Cale also had another operation that aided with ID and other things immortals needed when they changed names and moved house.
He couldn’t tell Alex that, though, so said, “I deal with a special-needs clientele who doesn’t wish to utilize the usual transport available and travel with the masses.”
“Ah, rich folk who want special attention,” Alex said dryly. “We get a lot of those at my restaurant too.”
“Yes, I’m sure you do,” Cale murmured, and thought she would be surprised to know that a good many of them were immortals. According to Leigh and Marguerite, several of the family who had found their life mates and were eating again frequented La Bonne Vie and adored the food there. Leigh had been ecstatic about gaining access to the recipes for the sauces she’d been creating in his stead last night. Although she’d been quick to assure him that it wouldn’t prevent her and Lucian from frequenting the restaurant, claiming that food always tasted better when someone else cooked it.
“What goods do you transport?” she asked, drawing him from his thoughts.
Cale sighed to himself. This not-lying business could be quite tiresome. After taking a moment to debate, he continued vaguely, “These special clientele often have needs they wish filled that are not the usual items that can be bought at a grocery store.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re talking prostitutes here,” Alex said, tipping her head to look down at him with worry.
“No. Merely exotic beverages or unusual items,” he assured her with a laugh. You didn’t get more exotic than blood as a beverage, or the occasional coffin to sleep in for old-timers who disliked giving up the old ways. At least, they would certainly be exotic and unusual to mortals.
“Exotic beverages,” she murmured, shaking herhead. Alex then wrinkled her nose, and asked, “And you really enjoy the business end of things?”
Cale chuckled at her expression. “It is not all as tedious as you seem to find it. There is the challenge of resolving problems, the excitement of new projects, the—”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll take your word for it,” she interrupted with disgust. “Frankly, problem solving is not one of my strong suits … unless it’s a problem like reducing the acid content of a tomato-based sauce, or how to get a soufflé perfect. I’m better with food than people. People tend to piss me off.”
He glanced up at her with surprise. “But you own a restaurant. You must deal with people day in and day out.”
Alex waved that suggestion away. “I deal with my kitchen staff, who are intelligent and good at what they do. I don’t have to deal with whiny customers who order something they’ve never heard of like gazpacho, and then complain that it’s cold, not knowing that’s how it’s to be served.” She clucked with irritation. “And I certainly am not used to dealing with the ineptitude of salespeople who write down the wrong numbers and get completely inappropriate and unwanted goods sent to me like lime green carpet and paint, and screaming orange bathroom tiles.”
“Did that happen?” Cale asked with surprise.
Alex set her roller in the tray with a sigh, and then stretched her back and nodded. “Why do you think I’m painting? I hired men to do this, but by the time I gotback from the old restaurant tonight, the wrong paint had been delivered and the painters had almost finished painting the walls with it,” she explained with disgust and shook her head. “The walls looked like someone had puked green slime all over them.”
Cale glanced at the unpainted portion of wall and noted the green tint to the white primer they were covering. He ran his roller through the paint in the tray again and continued painting as he asked, “And the green carpet?”
“The same deal. I had a project manager then and was working at the other restaurant training the new crew. I stopped in here to check on things after closing and found the floor carpeted in a sea of pea green rather than the shade I had chosen. I nearly had a heart attack, and it was too late at night to do a damned thing about it. I spent most of the next morning making calls trying to get it straightened out.”
“Obviously you did,” Cale commented, glancing down at the dark carpet visible through the drop cloth.
Alex snorted. “Yeah. But it cost me. The project manager had signed for the carpet, and it couldn’t be returned because it had already been laid. Basically, I had to buy it all over again to get the right color installed.”
“Is that when you fired the project manager?” Cale asked, shifting his tray further to the right to continue painting.
“No,” Alex said on a sigh. “He said he’d forgotten what color it was I’d chosen and I hadn’t shown him. Ithought it was just a one-off. So I bit the bullet on that one, but then the same thing happened with the tiles for the bathroom and kitchens.”
“Screaming orange?” he asked, recalling her earlier words.
“Yes,” she said with displeasure. “And that time I had reminded him of what color the tiles should be that morning. I even called the store the night before delivery and made the store clerk read the numbers out to me to be sure they matched the ones on my receipt.”
“They did?” he asked.
“Oh yeah, so I went to work in the old restaurant sure everything would be fine, only to arrive to the orange tiles covering the kitchen and bathrooms that night.”
“The project manager allowed them to be installed?” Cale asked with a frown.
Alex snorted with disgust. “Turns out my project manager was a raging alcoholic and apparently off-site more than he was on. That day he arrived with a hangover, let the installers in, then left them to sign for the tiles and went to pass out in my office.” She shook her head with a sigh. “But I wasn’t about to bite the bullet this time. The tiles I had ordered were a ridiculously expensive Italian import. They cost as much as everything else put together.”
“What happened?” Cale asked.
Alex’s mouth twisted bitterly. “The head tile guy was smarter than the carpet installers. He thought the orange might be wrong and tried to wake up the project manager, but he was out cold. So he double-checked the tile numbers on the receipt against the numbers onthe boxes before accepting them, and the numbers were the same so he just decided I had bad taste and went ahead with it.”
She glanced down and smiled wryly when she saw Cale’s surprised expression. “I checked the numbers myself, and they were indeed the same. It seems the salesman had mistakenly reversed two numbers when writing them down, and the orange tiles were what were on the order … and I’d signed the damned thing without double-checking. I’d gotten exactly what I’d signed for.”
Cale winced and guessed, “The supplier wouldn’t replace them?”
Alex snorted and turned back to her work. “The orange ones had been installed. They had to be torn out and didn’t come out intact … and like I said, they were superexpensive. He wasn’t taking that kind of loss if he didn’t have to. Unfortunately, my signing the order with the wrong numbers got him off the hook. Legally, it was my fault. Buyer beware and all that.”
“And now the paint,” Cale murmured, frowning as he continued painting as well.
“Yes, well, after the tiles, I fired the project manager.” She scowled at the wall, and admitted, “It was too late though. Replacing the tiles, even with less expensive ones, pretty much wiped me out financially and I couldn’t afford to hire another manager. But I needed someone here to make sure there were no more errors like that. I certainly couldn’t afford another mistake, so I promoted Peter to head chef two weeks ago, so that I could be here at all times and double-check everything.”
“But?” Cale prompted, knowing something had gone wrong or they wouldn’t now be repainting the walls.
“I ran over to the old restaurant today to pick up some papers, and the paint showed up a little early. Plus, I was much longer than I intended to be thanks to Peter quitting and my having to find a replacement. By the time I left you at the restaurant and got back here, more than four hours had passed.” She shrugged unhappily. “In the meantime, the wrong paint had arrived and the men started painting.”
“Ah,” Cale breathed. He worked in silence for a minute, and then asked, “Are you having to swallow the expense for this mix-up as well?”
Alex shrugged unhappily. “Probably. The men signed for the paint. And it was used, or most of it was. The store manager said to bring back any paint that hadn’t been opened, which is one can,” she added dryly.
“I’m guessing you checked the receipt to be sure you’d ordered the right one this time?” he queried gently.
Alex nodded. “Both the billing receipt and the delivery invoice say White Sand.”
“And the cans?” Cale asked.
Alex stopped painting and glanced down at him with surprise. She obviously hadn’t thought to check the cans. Setting her roller in the tray, she hurried off the ladder and moved to the used and unopened cans of paint she’d set in the corner. Cale immediately set down his own roller and followed.
Pausing at her side, he quickly glanced over the cans. The lids to the used ones were off and lying ontheir tops on the drop cloth, but the full one still had its top on.
“That one says White Sand,” he pointed out, gesturing to the unopened can. His gaze slid to the half-used can. The lid had been replaced, but a smudge of green paint covered the label. Cale knelt and began returning the other lids to their cans. A few also had their label obscured, but two were readable, and said “White Sand.”
Cale shifted to take the unopened can in hand. Spotting the opener, he grabbed it, caught it under the lid and tore the top off the paint can. They stared at the thick green liquid revealed.
“It looks like someone mixed them wrong,” Cale said quietly. “The store will have to reimburse you for this.”
“And for the painter’s time,” she said, beaming at him as if he’d revealed a small fortune in gold dubloons in the can. Cale had no idea how much painters cost, but felt sure he hadn’t saved her that much money. He suspected she was just happy to have at least one reversal of fortune, one instance where she wasn’t having to bite the bullet and swallow the expense. She proved him right by saying, “Maybe this is a sign that my luck is changing. You may just be my good-luck charm, Cale. Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” Cale assured her, putting the lid back on the can. Straightening, he said, “I shall have it taken care of in the morning, if you like?”
Alex smiled wryly. “It would be worth it to hire you just to not have to deal with the store manager again.”
“Then hire me,” he said. When she hesitated, headded, “You could return to cooking and stop worrying about all of this.”
“You’re like the devil whispering in my ear with temptation,” she said with amusement.
“Good. Hire me,” he repeated firmly.
Alex hesitated. Finally, she frowned and shook her head. “You’re from France.”
Cale’s eyebrows shot up. “Is that a problem?”
“Well, only to the government,” she said dryly. “You won’t have a SIN number.”
“A sin number?” he asked with confusion.
“A Social Insurance Number,” she explained. “They call it a social security number in the States. I’m not sure what they call it in France, but you can’t work in Canada without a Canadian SIN card … or at least a work Visa or something.”
“I have a Social Insurance Number,” he lied. Arranging for such things for immortals who wished to relocate to Canada was one of the things his companies did.
“How can you have a Social Insurance Number? You’re from France,” she said with confusion.
“I have dual citizenship,” Cale said blandly, thinking he’d have to call his office and have his assistant arrange for a SIN card to be sent to him. Realizing she was staring at him wide-eyed, he added, “A good portion of my family lives here. It is why I came.”
She tilted her head, “Is Mortimer family?”
“No. He works for my uncle, though,” Cale said, and that just seemed to confuse her more.
“How can he work for your Uncle? Mortimer, Bricker, and Decker are in a band.”
Cale stiffened. No one had told him that Alex thought the men were in a band. Smiling a bit stiffly, he said, “Work is perhaps the wrong term, but my uncle books their … er … concerts and appearances. They play where he sends them.”
“Oh, you mean he’s their agent or manager or whatever,” Alex said nodding.
“Yes, that’s it. He is their manager,” Cale murmured, leading her back across the room. He picked up a roller, and then noting that she had finished painting the area where the ladder allowed her to reach, he took a moment to move the ladder for her.
“Thank you,” Alex said as she began to climb back up it.
“De rien,”
Cale murmured, wondering how Lucian would feel about his new cover.
“So you’re here visiting family,” Alex commented as she set back to work, and then gave a slight laugh. “I’m glad to hear it. I thought maybe you weren’t too bright, vacationing here during the coldest season.”
Cale smiled faintly, but said, “I’m sure there is a lot to do here in the winter.”
“Oh yeah,” she agreed with amusement. “Ski, snowmobile, or huddle inside by a warm fire until the cold passes. I tend to prefer the latter.”
“You don’t like to ski?” he asked, wondering what she did for fun, or if she even took the time to do anything fun. He suspected Alex was a workaholic. Successful people usually were.
“I’ve never been,” Alex admitted with a shrug. “I’ve always wanted to try, but never really had the opportunity or time … Snowmobiling sounds like it might be fun too, but I’ve never tried that either.”
Cale was thinking that perhaps he should arrange an outing for her to try both activities, when she said, “I’m sorry about roping you into work tonight when you’re here to visit family.”
“Not at all,” he said at once. “I merely would have been sitting in my hotel tonight anyway.” It wasn’t true of course. Cale probably would have been having a powwow with Marguerite and Lucian, and most likely Sam and Mortimer, trying to figure out a different way to get close to Alex. In fact, her bad luck had actually been his good fortune … even if he couldn’t cook.
“I doubt you would have been sitting in a hotel,” Alex said at once. “Your family is probably eager to see you and …” She paused and quit painting to frown down at him. “Working for me would prevent your seeing them.”