Eleanor’s mouth popped open. I had heard this line before so I knew what was coming. My gut was already starting to knot itself up into a really pretty bow tie. How was it that this man could always seem to find me and bug me? I wasn’t the egotistical type, but Karl acted a lot like a stalker. I just couldn’t figure out why. He was good looking and he had a lot of money. Why did he need me around? He didn’t even like me. He spent a ton of time detailing all of the stuff he wanted to change. I’d even tried to accommodate him for the most part. It was weird how that worked. Like he could make me doubt myself so completely that I would actually try to change my own nature just to make him happy.
“Are you sure you want to eat that, Lena hon?” Karl pursed his lips and stared down at what was left of my yummy dessert. “Your hips really can’t afford that kind of assault. Can they? Do you still go to the gym? I don’t see you there anymore.”
“Um hmm.”
I didn’t offer a real answer. I deliberately picked up a bite of my dessert and placed it on my tongue. Eleanor’s eyes were starting to bug out of her head. I didn’t really want the food anymore. My gut was telling me that I was too full already to be dealing with Karl’s crap right now. I should have made a sign. NO MORE KARL KRAP.
“That’s disgusting, Lena,” Karl chided.
I looked up at him and answered with my mouth full. Yes. I did this. I was making a point. “Why are you here?”
“I’m meeting someone.”
“Uh huh.” I had stopped going to my old gym because I kept accidentally running into him there. “Who? Your mother?”
I hated his mother. Mummy Kitson was snooty as hell and felt like she was better than everyone else. Karl’s gaze narrowed. He’s actually not that tall. He claims that he’s five foot ten, but he’s actually five foot eight and wears platform shoes. That means he can’t date a chick over five foot four if she likes to wear heels. He started going bald at a super young age and so he shaves his head and wears a goatee because he says this makes him look like Vin Diesel. Not. He’s also a really squat kind of man. Not fat. That’s the wrong word. It’s like he was made out of a barrel or something. They just added arms and legs. Everything is round. And he has bird legs. That’s what he spends his time on at the gym. His legs. It never works.
“A business associate.” He suddenly looked up and waved at someone across the room. It was a woman. What a shocker. “There she is. I’ll see you around, Lena. We should catch up sometime. I’d love to hear how the real estate business is going these days. I don’t think I’ve seen your name on any listings lately.”
Right. The ass.
Eleanor watched him go and shook her head. “He’s totally trying to make you jealous. Why would he do that? Does he not understand that it usually has the opposite effect?”
“No. He doesn’t realize that because it would work with him. If I started sleeping with Bob I would have Karl beating down my door with jealous frustration.” This was really aggravating actually. Really. Aggravating. I pointed at my sister. “Not a word. I don’t have the patience. And next week we’re meeting somewhere else. Karl knows you’re a creature of habit. He’ll be back here. I swear he will!”
“I resent the insinuation that I am a creature of habit,” Eleanor muttered. “But whatever you want.”
I wasn’t going to argue with her. Not now. It just wasn’t worth it.
Chapter Five
Damion
I didn’t do a whole lot of research about real estate offices before pushing my way through the doors of someplace called Upscale Real Estate. The office was located in Chesterfield not far from my own office, which made it more convenient than anything else. I don’t know. I guess I was also naïve enough to think that if I stayed away from real estate brokers in Clayton, Trinity wouldn’t find out what was going on. Fingers crossed, right? I didn’t have any interest in finding out what she could do to make a real estate deal go south.
The office itself was nice, I guess. This Bob Abernathy guy was really into himself. His name was plastered everywhere. I’m the CEO of a recruiting firm with six different offices in five American cities and one in Vancouver and I’ve never felt the need to put my name on that much swag. But I wasn’t in real estate either. Maybe real estate was one of those things where you had to let your, uh—swag—hang out as much as possible in order to get respect. God knew they loved to put their names and their pictures on signs, park benches, billboards, and even city busses.
The office already got a thumbs up from me when I walked inside because someone had cranked the air conditioner to arctic. I stood there for a minute just soaking up all of that frigid manufactured air. The weather outside was a toasty ninety-five degrees, hot even for St. Louis in September. I think the heat index was in the low one hundreds. It was miserable. I added the word pool to my mental list of stuff I wanted my house to have.
“Good morning! Welcome to Upscale Realty. How can I help you?”
The voice was upbeat, but not that annoying fake perky tone that occasionally makes me want to cringe when I hear my secretary answering the phone. Oh, excuse me. Admin. When I hear my admin answering the phone. They really don’t like to be called secretaries in this day and age. At least that’s what the sensitivity training from my HR director had taught me after five hours of a horrible seminar all management had been required to attend in order to help us maintain our human resources star status. Or some shit like I that. I don’t know. I hire people to deal with that stuff.
“Hi there.” I approached a ridiculously tall counter. It was a circular shape and there was very likely a lower desk back there where some poor woman had to sit behind this strange setup in order to have privacy. Of course, Bob Abernathy’s name was scrawled on the outside wall of the counter. “I suppose I’m in need of a real estate agent.”
A woman popped up from behind the counter like a jack in the box. I almost shrank back. Then she offered me the kind of smile that somehow would have looked snarky coming from anyone else. She managed to pull it off and look adorable.
“Well then, you have certainly come to the right place. We have real estate agents languishing back there with nothing to do who would be very happy to chat with you about whatever property interests you might have.” She pursed her lips briefly. “Are we talking residential or commercial? That’s probably the best place to start.”
I needed to give her an answer. I really did. But right now I couldn’t stop staring at her. The woman was perfect. Not in the Trinity tradition of overdone, baked, fried, made-up, whatever they call it these days. Her hair was the coolest shade of brown. In this artificial light it looked as though it had streaks of both blonde and red in it from being out in the sun. I liked that. The sun, I mean. Her face had a sun-kissed look and she had a sprinkling of freckles across her nose that showed she didn’t obsess about her complexion. Her hair was long too. It probably stretched all the way down to her waist. She had pulled the front back and secured it with a barrette. Not a butterfly clip. Not some hunk of silver with so much jeweled crap on it that it looked like an alien popping out of her skull. Just a simple barrette.
“Is it both residential and commercial?” She put one tanned hand on the countertop and leaned forward just a bit. “Because if you were actually looking for both, I think some of the agents would actually pass out from sheer excitement.”
The girl didn’t come across as flirty even though I could have seen someone else—like Trinity—saying the same things and trying to make it seem sexy. This girl was playful. It kind of put me at ease. How odd.
I cleared my throat. “I suppose it would be a lot easier if I could just roll out of bed and step into the office. I don’t know how my assistant would handle that though. Can you imagine the sexual harassment suits if I just wandered past her desk in my boxers?”
The brunette’s eyes widened. I realized that the woman possessed the most beautiful aquamarine eyes on the planet. They were intense and right now they were thro
wing off the kind of sparks that promised a quick wit I could actually enjoy.
Then she bit her full lower lip. “Sir, you are really tempting me to push the boundaries of our relationship here.”
“Our relationship?” I took a hasty mental step back.
She folded her arms over her well endowed chest. “Well, yeah. We’re strangers. And you’re a potential client. So it’s not like I can start making randy jokes about your poor assistant using your morning wood as a message stick.”
I actually choked. It was so unexpected, but certainly not unwelcome. I saw at once that she was afraid she had stepped over the line. She actually took a breath to backtrack so I raised my hand and waved it off. “I’m not technically sure my over sixty-year-old administrative assistant knows anything better to do with morning wood.”
“Ha!” She covered her mouth with both hands. Then she lowered them and pressed her lips together in a firm line. “So, residential then?”
“Yeah. I need someone to help me look at properties in some…”—I realized how this was going to sound—“Well, I’m looking for a subdivision or something with gates and big fences and stuff.”
“Well, there’s a lot of that in this area,” she mused with a chuckle. “So you need a tower. Are we stashing princesses?”
“Keeping them out?”
“Got it.” She bobbed her head. “Tansy is here. She’d be happy to—”
“Male!” I belted out the word with such force that I think I actually scared the poor girl. Then I realized I could not keep calling her that in my head. “I’m sorry, what’s your name?”
“Oh. I’m Lena.” She put her hand out. “Sorry. I got distracted. Usually I have a whole spiel to belt out that involves introducing myself. But did you say that you wanted a male agent?”
“Yes.”
She bit her lip. “You know, real estate tends to be a, shall we say, female-dominated industry. There’s always Ray, but I’ll be honest with you. He’s more feminine than half our female staff members.”
“What about Bob?”
She actually snorted. Then she seemed to recover her senses. “Sorry. That phrase always makes me chuckle.”
It took me a second, but I did recall an old film by that title about a psychiatrist and a very needy and more than slightly insane patient named Bob. Wait a second. Why was this amusing? Was Bob a head case? “So…what about Bob?”
“Bob Abernathy is a very good and competent real estate broker,” Lena told me with absolute and believable sincerity. “I’ll let him know that you’d like to speak with him. It might be a minute. He’s in a meeting. Can I get your name?”
“Damion Alvarez,” I told her. “And I’m sorry for being such a pain in the butt. I just prefer a male agent. That’s all. I feel like a guy would better understand the sort of thing I’m interested in. You know, since I’m a guy?”
“Right.” Something about the expression in her blue eyes told me that she was probably on the verge of suggesting a lot more at this point but knew that she shouldn’t. “Just have a seat for a moment. Can I get you a water or something?”
“No. I’m fine.” I noticed a magazine on the table. Gateway Business Weekly. There was a headline on their cover that hinted at the possibility of a Kansas City IT firm trying to take over a St. Louis based office. I headed for the magazine. “I’ll just wait until he’s out of his meeting. Not a big deal.”
“Thank you so much.” Lena sat back down.
I was just reading a bullshit story about some wild speculation that the local IT guru who wrote for this business rag had inside information that it was my company who was going to undergo a takeover. They were accusing me of wanting to get rid of my St. Louis office because I didn’t value the local market. Pfft! I was so sick of that crap! I grew up in this city. My family is still here and I would never hear the end of it if I sold this office and moved to my beltway office in Chantilly, Virginia.
The phone rang. I barely registered the noise. I was too busy wanting to start screaming at this idiot in person. I was going to have to send him a strongly worded email. The jackass was playing with my local market stability. We would have to have a meeting so my recruiters would be aware that it was necessary to tell any potential local hires that we weren’t going to drop them like hot potatoes by the end of the year.
“Why are you calling me?”
I looked up. Lena had sat back down behind her towering countertop desk. But her voice had enough volume to carry over the countertop and across the small reception room. There was actually a note of panic and maybe a little desperation that struck a chord in me. It was the oh God, why are you still calling me after we broke up ages ago and why aren’t you over it tone of voice. Yeah. That’s totally a thing. If you’ve ever had a significant other who just wouldn’t take the hint, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
“No.” Lena’s firm tone was enviable. I actually had to bite back the urge to give her a cheer. “I’m not interested in lunch or dinner or anything else. I told you over two years ago that we were done. I’m surprised that you aren’t over it since you never stopped dating to begin with!”
Whoa! I felt my eyebrows inching into my hairline. Then I almost whimpered. Two years? Oh. My. God! This poor woman had been trying to get the message across to a former significant other for over two years? I was doomed! Totally doomed.
“Enough.” I could hear the threat in her voice. It was firm. It was well timed. It was perfect. She was getting ready to give this guy the slap down. Assuming it was a guy. There was really no way to know, right? “Karl, you need to stop this. You cannot call me at work. It’s harassment. Do I need to get another restraining order? You know how badly that embarrassed your parents. Do you really want to put them through that again? No. I’m not mean. I’m being perfectly reasonable here. You’re bugging me. I don’t like it. What will it take to get this through your head? We. Are. Done!”
Wow. I totally got what this chick was going through. I have never in my life felt such a kinship with another person like I did right then. Nobody ever got it. I’d had my male friends and coworkers go so far as to tell me that I should be flattered that Trinity was so dedicated to getting me back. Like I should be glad that she was stalking me like some possessive slave owner. Some guys might be flattered. I was freaked out.
The phone hit the desktop and I heard Lena mutter something about having to change her phone number again. I got that one too. And changing a private phone number was one thing, but if you had a job, or a company in my case, your stalker knew exactly how to harass you to the ends of the earth.
I stood up. I don’t know why, but I felt the strongest urge to let this poor girl know that I totally empathized with her pain. I got it. And then I heard a noise that usually makes every guy want to turn and run the other way. A stifled sob.
Good God, the guy had made her cry? That just pissed me off. Nobody had the right to run down another human being like prey on the hunt field. I cleared my throat. I was now standing only a few feet away from the big countertop desk.
Her pale face appeared slowly as though she had been trying to crawl under the desk. I tried to smile at her. I don’t really know how it came out. I might have looked scary. Maybe it didn’t matter.
“Stalker?” I asked quietly. Then I realized that I might actually be acting like a stalker myself. “I get it. I do. I broke up with this girl over eight months ago. It’s why I’m in here. I need a gated community with some kind of armed guard at the entrance just to keep her out of my house.”
“She breaks in?” Lena’s blue eyes went so wide that I could see my reflection. “That’s awful!”
“Yesterday she waited on my doorstep until I went to get the paper. She had doodled on my morning paper and glued the business section closed.” I realize that complaining about this makes me seem like a total whiney bitch boy.
But Lena got it. Her lips formed a little moue and she narrowed her gaze. “That is just wrong
! But that’s the thing, right? They figure out what your morning routine is. Or any routine. And then they just crap all over it like they think they’re marking your territory.” Then she said the one thing that sent a chill down my spine. Not a bad one either. A good one. “And to make it worse? They join your gym!”
Chapter Six
Lena
Damion Alvarez. Why did that name sound familiar? I had the sudden urge to Google him right there at my desk when he was standing less than three feet away. But then that would make me the stalker, right?
The man was so good looking that it made my teeth hurt. Honestly that has to be the stupidest phrase ever thought up by the human race. Or probably just Americans. But at the moment it had nothing to do with some lame thought that he was so sweet he was giving me cavities. Wasn’t that a line once upon a time in our culture? In this case, my teeth were hurting because I was clenching them together to avoid saying some of the most idiotic things that my brain could come up with!
Honestly. Damion Alvarez had thick black hair. It seemed inclined to do whatever the hell it wanted and he was better off letting it have its way because the result was scrumptious! His skin was caramel colored and his eyes were the most incredible shade of brown. They reminded me of the color of chocolate. He was tall too. That kind of threw me. I’d known my fair share of Hispanic men and they were usually pretty short. This guy was tall. He was the kind of tall that Karl Kitson wished he could be. Maybe even six feet.
I could wear heels.
The inane thought was so silly that for a minute I figured I was toast. Like he was totally going to read my mind and know that I was being stupid and female and falling in lust just standing there watching him.
“Yes. The gym thing,” Damion commented slowly. “You know, I can’t help but appreciate that you get that. Nobody freaking gets it. I don’t go to the gym to have women stare at me or so I can flex in front of a mirror and pretty much be sure that I’ve got a dozen plus people agreeing with me that I look good.”
Tangled: Contemporary Romance Trilogy Page 4
