Chapter One
“I’m sorry, what did you say your name was?” I practically yell in the direction of my phone as I furiously type away on my laptop. I’m a multi-tasker extraordinaire, which is good because in my business, time is always of the essence.
I shift my computer so it’s wedged up against the steering wheel of my three-year-old Audi. “April? Like the month?” I ask the caller.
“It is Abreeeeeel,” the cultured Latina voice echoing through my car speakers tells me. “Abril Valencia. You were recommended to me by Sandrine Flowers?” She asks like it’s a question I should already have the answer to.
“How is Sandrine?” It’s been ages since I’ve seen my old client. I knew the minute she moved into her new place, that love was right around the corner. Sandrine hadn’t wanted to look at the Coldwater Canyon property, claiming the commute to her office was a deal breaker.
When I told her I was positive that’s where she would find her happy ending, she hemmed and hawed and still tried to fight for the house in Benedict Canyon. She finally gave in when I explained the Benedict house had sadness written all over it. Like seriously, I think there’d been some kind of gnarly death there or something.
It turns out Sandrine’s future husband lived right next door to the Coldwater property. They were engaged within four months, and three months after that I attended their very fancy wedding at the Four Seasons Hotel. A week later, I listed both of their houses and found them the perfect marital love nest in Malibu. It was a real estate trifecta!
“Sandrine, she is as big as a house with los bebés inside her,” Abril announces. “But she is so happy and she says she owes it all to you. She says you are her fairy godmother, her matchmaker.”
“I’m not a matchmaker,” I say as an image of Yente from Fiddler on the Roof pops into my head, full-on with a babushka and an all-knowing look in her squinty eyes.
“You find the house that brings the love, no?”
“No. I mean yes. But I am more of an intuitive realtor than a matchmaker. I don’t know who the love interest will be, I just know where the love will happen.” That sounds sketchier than I’d intended it to, but you get my drift.
“I am also ready for the love, so I call you to help me find it. Where should we start looking?”
“Let’s meet,” I tell her. “I won’t start to get a feeling for the right area for you until I have a chance to get to know you better.” I check my calendar. “I can meet you for coffee at eleven tomorrow morning at Perky Cups on Melrose, or Friday at two at The Farm in Beverly Hills.”
“If tomorrow is the earliest, I will meet you then.” She hangs up before I can tell her what I look like. Guess I will look for a lovelorn Latina.
I hurry and press send, and voilà, the offer for Xander Fellows is submitted. His perfect house is in Hancock Park even though he was sure he was destined to live in Venice. He was convinced Hancock Park was too family oriented and wouldn’t have single men within miles of his doorstep. I assured him that single men live all over LA and that if it was a long-term relationship he was looking for, then the Hancock Park house was the right place for him.
After closing my laptop, I pull out onto the street in the direction of my office on Sunset Boulevard. I work at Pemberley Properties which is every bit as snooty as it sounds.
My office is full of women, and only women—other than my boss Frederic—who know how to play up their assets to their best advantage. Simply put, they have bleach blonde hair extensions, wear five-inch stilettos, and their boobs practically exist in another zip code. I’m nothing like them.
I, Emily Hargrove, am the epitome of the girl next door. I’m a Mary Ann in a world of Gingers. If you weren’t a Nick at Nite fanatic like I was and the Gilligan’s Island reference is lost on you, I’m a Betty, not a Veronica; a Monica, not a Rachel; a Reese, not an Angelina.
How in the world did I wind up working for a glamorous brokerage firm like Pemberley then? My best friend and queen bee of sales, Skylar Matisse, got me the job. At first, Frederic would only take me on a trial basis, as I clearly didn’t look like his vision of success. But after selling three houses in a week, he no longer cared. I was a moneymaker, and he was willing to overlook my faults, aka normal physical attributes.
The unwritten rule at the office is that no broker can be under five foot nine. As if only giants can sell multi-million-dollar houses. That’s why my fellow brokers stagger around like they’re stilt-walkers in the circus.
While I did try to at least meet the height requirement, I fell off said shoes on three separate occasions. The first time, I accidentally pushed a client into the swimming pool of the house I was showing him. I fell in also. The second time, I tripped and landed on top of Frederic. He may have wound up with a hairline wrist fracture—the man needs a calcium supplement, if you ask me. The third time, I fell off a curb into oncoming traffic and nearly got run over by a gold-plated Hummer.
After the last occasion, my boss decided that if I were to live long enough to make him a huge amount of money, he would have to bend his rule and let me wear loafers, or Vans, depending on how I was dressed. It was the safest decision for all.
As if my style and height aren’t enough to set me apart—I’m a solid five eight in flats—my hair is brown instead of blonde. I have never penciled my eyebrows into giant caterpillars with squared off edges in my life, and no one is allowed to superglue llama lashes to my eyelids. I don’t even have cool tattoos. In fact, I don’t have any tattoos. I’m just not that girl.
I’d rather eat burgers than sushi, pitch a tent on the beach than stay at a five-star resort, and horror of horrors—according to my coworkers anyway—I’d rather be a B-cup than go under the knife and have balloons stuffed inside my chest cavity.
According to Skylar, I’m refreshing and natural. According to Lucy, the one agent who hates me with a vigorous passion, I’m boring and boyish. She thinks anything less than a D-cup lacks femininity.
I don’t usually have any trouble with the other agents because I don’t engage in office drama. Also, most of them aren’t the least bit threatened by me. Hence, they barely give me the time of day.
They battle with each other all the time over who’s going to secure the newest jaw-dropping listing. They fight dirty to win the business of the latest Hollywood star or the most recent tech refugee from the Silicon Valley. I just keep my head down and don’t participate in their realtor Hunger Games.
I do, however, go to their open houses and support them. While they’re competitive (like real estate is a blood sport), I need to see every house I can in order to find the perfect dwellings for my clients.
Not all my clients are single and looking for love. As a matter of fact, I have almost as many married couples as single ones. The married ones, who know about my extra talent, are looking for homes where their union will flourish.
As previously mentioned, those homes aren’t always where my clients imagine they’ll live. It can be hard to convince someone that Pasadena is where their happy ending is waiting when their heart is set on the Palisades.
While you might think my sixth sense would make me the most successful broker in the office, you’d be wrong. This is LA. It’s the land where artifice is king or, as every casting director this side of Studio City will tell you, the place where you have to look the part you want to be cast as.
If you’re in, or adjacent to, the entertainment industry in any way, that generally means going to the right parties, dating the right kind of people, and living in the right neighborhood.
I’ve had a lot of clients who don’t take my advice, and a good number of them are perfectly happy. True love isn’t as important to them as projecting the right image.
Most image-conscious clients choose to work with brokers like Skylar, Lucy, Crenshaw, or the other gals in my office. They want to buy their monolithic homes from somebody who looks like their idea of perfection. If that were my criteria, I’d have to move to the Midwest where people are inherently more real looking.
As soon as I park my car and walk into the office, I notice everyone huddled around my desk. They’re staring at a giant vase of flowers that wasn’t there earlier today. I hurry over, using my elbows to part the crowd when necessary, and pull the card out of Lucy’s hands. It reads:
I’m ready to buy love. When can we meet? Jonathan Silver