quality control. Her job was to make sure everything worked right and looked right, down to the smallest detail. “You’re in the consulting phase now and can be spared.”
“All I have left is to start gluing on flowers.” And other organic material. Though flowers were the main starting point for any float, many areas were covered in seeds and grasses to add texture to the overall design.
“I was checking the hydraulics,” Chelsea continued, “and I wanted you to watch.” She waved at a man half-hidden in a well in the chassis. He waved back, and slowly the butterflies on the rear of the float began to descend.
Before she could comment, Greer’s phone rang. “Hello?”
“Miss Greer Courtland? My name is Logan Pierce.”
“Excuse me,” Greer said, having a hard time hearing over the noise of the welder. She stepped toward the back door open to the parking lot.
“This is Logan Pierce,” he repeated. “I saw you on Daniel’s show this morning. I was wondering if we could meet.”
“Why?” His own float was being built by another company.
“I’ve never had a woman ask me why I wanted to take her out to dinner.”
“I’m asking.” She tried to keep the suspicion out of her voice.
“I watched your interview with Daniel, and you were pretty funny. I want to get to know you.”
She paused. “How did you get my phone number?” She never gave it to people she didn’t know.
“My connections are staggering,” he responded with a wry chuckle.
“Really. How did you get my number?”
She could hear the smile in his voice. “I have a personal assistant who would make the CIA, FBI and NSA weep with envy.”
“I see.” Should she meet with him? She was deeply curious about the rivalry between the two men, and Daniel’s answers this morning hadn’t satisfied her curiosity. Maybe Logan’s would. “I thought you were in New York.”
“I’m visiting family for Thanksgiving. My parents still live in Santa Monica.”
Meeting him wouldn’t hurt, she supposed. “Where do you want to meet?”
“How about dinner at Craig’s? I’ll pick you up, say around 6:30.”
He sounded pleasant enough, but since he was based in New York, she didn’t know anything about Logan Pierce.
“No. I’ll meet you there.” She wasn’t about to put herself in a spot she couldn’t get out of.
“I’ll send a car for you.”
“I’ll drive myself.” She didn’t want to be dependent on this man when she didn’t know him from Adam. If she wanted to leave, she wanted to be able to do so on her terms.
He laughed, a rich, vibrant sound. “Seven, then, at Craig’s.”
“Okay,” she said before she ended the call. Craig’s! That was pretty classy. Celebrities were routinely spotted there, she thought as she turned to find Chelsea watching her. “You’ll never guess who that was.”
“Daniel Torres asking you out to dinner.”
“Close. His friend and float competitor, Logan Pierce.”
Chelsea’s eyebrows rose. “You’re kidding.”
“No. I’m meeting him at Craig’s tonight.”
Chelsea’s eyes went wide. “That’s the new in place.”
“You watch too much TMZ.”
Chelsea punched Greer on the arm. “This is so exciting. You’d better bring home a doggie bag. For me, not the dog.”
She laughed. “I’ll try to remember.”
After giving her approval on the hydraulics, Greer headed back to her office, till her father stopped her in the hallway.
“Meeting.” Roman Courtland was a man of few words.
She followed him into his large corner office overlooking the industrial park. Every available inch of wall space was covered with photos of the award-winning floats by Courtland Floats Designs, along with family photos.
Her mother stood at the window, a bottle of water in one hand. Tall and slim, Virginia Courtland wore a cream-colored pantsuit with a colorful Hermes scarf about her neck. She’d styled her black hair into a sleek French roll that emphasized her sharply defined cheekbones. She’d been born in Los Angeles after her parents had migrated from Bermuda nearly sixty years ago. Virginia’s father had been an actor with minor parts in nearly a hundred films. He’d made a good living but never attained a higher status than character actor.
Greer’s father, Roman, was of medium height with a thick head of curly black hair threaded with gray. He wore jeans and a black sweater with the sleeves pushed up. Like Virginia, he was LA-born, but his family had been in Los Angeles since the early 1800s. His ancestors had managed to escape from slavery in Georgia and thought to make a place for themselves in Spanish-held California. His two-times great-grandfather had been Native American, and the Nez Perce heritage showed in his slightly hooked nose and wide-spaced eyes.
Roman looked tired. These last few weeks before the parade were the most intense and stressful. All the labor of the last ten months culminated in round-the-clock shifts as floats were checked for any last-minute issues before heading to the staging tent set up on the Rose Bowl parking lot. There, hundreds of volunteers needed to finish the floral decoration on time.
Greer grabbed a bottle of water from the undercounter fridge behind her father’s desk and sat down on the sofa. “I think this morning’s interview went well.”
Her mother nodded as she took a seat in one of the chairs. “He seemed to ask you a lot of personal questions.”
“He made me a little uncomfortable.”
“You handled yourself well,” her father said as he sat in the other chair and crossed one leg over the other.
“Rose Queen training,” Greer answered. She took a sip of water.
“I wish he’d allowed you to talk more about the float.”
“They want me to come back on a weekly basis now that it’s coming down to the wire,” Greer said. “They want to do some on-site filming, too. Dad, what were you thinking?’”
Roman gave her an innocent look. “What do you think I’m thinking?”
“Why did you take on a celebrity client? Not that he’s been a problem, but now I have to budget a morning to do an interview when I should be overseeing the final decorating.”
“You work too hard,” he said. “In the last four years, two other companies have popped into the float business. If we want to stay ahead of the game,
