Cruz by Jacki James
Chapter 1
I adjusted the tie for the fourth time, but something about it still looked off. I missed the days when on those rare occasions that I had to wear a suit, like funerals and weddings, a clip-on would suffice, but if I paired a clip-on tie with the custom-tailored suit Penelope insisted I buy, she would probably have a stroke.
After a fifth adjustment, I decided it was as good as it was going to get and took a step back so I could see my entire body in the mirror. It was a nice suit and fit well. “I am rich. I am powerful. These are my people,” I said out loud, repeating the mantra she’d instructed me to use. Supposedly, if I repeated it often enough, I would start to believe it. But it had been three years, and it still didn’t feel true. I mean, the rich part was true. I had more money than I could spend in a lifetime, but the rest of it…not so much.
The restaurant where I was meeting my date for dinner was less than a block from the symphony, and I really didn’t want to deal with parking at both places, so I opted to hire a car. Which meant I needed to stop fussing and worrying about how I looked and go down to meet the driver. I took one last look in the mirror, gave myself an approving nod, and then left my room.
“Let me see,” Beverly, my housekeeper, said as I walked through the living room. She hurried over and tsked her tongue, fixing my tie. Then she gave it a pat. “You look very nice, Nolan. You’ll blow his socks off.”
I reached up to touch the tie, but she swatted my hand away. “Don’t fiddle with it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I teased.
“Have fun. You deserve it.”
I’d looked the restaurant up earlier and gone over the menu so I would know what I was planning to order ahead of time, and I’d met Ray, my date for the evening, at a social club we were both members of, so we weren’t strangers. All of that meant I should have nothing to worry about, yet I repeated my mantra all the way to the restaurant, hoping that would ease my anxiety.
I made it through most of the meal without wishing I were somewhere else, which was better than most of the dates I’d been on recently. At least that was the case until the server took longer than Ray thought was necessary to refill our glasses, and he got snippy with him.
“Hey, buddy,” Ray said, his voice laced with irritation. “You’ve been gone for a while. Could you please get us some water?”
The waiter nodded and scurried off, but Ray’s expression had already darkened. “That was unacceptable,” he muttered. “We shouldn’t have to wait that long for something so simple.”
I felt my face flush with embarrassment. The restaurant was busy tonight, and while I’d never waited tables, I was pretty sure it was a difficult job. The poor guy was doing his best, so he didn’t deserve to be treated like crap. I considered saying something, but Pen’s voice was in the back of my head. You are wealthy; you deserve to be treated well.
So instead of saying anything, I just sat there. I was never going to understand how treating people poorly was supposed to make me a proper rich person, but she’d beat into my head over and over that displaying concern for those people was a sure indicator that I wasn’t from the same world the people who had been born with money were from.
The rest of the date went downhill from there. He talked a lot about a boat he was thinking about buying, a trip he took to Rome, and the depreciation of his new sports car. All things that I should have cared about but didn’t. I didn’t understand the purpose of paying over a hundred thousand dollars for a car—even though I’d done it—because apparently, buying an ordinary off-the-lot sedan wasn’t done in my new circles.
When the meal was finished, I offered to pay and left the server a generous tip for having to put up with rich assholes like us all night. We left the restaurant and set out towards the symphony hall. I had season tickets even though I rarely attended. I usually passed them off to someone else because no matter how many times I’d forced myself to sit through various performances, I didn’t enjoy it, but as a patron of the arts, which Pen insisted I needed to be, it was expected.
On our walk down the block, we passed an old movie theater. It had recently undergone a renovation in which they ripped out all the old seats and replaced them with new ones that reclined. Some people had gotten up in arms about it, but as someone who enjoyed movies way more than the symphony, I thought it was a good move. As we walked by, I noticed the newest in a well-known series of Superhero movies was out, which explained the line waiting to buy tickets, and without thinking, I made a comment.
“The newest Marvel movie must be out.” I motioned to the long line.
“I’ll never understand how grown people can be so invested in comic book characters.” He shook his head like he felt sorry for all the people in line, while I, on the other hand, felt sorry for us because we were walking past the line and headed for a night of Schulze conducts Mozart.
“I know, right?” I mumbled as we walked on by because that was the response that was expected.
We made our way to our seats, although it took forever because Ray felt the need to speak to and make small talk with every person we came across. At the club where we’d met, I’d noticed that was something he excelled at, and it was something I was still trying to master. I didn’t understand the point of discussing the weather or how the Rams or the Padres were doing this year with multiple people saying the same thing over and over. Once we were seated and the music began, I let my mind wander to the current issue I was having with my latest project. The whole point in taking my company public three years ago was for me to get off the hamster wheel and work on things that excited me. So far, I hadn’t found that thing. All I’d found was problem after problem.
When the intermission was called, I decided I’d had enough. There was no chemistry between us, and honestly, the possibility of mediocre sex wasn’t enough to inspire me to sit through the second half.
We made our way to the front with everyone else, and I caught his arm to get his attention before he found someone to chat with. “Ray, I’m not feeling well. It must have been something I ate. I think I’ll call my car and head on home.”
He gave me a suspicious look, like he wasn’t sure if he believed me. “If you’re sure. I thought maybe we would go back to my place after for a nightcap.”
“That would’ve been nice, but I’m sure I wouldn’t be good company with an upset stomach.”
I could tell he was going to argue further, but to my relief, someone walked up to talk with him and stole his attention, giving me a perfect opportunity to slip away. But I didn’t call for my car. Instead, I walked down to the theater, and in my stupid three-piece suit that probably cost more than most of the people in line made in a month, I stood in line to buy a ticket for the next showing of the movie.
The next morning, I woke up with an idea for a game. I wouldn’t say it was inspired by the movie I’d seen the night before, but they’d played with the anti-hero trope pretty hard without the humor that made other movies with that theme so popular. It felt more serious than most and tackled some pretty hard-hitting truths. That was the part that sparked my idea.
I’d thought I didn’t want to work on another game, but instead, I wanted to do something completely new. I’d been playing around with some productivity apps and the like, trying to find something new to work on, but nothing was catching my interest. Maybe thinking I should try something totally different had been my mistake, and I should stick with my first love — gaming. At least I was excited by this idea.
The planning stages on projects like these were my absolute favorite, and I was ready to get started. I would start by brainstorming a simple storyline, nothing elaborate. I would hire writers for that, but I needed to have a general outline to give them to work off of. I would have to hire new writers, though, because the ones from my previous games were still under contract with CNC Software and Entertainment, and I wanted to do this separately from the company.
I’d pulled out all my materials to begin a planning board when I got a call from my assistant, Anita. If she was calling me this early on a Saturday morning, it couldn’t be good news.
“Good morning, Anita.”
“You say that now, but you haven’t heard what I have to say yet.”
“Go ahead and hit me with what fundraiser I have to attend or charity event I need to support this time?”
“No functions, I promise, although that would probably be less trouble than this.”
“Unless what you have to tell me is literal torture, it can’t be worse than that awards show you accepted an invitation for, so just tell me.”
“Apparently, your ranch foreman quit.”
“My ranch foreman? You mean the one in Texas?”
“Yes, Nolan, the one in Texas. Do you own any other ranches I don’t know about?”
“No, Anita, just the one. But what do you mean he quit?”
“I have no idea, but the hands haven’t been paid in over a month, so they’re ready to walk off. Not that I blame them. I mean, who on earth wants to shovel horse shit for free? But still, you need to take care of this right away.”
“Well damn. So he left and didn’t tell anyone he was going. Do we know if he’s okay? He wasn’t in an accident or something?”
“I guess he told the hands he was going and that you would be sending a replacement. He just failed to tell us.”
“Great. Okay, well, to start with, get everyone paid for me and give them all a sizeable bonus for their trouble. I’ll take care of the rest.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I should just sell the damn place, but whether I go that route or another, I know someone in River Gorge I can call.”
“Okay, just let me know if you need me to do anything else.”
I disconnected the call with her and pulled up the contact in my phone for Miller Monroe, the realtor who’d sold me the ranch. I pressed call and waited for him to answer.
“Charles Nolan Carter! I was just about to call you.”
“Hey, Miller, I hear I have a problem. And I told you Nolan will do. Charles is my father.”
“Yeah, rumor has it your hands haven’t been paid.”
“That’s what I was told this morning. I was hoping to get ahead of it before half the town heard it.”
He chuckled. “My friend, half the town never hears anything. In River Gorge, it’s the whole town. But I told them it had to be a mistake and that there was no way you would leave them high and dry.”
“It was a mistake, alright. But totally my fault. I should’ve been paying more attention to things. I had no idea Jim Bob bailed on me. He didn’t even let me know he was leaving, so I wasn’t aware that the men hadn’t received their pay. We’re taking care of that this morning, but now I need to figure out what to do. I can’t run a ranch, and I’m not there to find a new foreman. I’m tempted to just sell the place.”
“Well, I’m never one to talk myself out of a commission, so if you want to sell it, I’d be happy to list it for you, but if you want to keep it, I have another possibility for you.”
“I’ll be perfectly honest with you, Miller, it’s a great tax write-off, so if we can find someone reliable, I would prefer to keep it for the time being. But I can’t have what happened this time happen again. Those guys work hard. They can’t be left hanging like that.”
“I don’t want to say too much on the off chance it doesn’t work out, but if this does work out, you wouldn’t have that worry. This guy is as steady and honest as they come.”
“Okay, that’s what I wanted to hear. I’m going to leave this in your hands.” It might be a mistake to trust Miller with this, but I figured he couldn’t do any worse than I’d done with Jim Bob.