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Figured I’d be a damn fool if I didn’t at least try to give it to her.
Chapter 22
María’s house was lit up with the windows open at one end and music playing from inside, and I stopped the car in her driveway, just about tripping over myself getting out of the car and up to her front door. I could have called, but… this felt right.
I rapped hard against the wood door, and when nobody came to the door, I knocked again, calling her name. “María! It’s me.”
“London?” I heard her set something down inside, and then quick footsteps hurrying over to the door before she pulled it open. She looked like a completely different person in jeans and a t-shirt. “Madres, London, what are you doing here?”
I leaned on the doorframe. “Getting you to help. Leon Realty. I want the information—exactly who I should be contacting to take on Cameron’s case with their agency.”
She paused, looking me over, before she dropped her arms by her sides. “Then… you changed your mind.”
“Giving it one last try.”
María sighed with a tired smile, a hand to her forehead. “And… please elucidate me why you couldn’t just have called?”
“Would have been easier to shake me over the phone.”
She laughed. “Suppose I need to reckon with the sales monster that I helped create. The manager in charge of that division, her name’s Allison Craig. I’ll pass you her information and let her know you’re Cameron Mercier’s agent from Queen Pearl looking to do a seamless transfer. Well—bit of a seam by now, but from what I’ve heard, Mercier’s been a difficult client for them.”
“Been paying attention?”
María put her hands up. “I put a lot of myself into that case, London. I can’t just forget about it that easily.”
Finally, I let myself relax, just a little, leaning against the doorframe. “Thanks, María. Have you… you know, found out what you’re doing next?”
“Aside from watching soap operas and eating far too many tequeños?”
“I’m taking that part as a given, yes.”
“I’m not sure. A friend of mine was interested in having me on for a sales tech job, and who knows?” She sighed, slumping into herself. “Maybe just earning a nice, steady salary will be good for me. Not stress myself to the point of shriveling like a raisin.”
María working under somebody else for a steady, reliable 9-to-5 without her own stakes in ownership sounded like something I’d see right after pigs flew, and it looked like she felt the same way about herself. There was no point in me saying anything—she and I both already knew it full well—but I didn’t want to just sit on it. “You’re not thrilled about work like that.”
“Not exactly. But it’s better than being out of work.”
I took a long breath, drawing myself up higher. “You’ll be there again. Running something… a part of something you’ve made your own. I know you.”
She shrugged, looking away. “We’ll see about that… might be getting too old to start something like Queen Pearl. She was a long time in the making.”
“Hey, what’s the saying about planting a tree? The best time was twenty years ago…”
She gave me an odd smile, and after a second, she laughed. “You’ve really gone off the deep end.”
“Hey, look who’s talking.”
“That stings, hija.”
Turned out María wasn’t wasting any time. I stopped in for lunch with a former client I’d reached out to, just checking in on how things were going for her, and María’s email was already in my inbox by the time I was home, scrolling through it as Earl jumped onto my lap yowling plaintively as if he’d die if I went another minute without petting him.
I scanned the internet for Allison Craig, pulling up everything else I could, and once I was satisfied with my report, I sat on it while I sent a message off to Fitri, the woman from the conference who’d asked me for my contact, just curious. Asking her how things were going. When she not-so-subtly implied she could really use some sense of career coaching, I told her to meet me for coffee later in the week so we could review her professional goals.
It was only that evening that Allison called me, a bright smile in her voice. “London Sinclair?”
“The one and only. What can I do for you?”
“María Gonzalez put your name forward for Leon Realty. I’m a hiring manager here, Allison Craig. Do you have fifteen minutes to chat?”
