The Big Oh

Chapter 1

The bell above the door chimed as Cami was putting the finishing touches on the Valentine's display in the front window. A cool trickle of air swept in with the man who entered the adult toy store.

He was better dressed than the typical Sex on the Beach customer.

His charcoal gray business suit looked tailored from the way it clung to his broad shoulders and narrow hips.

His black hair was closely cropped and his skin was a warm medium brown.

Like his briefcase, his shoes were polished to a sheen, unscuffed.

He was clean shaven, with only a dusting darkness at his jaw that hinted toward five o’clock shadow that hadn’t arrived yet.

His mouth had a hint of curve at the corners that made her certain its natural state was a smile. One full of ardent promise.

When his eyes fell on her, that smile lit up his face, warming gray eyes that could have easily been icy.

Interestingly, a thin line of black extended from his left pupil to the outer edge of his iris.

It was an oddly specific and sudden shift in his eye color, and only in his left eye.

She might not have even noticed if he hadn’t been looking right at her. It was beautiful.

He took her in leisurely, from the finger-brushed blonde hair to the graphic t-shirt and jeans that comprised the non-uniform of a Sex on the Beach employee. Then his eyes stuttered on her hands.

She was holding a butt plug that looked like a Fabergé egg.

She wanted to die.

Cami hastily stuffed the plug onto a shelf with a bunch of teddy bears that held hearts with dirty words embroidered on them, and then turned toward him. She grasped her hands in front of her, clinging to her own fingers as though literally getting a grip on herself.

“How can I help you?” Her voice was remarkably even, despite the heat in her cheeks.

This was ridiculous. She’d worked in an adult toy store for over six months now. She could talk to attractive men while holding sex toys.

Just to prove it, she reached out and snagged the first item her fingers found—a riding crop.

The sweet release of death could not come soon enough.

The man watched her little display with a bemused smile and raised an eyebrow at the crop. “If I give the wrong answer, are you going to hit me?”

“Oh. No!” Cami shoved the riding crop away onto some random shelf for her coworker, Tristan, to find later, and the man laughed.

It was a delightful sound, and it almost made her feel better about the blush that was quickly turning her into a tomato.

“I’m so sorry.” She covered her face with her hands, just to give herself a moment, and then shook her hands out like that would shake off whatever was making her act this way.

She tried again: “Hi. I’m Cami. It is not my first day working here and I am a complete professional. Is there something I can help you find?”

“Hi, Cami,” he said. “I’m Des.” His mouth twitched as though he were trying not to laugh at her, but he switched his briefcase to his left hand, and held his right out for her to shake.

She did. His hand enveloped hers in warmth that chased away the coolness of the California winter.

If she held on for just a beat too long, it was the warmth. That’s all.

He withdrew his hand smoothly, then tucked it into the pocket of his slacks. “I’m actually hoping to speak with the owner. Lenore Seaver?”

Her eyes narrowed on him. Anybody who called Lenny Lenore had clearly never met her before.

And no one had ever come into the store asking for the owner without a resume in hand. Something told her Des wasn’t here looking for a job.

He looked about thirty, but had a sheen of polish about him that precluded retail work.

On occasion, people dressed up to drop off resumes, hoping to make a good first impression, but Des was on a whole other level.

He looked like he made more in an hour than she made in a week.

He oozed the confidence of someone who’d never needed a part-time retail job.

So what did he want?

“I’ll let her know you’re here,” Cami said finally. Des winked at her as she turned and made her way to the back office.

The door was closed. She rapped on it twice with her knuckle.

“Yeah?” Lenny called, which was as close to an invitation as Cami would get.

She poked her head around the door and found Lenny seated at her desk.

She was a heavyset woman in her late sixties, but you couldn’t tell her age from her aura.

She exuded youth. Her hair was salt-and-pepper and shoulder-length on one side, buzzed on the other.

As usual, she wore a brightly-colored poncho that smelled faintly of marijuana. She was tapping away at her phone.

“Are you playing Candy Crush again?”

“How dare you, Camille,” Lenny countered flatly. “I would never Crush Candies during work hours.” She turned her phone for Cami to see. “I’m on Tinder.”

“Oh! Good God.” Cami threw a hand up to block the screen from her view, but too late to save herself from a shirtless Baby Boomer. “There’s someone here to see you. I don’t think it’s that guy, though.”

“Pity,” Lenny sighed, and only then looked away from her phone as she plunked it onto her paper-covered desktop. “Is he hot, at least?”

Cami hesitated. Then, “Yes.”

“Great! Send him in.”

“You don’t even know what he wants,” she protested, but Lenny hand-waved her concerns away.

“Who cares? I could use a little eye candy. Now, get back to work, you free-loader.”

Lenny had been the first person she’d met in Santa Monica.

Cami had arrived here last June with only a backpack of dirty clothes to her name and an address scribbled on a scrap of paper.

It was the last known address of the father she’d never met.

Instead of her father, she’d found Lenny, who was warm and inviting and funny, and didn’t have any family of her own.

It took Lenny all of half an hour to offer Cami a job at Sex on the Beach and heavily discounted rent on the apartment above the store.

Cami rolled her eyes, but there was a fond smile on her face as she returned to the sales floor. She really needed to have a discussion with Lenny about office propriety.

Des had set his briefcase down so that he could use both hands to lift an unboxed dildo for inspection.

It was one of the pieces that got the most ogling from customers—over a foot long, it was hefty and thick, and its orange-to-gold gradient was particularly eye-catching.

It was scaly and tentacle-esque in a way that Cami found intimidating, but most of her customers didn’t seem to feel the same way.

“Should I box that up for you?”

He startled and whirled around, long fingers curled around the dildo just under its ribbed head. Then, once his bright eyes landed on her, he relaxed, laughing. “No, thank you. I was just admiring the heft of it. I could take this home and swap it out for my barbells on arm day.”

She nodded along. “I don’t think anyone is prepared for the amount of muscle mass you’d gain.”

He replaced the dildo where he’d found it, scooped up his briefcase, and looked to her expectantly. “So? Is Ms. Seaver available to see me?”

The formality of his speech when she’d just found him fondling a tentacle dildo made it difficult for Cami to keep a straight face.

“She is. Right this way, please.” She led him the whole fifteen feet to the back office and its badly painted white door, a piece of paper taped to it that said OFFICE in pink highlighter.

Then she gestured for Des to enter, and, when he did, closed the door after him, though not quickly enough to miss hearing Lenny exclaim, “Ooh, you are pretty!”

She’d have to talk to Lenny about laying off the Tinder at work.

As the door swung shut behind him, Des offered his hand to Lenore Seaver to shake.

She high-fived him instead and then gestured toward what could only be described as a pouf, crocheted out of the same hideous seventies yarn that made so many Grandma blankets in decades past. He eyed it skeptically, but lowered onto it, shifting a bit to find a comfortable position.

He set his briefcase on the floor next to him.

“Thank you for agreeing to see me, Ms. Seaver,” he started.

She waved a hand dismissively. “It’s Lenny. What can I do for you, Mr. Fancy Pants?”

A smirk threatened at the corners of his mouth that he did his best to smother.

“It’s Desmond Fancy Pants, but you can call me Des.

” He withdrew a business card from his pocket and passed it to her over the chaotic mess of her desk.

On top of a mouse pad and next to a mouse that wasn’t connected to anything sat a coffee-stained mug that proclaimed in bold allcaps: WELL, WELL, WELL, IF IT ISN’T THE CONSEQUENCES OF MY OWN ACTIONS. “Also, I think you’re very pretty too.”

His mind’s eye flashed back to the blonde at the front counter. Cami. Startlingly pretty, with the cutest little mid-western accent.

But not why he was here.

“Sadly, we can never be,” Lenny told him, flicking his business card at a pile of—was that her laundry?

“I’ve sworn to never love another after the death of my dearly departed Joey.

” She sighed dramatically, then leaned back in her chair and interlaced her fingers over her stomach.

“Well, that was fun. What can I do for you, Des?”

He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. This was the part he was good at. Really good at. This was why Gabriel had approached him when he’d wanted to start Calogistics in the first place.

“You’ve been running this store for about five years, is that right?”

Lenny nodded, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. That wasn’t a promising sign. When he’d approached the pizza place a couple of doors down, the owner had lit up like a July 4th drone show at the prospect of offloading his business.

“I’m with a company called Calogistics. We’ve been retained by Adrien International Holdings to facilitate the purchase of this entire plaza, including Sex on the Beach.”

Lenny remained silent, studying him as he lifted his briefcase onto his lap, clicked it open, and pulled out the offer letter he and Gabriel had drafted for Adrien.

This time, when he passed it across to her she didn’t immediately fling it at her pile of sweatpants.

Maybe she was more interested than he’d thought.

“This is just the initial offer. We are open to negotiation, of course, and you’re welcome to have an attorney look it over. We’ll be approaching each of the store owners in Paragon Plaza with similar offers. Mr. Adrien is very interested in purchasing the property as a whole.”

“Why?” she asked, glancing at him before picking up the reading glasses that dangled from a gaudy string thing around her neck and sliding them on her nose. She skimmed over the offer letter.

“Mr. Adrien hasn’t disclosed his plans for development, but properties like this are usually turned into apartments or hotels. Probably something along those lines.”

Adrien was a big shot businessman based out of Toronto and didn’t like to explain himself to the people he hired, even when they were the ones spending his money.

Truthfully, Des found him insufferable, but the bonus he’d been promised if he closed this deal was more than his father earned in an entire year.

If he pulled this off, and he knew he could, his dad could never again insinuate that his career was a waste of time and potential.

Lenny finished reading over the letter and laid it on the desk. Then, removing her glasses, she leveled her gaze on him. “It’s a nice offer, but it’s a no. Sorry.”

That was fine. A knee-jerk no wasn’t the end of the road. Change scared people.

“Can I ask what’s holding you back? Most people your age are already happily retired.”

“Maybe I don’t want to retire,” she snarked, glancing at the door over Des’s shoulder. “Maybe I want to work every day until the day I die.”

He paused, and then asked doubtfully, “Do you?”

Lenny sighed and pushed up out of her chair, then shuffled around her desk toward the door. He was being dismissed.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, shaking her head. “But don’t you mention any of this to Cami. I don’t need her worrying her job is going to up and disappear because some self-important Canadian got the urge to bulldoze something.”

It wasn’t the first time Des had been asked to keep the details of his business under wraps. Usually, it was because an owner’s family was expecting to inherit, or something along those lines, but if Lenny didn’t want her employees knowing there was an offer on the table, that was fine with him.

“I won’t say anything. But I will be in touch,” he said as he stood.

Lenny pulled the door open and strode out into the storefront, and he followed.

“It was very nice to meet you, Lenny.” He nodded toward Cami as she turned away from what appeared to be a textbook of some kind. “And you, Cami.” He let a genuine smile spread across his face, though it was maybe a little flirtier than he’d intended. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again soon.”

“Oh?” she asked, cocking her head to the side in curiosity. The straw-blonde of her ponytail swished with the movement, and he wondered if it was as silky soft as it looked.

“Des sells sex toys,” Lenny proclaimed, and he very nearly did a double take.

“Uh,” he said.

“Briefcase full of double-ended dildos! Wouldn’t you know it? He’s leaving now, though. Goodbye, Des, thanks for stopping by and hocking your wares.” Lenny shoved him gently at the door, and Des laughed, obediently taking a few steps in that direction.

“We’ll talk later, Lenny. You ladies have a wonderful afternoon.” He nodded his goodbye and pushed out of the store with Cami’s melodic bye! ringing in his ears.