Page 10 of Sweet Chaos
I forced a tight smile and nodded.
“Why should I sell to you? I have two good offers on the table.”
I hadn’t heard about a second offer. Didn’t matter though. I had no intention of entering a bidding war. “It’s time to make some changes in this town. Shake things up.”
“It ain’t the Wild West, kid. Not anymore. And you sure as hell ain’t Wyatt Earp.”
“Dylan St. Clair.” I extended my hand to him across the table. He stared at it for a beat before he shook it with a warm, firm grip. A proper handshake, thank fuck.
“I know who you are. You’re the kid who built his empire app by app. Don’t use ‘em myself. Kids today can’t do anything without consulting their damn cell phones. Not a fan of technology.”
Funny how he kept calling me a kid. I’d be twenty-seven in June and hadn’t felt like a kid in longer than I could remember. “Don’t knock it until you try it.”
He snorted with disgust. “If I want to go somewhere, I read a map. If I want food, I cook it. If I want the news, I read a goddamn newspaper.”
I didn’t mention that it was already old news by the time he read it. He was obviously set in his ways, and I wasn’t here to educate him on the benefits of technology.
“How many apps have you got now?”
“A few.” In the span of five years, I’d built and launched forty-three apps. Fitness apps, food delivery, airport transfers, interior design, medical cannabis, gaming apps, you name it, if there was a market or demand for it, I tapped into it. Building apps wasn’t rocket science. I’d figured out how to reverse engineer a successful app and applied it to the ones I developed. Apps had made me a multi-millionaire.
“How’s Rae?” he asked, doing a one-eighty on this conversation.
I shouldn’t be surprised that he knew my mother. Cal frequented The Last Stand, a dive bar on the fringes of town that my mother used to hang out at when she lived here. I dragged her ass home from there plenty of times when she was too drunk to drive and hadn’t managed to land a man to warm her bed that night. Maybe he had slept with her. Wonder how much she charged him.
“Last I heard, she was alive and well.”
“So it’s like that, is it?” He clucked his tongue and shook his head.
As if I hadn’t done enough to help her. As if I was the heartless bastard who had kicked his poor mother to the curb and walked away without a backward glance.
The bell over the door chimed and I heard the sound of her laughter before I saw her. I glanced to my left as the waitress led her and the ex-boyfriend (obviously, she hadn’t heeded my advice and dumped the asshole) to a booth across from us. A beanie covered her head, a tangled mess of blonde hair cascaded to the small of her back. It was ocean damp and water dripped from the ends, leaving a wet patch on the back of her oversized plaid flannel. My eyes roamed down her ripped jeans to the Vans on her feet, painted a riot of colors in a geometric design. Her handiwork, no doubt. She slid into the seat facing the door and I chuckled soundlessly at the words painted on her T-shirt: I’m A Little Fucking Ray Of Sunshine.
Damn right she was. The whole damn place lit up when she walked in the door. Her skin had a peachy glow like it did after a good surfing session. She looked downright edible.
Baby sister was all grown up. Small and ripe, curvy in all the right places, with pillow-soft lips so fuckable it should be illegal. She looked like the love child of Deborah Harry and Mick Jagger.
When Scarlett caught me watching, her baby blues widened, and she tugged her bottom lip between her teeth before she hid behind a laminated menu.
I spared a glance at the ex with his shaggy blond hair and droopy stoner eyes. Did she have sex with Shaggy Doo last night after I dropped her off? Why should I care?
I returned my attention to Cal, remembering the reason I was here. Which was not to get distracted by Scarlett Woods.
Cal took a sip of his coffee and didn’t comment on my sudden interest in the booth across from us.
“You know, I grew up in this town. Back then, it was all cowboys, surfers, and Marines. I’ve been all three. A bunch of hell-raisers we were. This was back before everything got so built-up and expensive.” He lowered his voice so as not to be overheard. “Back before guys like Simon Woods and John Hart came along and turned this town into some kind of Disneyland. Nicaragua, kid, that’s where it’s at now. Central America is like the Wild West.”
We pondered that for a minute although I had zero interest in heading to Central America and conquering new territory. Despite all the shit Remy and I had gone through in this town, I loved Costa del Rey. Had loved it from the minute we rolled into town when me and Remy were sixteen. Unlike any of the places we’d lived in the past, it was a wealthy town. A surfer’s paradise with big fat waves, killer sunsets, and a laidback, chilled-out vibe I envied in others but would never in a million years achieve.
“Why do you want to get into real estate?”
“It’s time to diversify my portfolio.”
“Fancy words. Why do you want to buy this property off me?”
“Because I can.”
He nodded slowly like that made sense to him. “And I guess there was a time not so long ago when nobody thought you’d amount to anything. So you feel like you’ve got something to prove.”
