Chapter 1 #3
“You two losers ever going to stop flirting and hook up?” the early-twentysomething punk who loitered in the marina park called
with a sneer.
They saw him almost every day and had decided he was a failure-to-launch Zoomer from one of the nearby McMansions who spent
his days terrorizing San Francisco with his heckling while his elderly parents, who’d had him too late in life to engage with
his youth, believed he was either at school or at a job all day. Jason had written his entire backstory.
“You ever going to get a job, Robbie?” Jason shot back.
They’d learned his name the day Jason snapped back at him with a made-up name—Bryce, if Dell remembered correctly—and Robbie fell straight into his trap by correcting him with his real name.
Robbie shot up his skinny middle finger with a painted black nail and cast them a furious scowl.
He was a jerk, but he was harmless.
“Youths,” Jason muttered just as Dell’s phone rang.
She fished it out of her spandex pocket, where it was stored like a rectangular tumor adhered to her thigh.
Rodgers Realty was calling her. She almost didn’t answer, knowing a frantic conversation waited on the other end.
“Hello?”
“Baby sis!” one of her brothers shouted at her. Or perhaps it was both of them; she couldn’t separate the tones of their voices
with a scalpel. The rush of a car in traffic carried over the phone.
“I’m not a baby; you’re only three years older than me,” she reminded them, whining like a baby.
She heard a dual chuckle on their end.
Alexander and Andrew—Alex and Andy—were twins so identical, Dell basically had one big brother, twice. She felt it entirely
unfair they’d gotten those names and she’d gotten Verdella. A just world would have them named Aloysius and Alastair, or something
equally archaic, but their parents could be uniquely cruel. Anyway, they ran the family real estate business and were basically
the Property Brothers, except instead of one being a hunky carpenter and the other a suave designer, they were both real estate
developers. They routinely called her on speakerphone from the car while they zipped around the Bay doing business, and she
only pretended to know who she was talking to.
“How’s the hottest new chef in the city doing?” Andy or Alex asked. Probably Alex.
Dell’s cheeks warmed, but she took the compliment. “Just fine, thanks.”
“Excellent. Listen, Dad wants to make sure you had his lawyer look at the final draft of your prenup.”
She smacked her hand to her forehead and grimaced.
She hadn’t talked to her father or their lawyer in over a week.
“Sure did!” she said in a bold-faced lie.
There’d been revisions made by both sides, and she meant to have a final sign-off, but it had fallen through the cracks of the restaurant, the book, the volunteering, the wedding.
Surely Mariana had mentioned it, and she’d forgotten to act.
She mentally added it to her to-do list but seriously doubted she’d fit in a legal review before they met to sign the prenup that afternoon.
“Great. Need all the ducks in a row,” Alex said. Or maybe Andy. The other one quacked.
“Working on it.”
“Speaking of work, we are on our way to the development site in China Basin. Zoning-permit day,” Andy said. For sure it was
Andy.
“Sounds thrilling.”
Dell had zero interest in real estate. Other than remodeling her kitchen and picking out the location for Pergo, she’d never
paid attention. Her childhood had been steeped in zoning permits and escrows and closing costs and all sorts of other terms
that made her eyes glaze over and her brain shut off when her father or brothers mentioned them. She left that world to them.
It was all she could do to act as a voting member of the Rodgers Realty’s board, and even then, she just did what her brothers
instructed her to.
“It will be,” Alex said. Definitely Alex. “We’re a month out from breaking ground on the new complex and . . .”
Dell tuned out his update on the apartments they were investing in building on the southeast shore of the peninsula. It would
cost them a few million but rake in several times more with property taxes and other things she’d stopped keeping track of.
“That’s great, Alex,” she said after he’d rattled on for a solid minute.
“What? This is Andy.” His frown was audible.
“Sorry. I gotta go. Almost back home from my jog.”
“Ah. Say hi to Jason for us,” one of them said, knowing her routine.
“They say hi,” she said to Jason as they approached the grassy area where they always stopped to stretch.
Jason waved in response and bent over to touch his toes.
“He says hi back.”
“Lunch today?” Alex asked. She was sure it was Alex.
“I can’t. Sorry. I’m going to lunch with Tommy and his mom.”
One of them snorted. “Maybe we should join. The mayor’s office hasn’t signed off on these . . .”
She tuned out when he launched into another brain-melting explanation about permits.
When they finally hung up, she was halfway done with stretching. She spent the rest of her cooldown mentally preparing for
the rest of her busy day.