He stopped, placed his hands at his hips, and slowly pivoted, so that he could glare at her. “What?” he snapped.
“Fine, they’re prepared to drop the price.”
“All the way?”
She nodded slowly. “And against my better judgment, I’ll have you know.”
“I don’t give a damn about your judgment,” he declared. “It obviously sucks if you’re defending the price for this property like you are.”
“It’s worth a lot.”
“Fixed upit’s worth a lot. In the shape it’s in right now, it needs to be dropped.”
She stopped, looked at him, and asked, “You’ll actually drop it?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll do that cost analysis later.” He glared at her. “So, is that a yes or no?”
“It’s a yes,” she snapped. “I just said so.”
“Fine. Draw up the paperwork then.”
“You know, you could do this a nicer way.”
“My lawyer will contact theirs, if they’re paying you a fee, that’s up to them.” He turned to face her. “And I’m not, so don’t even go there.”
“We’d get along much better if you paid for my time,” she noted. “I could go out looking for these properties for you.”
“Why would I bother? That I can do myself.”
She just glared at him.
He shrugged. “I don’t understand why we all think real estate agents are even necessary,” he growled. “Even when you do bring certain products to the market, you get in the way of us closing them.”
“Well, that’s because my clients get the best prices,” she explained. “However, if I were on your side, I could get you the best price.”
He shook his head. “It’ll still be the same rule. They’re paying you, not me.”
“Unless you hire me to go hunt out some of these properties.”
“No way. Not interested.” He had his reasons, and at the top of the list was the fact that he didn’t trust this woman at all. “If this is a go, send me something in an email,” he told her, “and I’ll contact my lawyers.” He turned to walk away.
“Don’t you want to take another look at it?”
“Nope, I sure don’t. I know very well what it looks like.”
“You didn’t go in there without my permission, did you?”
He stopped and just glared at her. “Are you done wasting my time?” She pouted. He shook his head. “That’s not a nice look on you,” he said, and, with that, he turned. He heard her screaming at him in the background, and it made him perversely happy. There was just something about dealing with realtors, particularly the pushy ones. So, if he had a chance to shove their noses in it, he was happy to do so. It should be a decent business relationship, but it didn’t take long before they could turn it sour. He was all for getting help and helping others, but not when it came to this bullshit industry.
For that reason, he bought most of his properties without realtors. Yet this one seemed to capture some properties, either knowing what he wanted ahead of time and contacting him, or somehow managing to get the listings. Otherwise he would have preferred to deal with the owners or their attorneys directly. He wondered if it was a case of her understanding more about what he was doing than he wanted her to, possibly reaching out to contact these people before the properties were even listed in the first place, jacking up their expectations on the value, resulting in unrealistic pricing.
It would be a smart business move on her part, but it also meant that he wound up continuously dealing with her, and that had proved not worth the aggravation.
Chapter 10
Kate stared atthe trees surrounding her; she was back here yet again because she couldn’t get it out of her head. She’d already walked several of the other pathways, looking to see other angles, other ways of catching sight of who was running. And unfortunately she had found way too many. With the hillsides adjacent to the trees, now that Simon had pointed that out, there were just way too many areas to cover. She slowly walked back toward the area where her car was parked. Her phone rang, and she looked down to see it was Rodney. “What’s up?” she asked, when she got to her car.
“Where are you?”