Page 17 of Strictly Pretend

Brooks

“You can wipe that smirk right off your face,” I tell my brother the next day. But of course his smile doesn’t waver, because this is Linc and he lives to mock me.

“I’m not smirking. I’m just smiling,” Linc says. He’s the third youngest of the seven of us, with me being the second youngest, and our baby sister as the last. Even after a few years I’m still getting used to seeing him as a family man. He met the love of his life at work. Tessa was a single mom of a teenager and Linc fell in love with her and now they’re married with two more kids.

Both of whom are here with him for lunch. Because if there’s one thing he loves as much as being a dad, it’s gossip.

Combine the two and he’s in heaven.

“But why are you smiling?” I ask him.

“Because that’s so typically you. You were supposed to go in and sweet talk the tenant. Instead you told her you’d fight to the death. Do you even have a single empathetic bone in your body?”

“I’m empathetic.” I frown. “But this is business.” I haven’t told him I knew Emma before yesterday. Mostly because I don’t want him knowing she’s the girl I kissed at that wedding.

Or that I can’t stop thinking about the way her mouth tasted that night. Christ, this is a mess.

“Business is about people,” he reminds me. “And trying not to piss them off.”

We’re sitting in a diner just outside my office. It’s one of those kid friendly ones with an enormous table in the center with crayons and print off coloring pages. His older child, Rowan is kneeling on a stool, a red crayon in his curled up palm, hitting the paper with the tip like he’s trying to stab something.

Baby Abigail is asleep in her car seat.

“I need some adult interaction,” he’d said on the phone that morning. “And as Rowan and Abigail’s uncle it’s your duty to give it to me.”

“Okay, let’s take this back to basics,” Linc says. “Rowan, don’t stab that little girl with the crayon.” He segues from talking to me to child-related crisis management without taking a breath. “Sorry.” He flashes a smile at the mom of said girl, who smiles back at him.

Ah, the old Salinger charm. It works for him every time.

“What basics?” I ask him, because he’s actually a really intuitive guy. And he’s an astute businessman when he wants to be.

“Tell me again. Why did you buy this building and what are your plans for it?”

“Well, Dad bought it on his way out. It was part of a lot with a hotel he wanted to purchase and we didn’t know what a fuck up the leases were.”

“And the hotel is good?” Linc prompts.

“Yep. It’s great.” We’re currently renovating it into a mixture of hotel rooms and long-term luxury apartments. “That part of the transaction was a straightforward decision.”

“But this other building? It’s not good?”

I take a sip of my coffee. “The bones are good. It’s an old building. Constructed in the 1920s. Brownstone. Pretty. In an up-and-coming area of Long Island.” Too far to commute daily to the city, but nowadays most people aren’t doing that, anyway. Part of me taking over at Salinger Estates was to change direction for us. Away from purely commercial real estate on the island of Manhattan toward a portfolio that has mixed use. We’re building up our hotel and residential buildings.

“What are your plans for it?” Linc asks me.

“Once it’s vacated, we’re renovating it from top to bottom.” The plans are already drawn up. “And then it will be mixed use residential and hotel.”

“No retail units?”

I wince. “Possibly. But high end ones.” Not the kind that are there right now. We’re looking at boutiques and expensive restaurants. I may not understand certain people but I know our target customers. They won’t want a dusty old bookshop and a dress shop that looks like it’s from the nineteen sixties.

“And the lease isn’t breakable?”

“Not unless they don’t pay rent for six months straight.” Our lawyers have been scouring the contract. The ones that are still with us, because at least one of them completely messed up when doing the due diligence on this purchase. They should have spotted the lease way before we passed any money over.

“Is that a possibility?” Linc asks, catching my eye. “Them not paying.”

“They’ve paid on time every month since they took on the lease. Since the granddaughter took over, she’s paid early.” For some reason, that makes me feel a strange sense of pride for her. I take out a dossier from my case and pass it over to him. I’ve read every single page.Twice. “We ran a background check on them,” I tell him. “There’s very little money there, but somehow there’s always enough to pay the rent.”

---