A Trade For Good

A Trade
for Good

“You’ve reached Sera, P.D., Melle,
Charlie, Em, and Buddy. We’re either away from the phone or just
can’t talk! Please leave your name and number, and who knows, we
might just call you back!” Jeff slammed the phone. That was
the fifth time today he had gotten that same stupid message with
three voices and a dog’s bark on cue. The guy owed him over ten
grand for a landscaping job that hadn’t even started, but the
building materials delivered, were still waiting for
payment.

Sera heard the phone and yelled out to
the kids, “Don’t answer that!” She held her breath, waiting. This
time he didn’t leave a message.

How on earth was she going to pay for
landscaping when she could be losing the house any day
now?

Six months from now, she might pay
closer attention to that sexy voice on the phone, but after Peter
left her and the kids, she had no time for any man unless he
did dishes, took out the trash, or paid off her many
debts.

Then a thought occurred to
her: what if she provided a service to him to work off the money
she owed? He sounded
nice
enough.

A Trade
for Good

~ Book I ~

A Trade for Good
Series

By

Bria Daly

Also by Bria
Daly

A Trade for Good
Series

A Trade for Good ~ Book I

A Trade for Better ~ Book II

A Trade for Keeps ~ Book III

Coming Soon…

Cajun Menagerie

Another Go at Romance ~ A Family
Series

20 Questions

Sisters Out of Rank

A Tail in Two Cities ~ A children’s
story

COPYRIGHT
© 2014 by Bria N. Daly

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of the book may
be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means,
including information storage and retrieval systems, without
permission in writing by the author or publisher, except by a
reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

The Characters and events in this book are
fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is
coincidental and not intended by the author.

Cover Art by Ali Matthews

TO My Family

There’s no trading when it comes
to you; you’re perfect just the way you are!

Chapter 1

Jeff looked at his watch. It was nine
in the morning; a decent time to call. He dialed the number from
memory and prepared himself for another busy signal. Yesterday he
had called the same number three times with no success.

The message left on his voice mail
yesterday morning had sounded almost hysterical, but not in a funny
way. It was apparently from a very distressed client, and in the
landscaping business that usually meant a broken pipe, some shifty
sprinklers, an industrious gopher, or a neighboring tree dispute.
The problem was, he had no idea who the caller was!

“You’ve reached 555-1347.” Jeff got
out of his chair and quickly shuffled through the papers on his
desk to recheck the number he had scribbled on his desk calendar.
The number was the same, but he found it hard to believe he had
finally gotten through.

The voices he heard on the recording
were those of a couple of kids, followed by the happy trill voice
of someone who had to have been the children's mother, topped off
by some barking in the end. It would have been cute had he been in
the mood.

The person who called had left a
number, but no name, and unfortunately, Jeff’s files weren’t set up
to do a reverse phone lookup, so he had no idea what this was all
about.

“Hi, this is Jeff Mason, from Mason
Landscaping. You left a message yesterday? Please call me back… Uh,
thank you.”

He pulled out a cardboard box from the
top right drawer of his desk, and sifted through the paper pile.
Most of them were letters or bills strewn about haphazardly, others
were mysteriously hidden under the guise of a generic white
envelope.

He looked at the task ahead and tapped
his fingers on the desk. On second thought, he decided to put the
box back into the drawer. He didn’t feel like paying bills,
answering letters, or looking at ads. Maybe he’d throw them in
another box and take them home to work on later. He was tired, and
in a rut. It was work, work, work, but he didn’t feel he was
getting ahead; he was just working.

He looked down at the scribbled phone
number he had called ten minutes earlier and decided to give it
another go.

“You’ve reached 555-1347. Sera, P.D.,
Melle, Charlie, Em, and Buddy are either away from the phone or
just don’t want to talk! Please leave your name and number, and who
knows, we might just call you back!” Jeff slammed the phone.
That was the second time today he had gotten that same stupid
message with the three voices and a dog’s bark on cue.

Damn it! He didn’t even know why he
was fixated on calling the woman back. It could have been the
desperation in the voice he heard on the other end when she left a
message the morning before, or it could also be that he had no idea
what it was about and not knowing bothered him. Not that it should,
if she had a pipe leaking in her yard, she should have at least
left her name…

Wait a
minute
, Jeff looked at the phone number
again and decided to check on something. Out came another cardboard
box, this time from the bottom drawer of his desk, with a card file
of current jobs; or would it be upcoming jobs?

555-1347… there it
is!
He looked at the number again,
yup
, he even remembered
the guy. Some stuck up asshole who argued over every penny, and
even with the discounted rate, nothing was good enough for
him.

Apparently this guy,
something
Sinclair?
Had asked around and finally ended up calling Mason
Landscaping when he heard they were really good, and their prices
were super low.

Jeff had to do something about that.
One thing was staying competitive, but the other was giving stuff
away. The only thing that kept him from raising prices right now
was that he had to re-do all financials, forms, and advertising to
show the changes. And with all of the work he had on his plate,
that prospect was way too daunting.

The guy owed him over ten grand for a
landscaping job that was supposed to have started over a month ago,
with paid building materials in storage, waiting for payment
to start digging.

Mystery over, Jeff picked up the phone
and hit redial.

Sera heard the phone from
the other room and yelled out to the kids,
“Don’t answer that!”

She waited, making sure the phone
wasn’t picked up and hoping it was a call from Ed McMahon, calling
to say she had won a gazillion dollars from the Publishers Clearing
House. Then again, it would most likely be better news for Ed
McMahon if he called, since he had died a few years
back.

No message?
No such luck… the recording on the machine was
probably still going.

“…
If Buddy could answer, he
would,”
the message continued as a resonant
dog’s bark seemed to respond on cue, “
but
since he can’t, and we're not home, please leave a message after
the beep and we'll be sure to call you back.”

What followed were good-byes from
mother, children, and some howling at the end, with the help of the
dog.

Holding her breath and wondering if it
was the landscape guy, she wondered how on earth she was going to
pay for landscaping when she might soon be losing the
house.

Jeff sat back down and
adjusted himself in his seat, waiting for the recording to end, and
ready to leave a message.
Beep…

“Hi, this is Jeff Mason, from Mason
Landscaping, I tried calling several times but..." the phone
clicked.

“Hel... sorry, hello?” The person on
the other end was out of breath when she answered and didn’t sound
anything like the happy voice he had heard on the recording the day
before.

Jeff picked up a paper, looked at it,
and turned it over to write on the blank side just in case he had
to take notes. He was about to introduce himself once again, when
she saved him the trouble.

“Hey, I’m so glad you called, I was
beginning to wonder if I’d hear from you,” she laughed, when a loud
screeching sound erupted in the background making it very hard for
Jeff to hear what followed. The voice had apparently continued, who
knew how with all the background screeching, when he heard the
voice conclude, “So I’m really sorry, but we’ll have to cancel the
job.”

What the…
At this Jeff jumped to his feet and would have
pounced on her had she been anywhere near.

“What do you mean cancel the job? I’ve
got thirty bags of cement, 500 hundred pounds of river rock, and a
top of the line sprinkler system on order, not to mention a truck
with the best quality soil available ready, and waiting, to be
delivered to your address." He knew he was yelling into the phone,
but he didn't care.

"There is no
we’ll just have to cancel
,
we have a contract," and with a slight hesitation he added "and
it's binding!”

The screech in the background
continued and the woman raised her voice higher to be heard, but
also to match his.

“Mr. Mason, weren't you
listening? You can do the job if you’d like, but I can’t pay you.
You'll just be wasting your time and
your
money.”

Jeff started tossing papers all over
his desk and shuffling through them as quickly as he could. This
was one of those times when he thought clearing his desk and filing
things, might actually help his business.

There was a system to the chaos that
surrounded him. Basically, his filing system followed the
unorthodox order of what job came first. The top papers being jobs
that were in progress, and the papers that came next were jobs
coming up, and on the bottom he had a small stack of estimates and
potential clients. The system had worked for him for the past seven
years and he prided himself in being the only one who could
understand it.

There.
He found the contract he was looking for and pulled it out
from under at least two dozen very similar contracts. He looked at
one of the contracts and realized it was a few months old; he never
said the system was perfect.

A key fell out of the stack as he was
pulling out the contract and he gave it a quick glance, not knowing
what it was for, and put it in his pant pocket. Looking at the
contract more closely he scratched off a stain on the letterhead
that looked suspiciously like mustard and continued.

“Listen lady, I hate to be the bearer
of bad news, but there’s a contract with everything I just told you
on it and I’m looking at it right now." Jeff stretched his long
legs and rubbed his eyes with the free hand that was not holding
onto the phone.

"It says the job starts on June 15 –
that’s ...,” he sat up straighter, “that’s tomorrow. Yup, June 15.
It also says the estimated cost of materials plus labor is
$14,000.00, which by the way is a bargain, so whoever negotiated
this contract got a great deal for you. A great bargain.” He added
lowering his voice and once again thinking he had to do something
about his pricing.

“Listen, and I don't mean to be rude,"
the woman interjected, "but I don’t care what it says. The bottom
line is I don’t have any money to pay you so you'll just have to
cancel.”

“No,
you
listen; I don't care what your
finances are. From the moment you signed this, you have a legal
obligation. It says it on the bottom of the page. That’s the only
reason we buy the materials ahead of time for you. We use our money
in advance, but by buying more, we get the best rates. Everyone
wins, that is if I get paid for the money I already put
out."