Jaimie: Fire and Ice Read online

  “You know, Mr. Castelianos, those condos are hot! If you wanted to sell…”

  “I don’t,” Zach had said politely.

  “But if you did… We are an experienced firm, Mr. Castelianos. We’d be delighted to handle your listing.”

  “I’m sure,” Zach had said. “But I’m not interested.”

  Not clearly enough, apparently. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so quick to hit delete. Maybe he should have sent a reply, something slightly more specific, like No effing way.

  A horn beeped and he swung toward the sound.

  There it was. His red Porsche Carrera, pulling up next to him in the pickup lane, looking like the thoroughbred it was in the long line of black limos, nondescript sedans and house-in-the-country SUVs.

  He opened the door, tossed his duffel bag into what passed for the back seat, went around to the driver’s side as John stepped out.

  The men shook hands.

  “Welcome home, sir.”

  “Thanks.” Zach dug in his rear pocket, took out a neatly folded wad of bills. “And thanks for bringing the car.”

  John nodded gravely and accepted the money. One thousand dollars.

  He’d been with Zach for three years; he knew the ritual, knew better than to try to wave away the cash.

  “It’s my lucky charm,” his boss had said, the first time John had made the attempt.

  John was ex-army. Not ex-Special Forces—which he figured his employer had been even though Zach had never said so—but he’d seen his share of things. He understood the value of lucky charms. His boss’s involved this exchange, the Porsche Carrera for a taxi whenever he got back from what he invariably referred to as “some business to take care of,” the extravagant tip, his employer with a look in his green eyes that hinted at things better left unsaid.

  “You can take the night off.”

  John nodded again. That, too, was part of the ritual. Far as he could tell, his employer never went anywhere the day or the evening he returned from these infrequent trips. Often, the next morning, there’d be take-out boxes in the trash from a little Thai restaurant, maybe an empty bottle of Johnny Walker Blue or Macallan 25, though he’d never seen his boss drunk.

  Come to think of it, he’d never seen him out of control at all. No highs. No lows. Just, on rare occasions, an almost frightening stillness.

  “John?”

  “Yes. Thank you, Mr. Castelianos, sir.”

  “It’s Zach.”

  “Yessir.”

  Zach rolled his eyes. John flashed a rueful smile.

  “I’ll see you in the morning. Sir. I mean, Zach.”

  Zach nodded. His hands were already wrapped around the steering wheel; his foot hovered over the clutch. His impatience to set the car free was almost palpable.

  “Watch out for the cops, boss.”

  Both men grinned. Then Zach checked for traffic and the Porsche shot away from the curb. He shifted the gears, throttled down to a more reasonable speed and headed for the Van Wyck Expressway.

  Damn!

  Traffic was always bad on the roads leading into Manhattan from Long Island, but it seemed worse than usual this evening. Cars were lined up as if the Expressway were a giant parking lot.

  He got off after a couple of exits, wove through a maze of side roads until he hit an area filled with factories and empty streets. He shifted, put his foot down on the gas pedal and took the Porsche to a speed that was still well below what he knew it was capable of doing. The momentary burst of speed, however abbreviated, had been what he needed.

  He could feel some of the tension ease from his muscles. The long flight, its cramped confines, and the rush of adrenaline and endorphins that had accompanied him the past ten days had all taken their toll.

  He needed a change. Something different. A couple of weeks of doing nothing.

  He needed more than that. He needed to believe in something again.

  He had, once upon a time. He’d believed in his country, right or wrong. In his heart, he still did. The problem was that the people who made the decisions that ruled his country seemed increasingly intent on making them for their own gain.

  Talk about philosophizing…

  Zach eased his foot off the gas and pulled into the debris-littered parking lot of an abandoned factory building. He turned off the engine and scrubbed his hands over his face.

  Something wasn’t working in his life. You didn’t have to be a man who gazed into your own navel to realize that.

  He had a lot of money. He had a home in the sky. He had medals and ribbons and commendations. He accomplished things people said were important, even vital. And…

  And there it was, that nagging question he’d been trying to avoid.

  So what?

  He’d seen a shrink one time. A couple of times, actually, after a particularly intense operation he’d led when he was still in Special Ops. His commander had thought it might be a good idea.

  The shrink had listened to him talk. Tried to listen, anyway, but Zach had not talked. Not about anything more than his lack of desire to do so.

  “I’m not someone who spills his guts,” he’d said. “I don’t unload on others.”

  “Is that what you think connecting with another person is?” the shrink had said. “Unloading? Spilling your guts?”

  Zach had shrugged.

  “I work out my own problems. I always have.”

  “What about things that aren’t problems? Do you ever share your feelings?”

  “I’m not the touchy-feely type.”

  “How do you get along with your family? Are you close?”

  “No.”

  “Just ‘no’?”

  Another shrug. “I haven’t seen my old man in years. I used to call my mother once in a while, but she’s gone. There’s nobody else.”

  “Is there a woman in your life?”

  “What is this, an episode of Dr. Phil?”

  “I take it that’s a no.”

  “I have lots of women in my life, Doc. And I fail to see what any of this has to do with my military service.”

  “It has to do with you, Zach. Your emotional removal from yourself.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “It means you keep everything bottled inside. It means you need to learn that showing emotion isn’t a sign of weakness. It means that loneliness can be destructive to your soul.”

  “Christ! What are you, Doc, a chaplain in disguise?”

  That time, it was the shrink who’d shrugged.

  “I’m using the word soul advisedly. If you prefer, I can talk about your psyche.”

  Zach had risen to his feet.

  “What we can talk about is not wasting each other’s time after today,” he’d said, holding out his hand. “I’m assuming you’ll tell my commander that I can get back to work ASAP.”

  The doctor had risen, too. The men shook hands.

  “I’ll tell him that,” he’d said, “but I’m telling you that if you don’t let down your defenses pretty damn soon, you’re going to reach a point at which you can’t.”

  Zach had smiled. “‘Desperado,’” he’d said. “An old Eagles classic, Doc. Sounds as if you wrote the lyrics.”

  And why was he remembering all that crap now?

  Zach sat up straight, started the Porsche and headed back toward the highway.

  Home. A long hot shower. A healthy belt of first-rate Scotch that he’d down, neat, on the wraparound terrace while he lay sprawled in an oversized lounger and watched the sky go from pale gray to black, or as close to black as it ever got in Manhattan.

  The glow from thousands upon thousands of lights all but wiped out the night sky.

  Growing up, he’d lived in places where the sky was like a vast black silk canopy shot through with stars. Kuwait. Saudi Arabia. Alaska. He’d done missions in the mountain passes of Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan.

  There’d been times those beautiful night skies were the only thing that was bea
utiful.

  Back to Philosophy 101.

  Zach slowed his speed as he approached the entrance ramp for the Van Wyck. It looked a little better than it had half an hour ago. He merged the Porsche into traffic, then got it all the way to 45 miles per hour.

  Pathetic, but an improvement.

  With luck, he’d be home in less than half an hour. He’d get that shower, the whisky, the city sprawled beneath him.

  He felt the last bit of tension slip away.

  It was good to be home.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Jaimie Wilde wished to heaven she were home instead of here, in New York City, trapped in a taxi halfway between Lexington and Park Avenues.

  “Come on,” she said under her breath, “come on. Move!”

  God! She was talking to the traffic.

  Totally illogical to talk to traffic, but nothing about today was logical, and that was the real problem. Well, that and the fact that her taxi hadn’t moved more than a couple of feet in the last five minutes.

  She was going to be late. For a meeting. Or maybe not. Maybe there wasn’t going to be a meeting. She’d left two messages on Zacharias Castelianos’s voice mail over the last week and he hadn’t returned either one. But since her boss had assured her that Castelianos wanted the meeting ASAP, it was only logical to proceed as if there was a meeting.

  At least, she kept telling herself it was logical.

  Otherwise, Roger’s client—his almost client—would surely have called back and said there’d be no meeting.

  Roger insisted that was just the way some clients were, that they had sort of a passive-aggressive attitude toward selling a house or a co-op or, in this case a condo, and who was she to argue with him? She was new to the game; she’d joined Stafford and Bengs only a few months ago.

  More to the point, Roger Bengs was her boss. Her mentor. Taking his advice was logical, and Jaimie was nothing if not logical.

  Always.

  She’d learned the importance of logic in childhood. Be consistent. Be practical. Rely on common sense, not emotion, and avoid disappointment. It was her sisters who used to get upset when their father promised to make it home for Christmas or Thanksgiving or birthdays and didn’t. Not her. By the time Jaimie was six or seven, she knew better.

  Logic had become her guiding philosophy.

  Not lately, a cool voice inside her whispered, or you wouldn’t still be trying to deal with Steven.

  Jaimie blanked out the thought. Forget Steven. Forget everything but now.

  Now was more than enough to worry about.

  She was in New York for a meeting. An appointment. Jeez, she thought, rolling her eyes, what did it matter what she called it? She was here to meet with someone and she was still blocks away from where she was supposed to be in less than half an hour.

  And she could not, must not, would not be late. This was too big a chance to blow.

  Make this meeting, convince the owner of a sickeningly expensive condo that only Stafford and Bengs were capable of marketing it properly, and everything would change. She’d go from being just another newbie agent to being the one who’d landed a huge catch.

  Sure, she’d land it for Roger Bengs, her boss, not for herself, but that would still be huge.

  Better still, she’d pocket a neat sum.

  Roger had promised her .01 % of his commission if she landed the listing and he sold the condo.

  Jaimie was good at math. She’d majored in accounting, had been an accountant until very recently, but you didn’t need an accountant to tell you that 1/100th percent of Roger’s commission would be a very tidy sum. Technically and legally, she’d probably be entitled to more than that, but she was willing to trade the financial benefit for the experience and for getting into Roger’s good graces.

  Assuming any of this happened at all.

  Jaimie took a deep breath.

  She had to think positively. Forget the gaps in what he’d told her. Forget how he’d danced away from all her questions, starting with the big one.

  Had the mega-rich, mega-mysterious Zacharias Castelianos actually made a commitment to list his condo with Stafford and Bengs?

  Roger had given her the kind of smile a school principal might give a child who’d asked why being quiet in the hall was a good thing.

  “Excellent question, Jaimie. The answer is that it’s never a commitment until a client signs on the dotted line.”

  And why would Castelianos want to deal with an agent from the firm’s D.C. office when it had branches in Manhattan?

  “I have explained that,” Bengs had said, impatiently. “We met at a function here in Washington. We had a chat about New York real estate and he said he’d thought about selling, but finding the right Realtor was never easy.”

  “But—”

  “But what?” her boss had said, his tone sharpening. “Should I have said, ‘Listen, Mr. Castelianos, you want to sell your condo, I’ll have someone in our New York office contact you?’” He’d looked at her, his expression going from irritated to avuncular. “You’re new to this business, young woman, but surely you know how it works. A client needs to feel comfortable with the person handling the sale of a valuable asset. This man feels comfortable with me. Is that so hard to understand?”

  No. It wasn’t. She did understand that. Things always went more smoothly if client and agent got along, which led to the inevitable question about why she was taking this meeting instead of her boss.

  So she’d asked.

  “If Mr. Castelianos is comfortable with you, why ask me to do this instead of doing it yourself?

  That had rated a one-beat pause.

  “I don’t know Manhattan as well as you. I’ve lived in the D.C. area most of my life.”

  And Jaimie had lived most of hers in Texas.

  She’d visited New York a few times. And for a year or so now, her sister Emily had lived there, but that didn’t constitute “knowing” a place.

  When she’d pressed Bengs, he’d grown annoyed.

  “The Castelianos place will market at fifty, sixty mill, easy. Maybe rich girls can turn their noses up at the possibility of making a commission of twenty, twenty-five thousand bucks, but you can bet your bottom dollar that there are agents in this office who’d jump at this kind of opportunity.”

  That, of course, had done it.

  Jaimie wasn’t rich. Her family was, but that wasn’t the same thing at all. She had moved east in part to get away from the rich kid thing that had followed her all her life. Her sisters had left Texas for similar reasons. They all wanted to make it on their own. She loved her family, loved El Sueño, the enormous ranch that had come down to the Wildes through endless generations, but she wanted to make her own mark on the world, just as her brothers had done and her sisters were now doing.

  Her boss had handed her the chance.

  Which was why this meeting absolutely had to go well.

  Jaimie sighed and smoothed down the skirt of her white silk suit.

  She’d dressed carefully. A classic suit. A simple blouse. Medium-height black pumps that she’d exchanged at the last minute for stilettos. She was going to New York, not to Chevy Chase. She wanted the look of urban success, not suburban wealth. Her hair would be the problem. It was long and it had a will of its own, never quite straight, never quite curly, just masses of blond waves that refused to be tamed when the weather was hot and humid.

  This morning she’d eyed it with grim purpose, then wound it around her hand and secured it in a businesslike topknot with a dozen bobby pins.

  It wasn’t quite so businesslike now. She could feel wispy curls at her temples and neck. Her suit wasn’t holding up too well, either. Silk wrinkled when exposed to damp. How come she hadn’t thought of that?

  She looked down, took a couple of useless swipes at the creases in her skirt, tried to tug it down because the slick fabric had ridden up her thighs; the phony leather seat felt clammy straight through her pantyhose.

  Dammit.r />
  This had to go well, but she could feel it shaping up to be a disaster. Not just how she looked or that she was running late. The entire thing. There was a bad feel to it.

  She should have told Roger what he could do with his offer.

  Except, that wouldn’t have been logical. Not when she needed the boost her burgeoning career would get if Zacharias Castelianos signed.

  Her new career was exciting but so far, it hadn’t taken her very far.

  She had a degree in finance and an MBA in accounting. Numbers, with their intricate simplicity, had always intrigued her. The accounting firm she’d worked for had sent her to do audits for a few realty firms. Gradually, she’d found herself seeing that real estate, especially if she eventually got a broker’s license and worked for an elite firm, could be a challenging and lucrative career.

  She’d spent weeks trying to make a decision. A logical decision. Her sisters had teased her. Emily had said she’d make the choice based on statistics and spreadsheets; Lissa had added sequential analysis to the list.

  Well, how else to make such a big change in her life?

  So, yes, she’d created spreadsheets. She’d amassed statistics. She’d run data backwards and forwards. Then she’d approached one of the Realtors she’d met through work.

  Two lunches later, she’d handed in her notice and joined Stafford and Bengs, Realtors. Since then, she’d taken her licensing exam and passed it, passed an ethics exam, and become a Realtor.

  Only one problem.

  She’d been a terrific accountant, but so far, she was a washout as a Realtor.

  It turned out that her love of all things logical worked against her.

  She’d show up at a prospective client’s to take a listing and when that client said his place was worth, say, four million, Jaimie would point out why it wasn’t. Another client would say he needed four bedrooms and she’d hear herself saying that actually, three would probably be preferable.

  “You’re dealing with people,” Roger Bengs would tell her, “not numbers. Numbers have to add up. People never do.”