Page 48 of Devil in the Details

“Maybe not,” she replied at once. “It never hurts to have some contingencies, right?”

Another smile, one that was warm enough, even if it didn’t quite reach his eyes. Was he hoping his client would love the house so much that she would make an offer that very same day?

Well, Delia couldn’t blame him for that, not when it was the sort of outcome everyone involved in those sorts of transactions hoped for.

“Let’s drink to contingencies,” he said, and lifted his pint glass.

The customary clink, and then they both drank. It was a good margarita, not watered down the way so many of the bars here in town tended to do. By this point, she was used to it, and had the “good” bars on a mental list she updated as necessary, but even so, part of the reason why she drank wine so often when she went out was that then she wouldn’t have to worry about getting a wimpy cocktail.

Not much chance of that here, it seemed, so she was glad she’d already mentally resolved to have no more than two drinks tonight. True, it would be easy enough to take a cab or an Uber home if she thought she’d overindulged, but still, it just felt better to keep her wits about her when she was out with someone she barely knew.

“So…what made you go into real estate?” she asked, figuring that was a logical enough question for a first date. The information Pru had provided had already told Delia about where Aaron was from and where he’d gone to school, but obviously, those bare bones of facts hadn’t revealed anything about why he’d made the switch from managing restaurants to selling houses.

He smiled, one finger playing with the condensation on the outside of his tall glass. “A couple of different things. I was a restaurant manager for a while — I got my degree in business with a focus on the hospitality industry — but it was kind of grueling, and I knew I wanted to try something else.”

“Real estate can also be a bit overwhelming,” Delia responded, but he only chuckled.

“I suppose it’s a different kind of overwhelming,” he said. “Now I have more control over my schedule, even when you count the late night hand-holding when you’re trying to reassure a nervous client that their mortgage really is going to fund.”

Since Delia had been in that position more than once over the years, she smiled. “Yes, that part can be kind of rough. But I suppose it’s better than dealing with customers who keep sending their food back because their pasta is cold, or whatever.”

She’d meant that as a sort of throwaway line, but something in Aaron’s posture seemed to stiffen.

Was he wondering how she’d known that he’d worked for an Italian restaurant down in Bullhead City?

No, that was silly. Italian food was pretty much universally loved, so making an off-hand comment about pasta wasn’t that out of line.

But then he appeared to relax, saying, “Or letting their kids run wild in the restaurant, or dining and dashing, or — ” He stopped there, a rueful smile touching his lips. “Anyway, there are lots of things that can go wrong in a restaurant. I suppose you can say the same thing about a house or how it’s getting funded, but I still feel like it’s a lot more rewarding. You’re helping someone find their forever home. That’s pretty cool, don’t you think?”

Delia did. At the same time, though, she couldn’t help thinking that something about his reply had seemed almost too pat, as if he’d said what he thought she wanted to hear rather than what he was actually thinking.

Or she could be reading way too much into all of this. It had been a while since she’d been on a first date, so maybe she was just rusty and was over-analyzing everything because she couldn’t remember how to act in these sorts of situations.

She’d never felt awkward with Caleb, though, not when they’d first met, not even when they’d gotten into increasingly crazy circumstances.

Because she’d approached him as a client first and then as a friend. There hadn’t been the kind of expectations that inevitably floated around when you were out on a first date.

“I think it’s really rewarding,” she said, and hoped she didn’t sound like someone on a job interview…or maybe answering questions during a beauty pageant. “But then, I grew up around it. My mother’s been a real estate agent for, like, forever.”

“I know,” Aaron replied, and Delia lifted an eyebrow. He didn’t seem fazed, however, and added, “Your mom is kind of a legend in the Las Vegas real estate community. So of course I heard about her when I moved here and set up shop.”

Delia didn’t know about a “legend,” but she had to admit that her mother had been at this for nearly thirty years, which was sort of legendary in itself when you considered how many people came and went in the local real estate industry every year. And because she sold everything from multimillion-dollar penthouse condos to three-bedroom starter homes, she had an excellent idea of everything that was out there for a potential buyer, no matter what their budget might be.

Wherever this date ended up going, she knew she’d need to tell her mother about this part of it. Linda Dunne would be tickled pink to know that some people regarded her as a legend.

The nachos arrived then, so Delia and Aaron dug into them, exchanging snippets about the local real estate market, trading stories about the oddest things they’d ever seen.

“No kidding, I repped a guy who’d installed carpet on all the ceilings,” Aaron said as he reached for a loaded nacho, barely getting it into his mouth before some of the ground beef and olives and chunks of tomato began to slide right off.

“Why in the world would he do something like that?” Delia asked. She was getting to the bottom of her margarita and figured she should be okay to have another one. The hardest part would be flagging down the waiter, who seemed to have disappeared to another section of the bar.

“He said it was all about noise reduction,” Aaron replied, now that he’d finished chewing.

“Was the guy a musician or something?”

A shake of the head. “Nope. He just said he was sensitive to noise. But it ended up costing him a chunk, because the person who decided to buy the house asked for it to either be removed or to have a reduction in price to cover the cost of repairs.”

Which couldn’t have been cheap, since Delia didn’t even want to think what that kind of installation might have done to the ceiling drywall. “What did he decide to do?”

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