Home Sweet Home Read online

  She was too shocked to yank her hand away, and by the time she recovered enough to do anything at all, he had already lowered her hand, winked at her, smiled his too-bright smile and said, “Charmed, I'm sure, Ms. Harrison.”

  The act was so outside the realm of what Lauren would have expected to happen in a business situation that it left her momentarily speechless. She was grateful that she maintained enough composure to keep her jaw from dropping, but nevertheless. Lauren was rarely rendered speechless, and she didn't relish it.

  Rather than charming her, as he was clearly attempting to do, the greeting had only ratcheted up her irritation with the man, who clearly felt that the rules of professionalism and decorum applied to him about as much as the rules of punctuality.

  Ben turned his gaze momentarily to the cavernous living room, at the far end of which was the crown jewel element of the house – an entire wall of unbroken floor to ceiling glass windows with a spectacular view of the pine-covered valley which was home to the town of Hope Falls. The view beyond that window was so picturesque, so perfect, that at times it didn't seem real.

  The backdrop of pine trees dotted here and there by brilliantly colored aspens. Running through the valley below, from one end to the other, was a twisting, meandering stream. At the very center of the valley lay the town of Hope Falls, which from Karina's window looked like the toy town that would come with a train set.

  Lauren never tired of that view, no matter how many times she saw it, and she actually envied Ben for a moment, if only because he was lucky enough to be laying eyes on it for the first time.

  He turned his attention back to the women, “This is a beautiful home. But I have to say – the thing that makes it the most unique, in my experience, is that with homes of this caliber, it's exceedingly rare to find one that comes with an agent whose beauty actually exceeds that of the property.”

  He flashed them his brilliant, movie star smile and turned to move further into the living room.

  Even though he hadn't stayed around to witness it, Lauren was supremely aggravated that he had – again – rendered her speechless. What was it with this guy? She had read his bio online. He wasn't just some 'pretty face' they brought in to host – he was an actual real estate agent! She didn't see how it would be possible that he didn't understand how unprofessional his behavior was. The only explanation was that he didn't care.

  --- ~ ---

  Ben wandered over to the gigantic wall of windows to take in the view, and slow his breathing. Dear God. That blonde was a knockout. In the truest sense of the word – she had knocked the wind right out of his lungs, and apparently knocked the sense right out of his head.

  She was elegant, sophisticated, beautiful beyond belief. When he had been a boy, growing up in circumstances that could in the kindest possible terms be described as 'humble,' he had looked at women like her – moneyed, graceful – and they had represented to him a life that he knew he would have to claw and fight his way into if he were ever going to be allowed to have it.

  And he had fought his way up the ladder of success. At 18 years old, he had taken a hard, realistic look at what his assets were. What did he have to offer? He settled fairly quickly on two things: one, he was not bad to look at, and two, he had formidable powers of persuasion.

  This led him equally quickly to realize what career would make the best use of those assets – sales. He had started out selling vacuum cleaners door to door. That had been a miserable experience, but it had taught him valuable lessons about human nature that served him well in his career to this day. It had taught him the single most valuable skill that any sales person must possess, whether the product was a hundred dollar vacuum cleaner or a million dollar home – the ability to read a person and instinctively know what approach would get them to close the deal.

  Some people liked facts and figures and stats – hard numbers made them feel safe and secure to execute a buying decision. Some people were all about emotion – they needed to feel right about making the purchase. Some people needed to be charmed. Some people needed to be sympathized with. Some people needed a hard sell.

  It wasn't about what approach the person liked...that was the mistake made by unsuccessful sales people, they went with the approach that their prospect felt comfortable with. No. A sale was never about the person's comfort. It was about pushing them OUT of their comfort zone, and getting the yes. It was all about closing the deal.

  And yet, it was a delicate balance. You make them feel too comfortable with you, and they then feel comfortable telling you no. You make them feel too uncomfortable with you, and they abandon the transaction. It was all about instinct, all about the right approach.

  When it came to intuition about what approach a prospect or a colleague needed in a given situation to achieve a given outcome, there was no one better. Ben Stevens was the master.

  So why was he screwing it up so royally with Lauren Harrison?

  God, he could see that the 'charming' approach was falling completely flat with her. Instinctively, he sensed that what Lauren would respond best to was no 'approach' at all. He could feel that she was an excellent judge of sincerity and artifice, and that in order to connect with her, he should stop trying to sell himself and just BE himself.

  He knew that. In his head. Yet, he was powerless to stop putting on the act with her. Things flew out of his mouth, and he felt as if he had no power whatsoever to filter them. He was watching himself fail at his most basic skill – human connection. It was like he was standing outside himself, not able to control his own words and actions.

  Why was he behaving this way around this woman?

  The better question was...why the hell couldn't he stop?

  --- ~ ---

  Lauren marched over to where Ben stood gazing out the windows and said briskly, “Mr. Stevens, I only have a limited amount of time to discuss the details of the property with you before filming begins. Shall we get started?”

  Ben turned to her, flashing that too-brilliant smile again. It put Lauren's teeth on edge.

  “Mr. Stevens is my father,” he said jovially, “Please, call me Ben. And may I call you Lauren?”

  “If you like,” she replied, careful to keep all traces of the irritation she felt at his larger- than-life persona out of her voice, “Now, shall we get started?”

  “Oh, Lauren,” he said cheerfully, “All the pertinent details of the home are written out for me on cue cards. Why would I want to waste the opportunity to talk with a beautiful woman such as yourself by discussing the dry topic of architecture?”

  “I'm sorry, then why am I even here, if not to educate you on the details of the property?” Lauren said in the chill, distant tone that only her closest friends knew signaled the fact that she was absolutely livid, “Can someone please explain that to me?”

  Ben winked at her, “I assume they let you come because they figured you'd want to meet me.”

  Lauren raised one eyebrow. The nerve of him! She would never give him the satisfaction of screaming or yelling at him, however. That was not in her character. Rather, she simply replied with a small half-smile, “Well, I assure you that 'they' could not have been more wrong on that count. Now, I do have appointments this afternoon, and as I consider lateness to be the height of unprofessional behavior, I will leave you to your cue cards.”

  With that, she spun on her heel and glided gracefully out of the living room, across the entryway, and through the front door. Again, she would never give him the satisfaction of storming out, even if every cell in her muscles was burning with the desire to stomp out to her car like a toddler throwing a tantrum. God, that would feel sweet! But it simply wasn't in her nature to indulge in public displays. She would have to take what satisfaction she could from the small sarcastic barb she had leveled at him on her way out.

  True, it was innocuous enough that it probably hadn't even registered as a blip on his radar. Still, at least she hadn't merely bowed to his “star” attitude and fa
ded away into the background like one of his acolytes. At least, whether he had heard it or not, she had told him – albeit, in her classy, roundabout way – precisely what she thought about him and the way that he represented the profession that she loved.

  She climbed into her Mercedes, turned it on, and placed her hands on the wheel, surprised to find that they were actually trembling with anger. She shook her head. This was so unlike her! Why was Ben Stevens, of all people, having such an unprecedented effect on her? Yes, he was a jerk – but Lauren had met some prize jerks in her time. None of them had engendered frustration this instant and profound in her.

  No, Ben Stevens was in a class all by himself. He might actually be the single most infuriating man she had ever met! The way he thought he was the center of the universe. The way treated everyone else in the room like he was the sun and they were merely planets in his orbit. The way he just assumed that his looks and charm were enough to make any woman – Lauren included – fall to giggly, starstruck pieces.

  Yes, Lauren decided, he is arrogant and entitled and completely and totally aggravating. He behaves unprofessionally, and treats others as if they don't exist. He is the human embodiment of every single trait that I find distasteful in another person, let alone in a man.

  But this caused her to ponder an enigma which was a little more disturbing. Yes, there was one thing about the encounter that truly bothered her above all else, one question that nagged at her and wouldn't leave her alone.

  Why was the back of her hand still tingling where he had kissed it?

  --- ~ ---

  Her eyes on the spectacular view of the sun setting over mountain peaks that she was treated to outside her office window, Lauren leaned back in her oversized maroon leather office chair and relaxed. It was the first moment she had taken to just breathe all day long. And long was exactly the right word for it, too – her alarm had gone off at the ungodly hour of 4:15 am and she hadn't stopped moving since.

  The morning had been a test of her will and her patience, to say the least. The afternoon had gone by in a blur, but had been infinitely more productive, thank God. She had shown some multi-million dollar properties to a couple who had flown in from Dallas to look for a vacation home in the area.

  She smirked. 'See that, Ben?' she asked him sarcastically in her mind, 'That's what we real estate agents like to call real work!'

  The couple had been quite picky about certain features of the homes they looked at, features they hadn't specified any preferences about before Lauren had taken them out. This didn't give her even a moment's pause, however. Clients who didn't know their own minds until they got into houses and started having visceral reactions to various features were the norm, not the exception.

  In fact, Lauren would bet that if you did a scientific study on the correlation between what factors a client said was important to them before they started house hunting and what factors they actually ended up basing their final decision on, the result would be that there was almost no relationship whatsoever.

  Lauren understood this. It made sense, actually. People walked into a real estate agent's office with a list of practical items in mind – square footage, number of bedrooms, etc. But when you got them out into the field and they started actually walking through houses, it became more about if they could picture themselves living there. Did the property feel like their home? And most of the time that emotional connection with a property had little to do with square footage or number of bedrooms.

  So the thing to do, in Lauren's experience, was listen to them carefully as they talked to each other and to her while touring the homes. But the key was not to listen to their words, so much – that was a rookie mistake. No, you had to learn to read between the lines. Read their body language, their facial expressions, the looks they exchanged between them which spoke volumes. Those were the cues that would tell a skilled agent what features their clients were really looking for in a home. What features would make them walk into a house and feel that they already lived there. And Lauren was not just skilled. She was brilliant.

  She thought back over her afternoon with the couple from Dallas. Lauren saw within the first five minutes of touring the very first home that what they had described to her over the phone as being on both their 'wish list' and 'deal-breaker list' had almost no relationship whatsoever with what was on their 'subconscious gut-check list.'

  She made a split second decision to scrap all of the homes that she had planned for the afternoon and spent a quick ten minutes setting up three new showings. She hadn't even had to check the MLS on her smart phone. Lauren knew the up-to-the-day inventory like the back of her hand – and not just the bare-bones specs of the houses, either, but the intangibles. The feeling that each home resonated with.

  As it turned out, they hadn't even had to tour all three. Before they had even gone upstairs in the first property on Lauren's revised list, the couple had fallen in love and put in an offer. It was a stellar offer, too. Two percent above asking price, and not contingent on anything, such as selling another property. The older man and his somewhat younger wife had fallen in love with the prestigious home, felt they absolutely had to have it, and money was no object.

  It was in moments like these that Lauren absolutely loved her job. LOVED it. A lot of her colleagues stressed out about the instability of the market, the long hours, the uncertainty of a deal falling through, the time and money that you ended up investing in deals that went nowhere – none of these things mattered to Lauren when compared to the high she felt when she closed a deal. God, the rush! It was exhilarating! It was unlike anything else she'd ever felt.

  Except maybe...sex.

  Yes. Sex. GOOD sex, anyway. That ran a close second.

  She sighed and rolled her head from side to side, trying to stretch out a knot. Unfortunately, she thought to herself with regret, it's been close to a year since I've been able to actively analyze that particular comparison. Yep. Almost a year since she'd had any kind of action in that area of her life, and even then, it had been mediocre at best.

  She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples with her fingertips. That had to be why she could still feel Ben's phantom lips on her hand. Why the cocky compliments that he had spoken to her kept running through her mind.

  She was lonely. That was the only reasonable explanation for her insane response to Ben Stevens' poorly constructed advances.

  Lauren had not been involved with anyone since she had experienced an acrimonious break-up with her (then) boss back in New York. Things had gotten very ugly when he attempted to blackmail her into continuing their affair by damaging her reputation and making it impossible for her to work for any other broker in the city.

  Lauren had left the ugly situation in New York and returned home to Hope Falls to help her childhood friend Amanda deal with the loss of her father, Parker Jacobs. Once she was reunited with Amanda and the other two members of the Fabulous Four, Sam and Karina, Lauren had realized that this was the life that she wanted. New York had served its purpose in her life, but that chapter was well and truly over. Hope Falls was where her heart lay.

  She had not left New York with her tail between her legs, though. That just wasn't her style. No, Jim Prescott had definitely gotten his just deserts.

  Being involved with Jim so intimately had made her privy to all sorts of juicy skeletons that he had carefully locked away in his closet. Luckily, Lauren – never one to be comfortable with an imbalance of power – had employed the foresight and protected herself by obtaining the metaphorical key to that closet. When threats were made against her, she had turned that key over to the authorities in the form of proof of all his dirty doings – among them fraud, embezzlement, and money laundering.

  When things went sideways, did Lauren get flustered or upset, get her feelings hurt or crushed? Hell, no! Lauren didn't function that way. She didn't get emotionally involved when it came to relationships. It wasn't that she was cold-hearted. She felt affection for the per
son. But she just didn't get terribly invested in them is all. That way, if she were betrayed, she never got devastated.

  She got even.

  Oh, not in a revenge, how-could-you-do-this-to-me, even the score, make him pay sort of way.

  No, it was more tit-for-tat. A righting of the scales of justice. It boiled down to this: if you wanted to step into the ring with Lauren, you needed to know that the odds were even that you would lose, and even if you didn't – you were sure as hell going to leave the ring beaten and bloody.

  She had moved on from her relationship with Jim and honestly held no ill will for the man. He looked out for #1. She understood that completely. His only mistake had been underestimating Lauren's ability to do the same.

  Lauren knew she didn't miss Jim, her feelings on that score were crystal clear. Her current loneliness did not muddy them in the least. However, she did miss being with someone. The closeness, the camaraderie. The sense of home, the spark of flirting.

  The sex.

  Yep. She missed having a man.

  Watching her three best friends fall madly in love over the course of the past few months hadn't helped in that department.

  Not that she wanted exactly what they had. Lauren was a realist. She knew she was not made up that way. She was not going to meet up with and fall head over heels, uncontrollably in love with her 'soul mate.' She wasn't built for that kind of all-consuming, control-releasing romance. She would never surrender her heart to another person because she would never be able to trust them to take care of it as well as she could. Simple.

  It wasn't that she had anything against the concept itself, when it came to other people. On the contrary. It seemed to be working beautifully for her friends. Lauren was simply just not cut out for it.

  No. She was looking for three things: Compatibility, Trust, Sparks. Not the kind of sparks that set off a three alarm fire, that was too out-of-control. Just enough sparks to make things fun.

  She wasn't expecting to be engulfed in a fiery inferno of lust like Amanda, Karina, and most recently Sam had seemed to succumb to. No, she wouldn't even want that! She just needed a sparkler, not fireworks. Fireworks were for other people.