Chapter 1
Chapter One
Savannah…
“Aggravating prick,” I muttered under my breath, and set my phone aside on the linen by the sparkling cutlery.
I hated dealing with Corbett Prescott. The douchebag was old money – born with a silver spoon in his mouth, with a line going all the way back to some of the first settlers and maybe some Vanderbilt blood built in.
Whatever it was about his lineage, it was all the worst parts of the American aristocracy flowing through his veins.
Arrogant, insufferable, brash, and cocky.
I hated working across from him on deals, but alas…
it’s where we were on the Duffy listing.
My clients were the homeowners. His were looking to buy, and they were picking on things to the nth degree, stalling literally everything at every turn, to the point it was just turning into one big quagmire.
Ugh… it was only around a 900k listing, and he was making me work for it.
I sighed and checked my watch. It was gold and had diamond chips at the 12, 3, 6, and 9.
A gift from my grandfather to my grandmother on their wedding day. I flipped over the face, and on the back was inscribed, never enough… as in there would never be enough time spent with her.
I hoped that someday someone would think of me that way, but I wasn’t counting on it.
I heaved a sigh and was just about to consider this meeting dead on arrival when a harried man, led by the ma?tre d’, arrived at the table.
“I am so sorry I’m late,” he rushed out with a clipped, foreign accent, as the ma?tre d’ held out his chair for him and he slid into it. I gave the ma?tre d’ a nod, and he snapped a curt bow and strode back to the front of the house.
Yes, this place was that kind of place.
“No trouble at all, sugar.” I put on my award-winning smile, as much as it pained me to do so.
“Please,” he said. “I mean it. I do apologize. I was held at a rather volatile board meeting. Anyway, I’m Hal Lindstrom. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.” He held out his hand.
I gave it a light, girly shake and said, “Savannah Davenport, and the pleasure is all mine.” I laid my southern accent on thick. Hal here was from Sweden or Norway or some such country. He was looking for that slice of Americana that was in the movies.
He’d likely watched Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil one too many times, and had been enamored by the whole southern hospitality and weird sort of vibe that was Savannah in the 1980s and early 1990s…
but I was twenty-nine. Born in nineteen ninety-five, so all that sort of culture was lost on me.
Savannah had settled some. All the women who’d made it a wild place back then were in their fifties and their sixties now.
Some were pushing into their seventies. There was a reason that Slow-vanna was what she was called today.
The city had mellowed considerably in the intervening years, but there was no big Hollywood blockbuster film out there to reflect that nowadays.
It was all the ballad of ornery old Jim Williams and the lore of the Mercer-Williams house.
It was still murder, and the mayhem of characters like the Lady Chablis – God rest her soul… who’d passed in two thousand sixteen.
It felt like the wild vibe of Savannah’s rebellious era had gone to rest with her, and now it was a slower, calmer, more sedate place to be – a lovely walk down historic streets, past old and historic homes, with a sense of nostalgia steeping in the sultry air; permeating everything.
But Hal wasn’t here for that. He was here for the Savannah of at least thirty years ago, and that was fine by me.
He was looking for the perfect property to steep himself in that Williams kind of vibe, filling it with antiques and a maximalist style, which was, at least, the vibe I had gotten from his emails.
At first, I had wondered why anyone would wish to immigrate to the United States under the current political landscape. But then he took his seat across from me, and I realized he was exactly the perfect archetype that the people in charge wanted around these parts now.
Blonde-haired and blue-eyed, and as the Lady Chablis would say… ‘stinkin’ motherfuckin’ rich.’
It was quickly obvious as he described what he wanted to me that I could likely add insufferable to that category as well.
I thought about it as he droned on and on about the kinds of property he was seeking, that he would have been much better off with Corbett Prescott as his buyer’s agent.
But Corbett could and would pry the commission I was looking at from the sale of the type of property Hal was looking for out of my cold, dead hands.
Still, this was the game.
Only one person out here knew what I was doing, and that was my assistant, who was older than me! Fabian was pushing forty, but with his skincare routine and generally bubbly personality, he might as well be twenty to my almost thirty.
I could picture him at home in his light, sheer silk robe with its copious mounds of ostrich feathers surrounding the collar and cuffs, a facemask on his face, and fingers dripping with jeweled rings as he texted me back; his manicure clicking against the screen of his phone as he took notes on a legal pad nearby.
I relayed the information, and he would have a series of properties to review by morning that were up for grabs and fitting Hal’s whims and desires.
I would find Hal what he wanted at a better price than he had ever dreamed of.
It was the Savvy Savannah way.
I just hoped it would be enough.