard hat. Instead, he has a tan Stetson perched on his head. Both of them have streaks of oil on their shirts and a sweaty, windblown look about them that indicates they’ve been out on a drilling site, probably since dawn.
Marissa tosses the site maps to Dad. He catches them in one hand while removing his hat and running a free hand through his graying blond hair. At nearly sixty, Dad still looks and behaves a lot like the college kid who would have made it to the NFL if a shoulder injury hadn’t destroyed his career. Instead, Byron “Buzz” Mason finished his geology degree, went to work in the oil fields, and then started his own small drilling company. Forty years later and he’s the head of a national conglomerate with drill sites from coast to coast.
He and Marissa are cut from the same cloth. The two of them love nothing more than tromping around in the oil fields, praying that the ground will give up what they’re betting it will. But Marissa is also next-level smart, with more engineering degrees than any one human being needs. She’s also an avid knitter, a CrossFit junkie, an expert trap shooter, and a collector of obscure, dorky vintage cartoon memorabilia. Basically, my sister is a hundred different high-performing people, all rolled into one.
Marissa flops into the chair next to mine and starts to loosen the laces on her work boots. Mom quietly mutters a few oaths in Italian when she spots the mud Marissa and my dad tracked into the office yet again.
Mom sighs. “No. I need Alec to go to Colorado. This doesn’t play to Marissa’s strengths. It requires more finesse. Someone who’s more…” She pauses, searching for the word she wants. “Agreeable. Being agreeable isn’t your forte, my dear.”