Tangled: Contemporary Romance Trilogy

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “Yeah,” I snorted. “But then I’d probably be afraid of someone realizing that I have a huge stash of tissues. All of those boxes. It would look suspicious as hell if someone came in to pack my house.”

  “And the lube.”

  I swung around so quickly that I thought my neck was going to break off. “Lube? Like I have cases and cases of the stuff?”

  “Either that or some kind of product to help with the chafing. I don’t know. I’m not a guy. Does diaper rash cream work?” She smothered a giggle.

  She was quick minded and witty and for a second I wanted to tell her that if the two of us were together there would be no reason for lube or anti-chafing cream. “I suppose if you got that greasy stuff it would work both ways.”

  “Whoa! Sounds like you’ve got some experience. Do you also have a basket full of towels so the ladies can wipe their hands as they walk out of the house?”

  “Woman, if I’ve got a parade of ladies in and out of my house why do I need porn or lube? A warm, willing woman is way better than the fake stuff you see when you watch porn.”

  Her voice was just a little tighter when she spoke again. “I don’t know. Those women are pretty near perfect from what I’ve been told.”

  “Mostly because they’ve had a crew of makeup artists caking makeup onto each and every freckle or blemish. I’m not even sure the word fake applies. It’s more like plastic.”

  “Sounds like you’ve seen your fair share. Barely legals. Girls enjoying girls. What’s your preference? Three way?”

  “Three way, huh?” I shook my head. None of it was appetizing. Porn. I hadn’t been into porn since college. “Is that the kind of thing you think I’m into?”

  We were flying down the highway, but she wasn’t actually speeding. Lena drove a lot like I did. She was assertive without being aggressive and she drove the speed of general traffic. I wondered if that was just the way she lived her whole life. Porn and all.

  “Come on.” There was an edge of sarcasm to her words. “A guy like you could probably walk into the gym, snap his fingers, and get an entire Bacchanalia going on.”

  What? A guy like me? What did that mean? “So I’m just having orgies every weekend, is that it?”

  “The house certainly has enough room for that sort of thing.”

  “Hang on just a second here!” This was actually starting to piss me off. “What do you mean the house has enough room for that sort of thing? Is that what you really think I’m like?”

  “I don’t know.” She wouldn’t look at me. “I’m just saying that you’re incredibly good looking. You’re rich. You’re buying a huge house. You could have a dozen women at your beck and call. That’s all I’m saying. I don’t know what you do. It’s not my business. None of it is. I was just making a joke. Geeze.”

  I had to take several big breaths to calm myself down. It wouldn’t do any good to get any more upset. “Did it ever occur to you that guys like me get a little tired of everyone assuming that we’re players?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about it.”

  “Well I can’t speak for everyone, but I personally get really tired of people assuming that just because I’m a good looking single man with a decent income, that I’m some kind of rampant predator.”

  “I suppose that’s fair enough.” She cleared her throat and seemed to be searching for words. I bit my tongue and let her find them. “I suppose if you were into orgies then you wouldn’t be trying to get rid of Trinity. You would just be stringing her along for the ride.”

  “Sleeping with Trinity was about the stupidest thing I ever did.” Why was I telling her this? Sometimes I feel like my mouth isn’t attached to my brain. “We were in a relationship. It’s what you do. I suppose I took that for granted like anyone else does. But it didn’t last long when she decided that we weren’t just having fun, we were planning a future together.”

  I saw Lena’s throat move as she swallowed. Her face was getting red. I wasn’t entirely certain how, but I had stepped in it for sure. Her leather wrapped steering wheel creaked as she gave it a mighty squeeze.

  “You should know,” Lena told me firmly. “I don’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “I don’t sleep with a guy just because we’re in a relationship. I don’t feel like it’s a mandatory service that women are required to participate in as some kind of price we pay to be in a relationship.” She did not look at me. It was quite possible that she felt like she couldn’t. Hell. I wouldn’t have been able to look at her if I’d been saying that out loud.

  “Lena, I would never expect that of you. I wouldn’t expect it of any woman,” I amended. It had nothing to do with her. “And who in your life has been trying to pressure you into a three way?”

  “What makes you say that?” The single note of panic at the end of her sentence told me all I needed to know.

  “It was Karl, wasn’t it?” I grumbled. The guy needed to be castrated. “That asshole tried to get you to participate in one of those and now you think that secretly it’s some kind of end game for every man out there.”

  “That’s not true!” The words echoed around the inside of her small compact car. She exited the highway and headed into Fenton. The little suburb is pretty spread out. I probably needed to give her directions, but she seemed to know where she was going. “I’m just trying to figure out why you would kiss me. Why would you do that? What were you expecting? What does it mean?”

  “Does it have to mean anything?” Was I asking her or myself? “Can’t it just be something that happened? There are no expectations and we just see where things go from here? Do we really need some kind of flow chart? This isn’t a business plan. I kissed you because I wanted to.”

  “Then maybe I should have said no and shoved you into the pool.”

  I stared at her. This wasn’t that big of a deal! It wasn’t. “I wasn’t making a commitment or anything. It was just a kiss!”

  “Just a kiss. Just sex. Just another woman in the room. It’s all the same. No strings, Lena. Don’t worry about it. You think too much, Lena. That’s what all of you say.”

  “What all of us say?”

  I took a breath to tell her to turn at the next light, but her signal was already on. She acted like she already knew where she was going.

  “How do you know where the engine shop is?” I demanded roughly. “Are you stalking me? Do all women stalk? Is that what I should be worried about? You might be just like Trinity. You might be planning to trap me into marriage and then try your best to empty my bank accounts. Are you going to steal my credit cards? What’s your agenda?”

  “Excuse me?” She looked affronted.

  “Yeah. Exactly.” I snorted and shook my head. What was wrong with me? I shouldn’t have kissed her. I should be running as far away from her as possible. She was a great person. But in the end, she was just like every other woman on the planet. They were always trying to punish one man for the sins of every other man who had come before him.

  “Just pull over to the curb.” I was already unbuckling my seatbelt and reaching for the door handle. “I’ll walk from here.”

  “Walk?” She swerved to the curb. Someone behind us honked. I was tempted to stick my arm out the door and give them the finger. “You’re going to walk?”

  “Why do you look so surprised? A guy like me can’t walk? How about when he’s had enough of a woman assuming the worst about him and just wants to be alone for a while?” I glared at her. I don’t think I’d thought of her in that context before. Had I been so blinded by the fact that the two of us seemed to have so much in common?

  She pushed the automatic lock button in order to let me out. “Whatever. I’ll contact you when the closing is set up. Beyond that, you won’t hear from me again unless there’s a problem.”

  “A problem?” I was about to blow and then I realized that she had reduced all of this back to business only. Maybe that was for the better. “You can just call
my office and talk to my admin. Zelda handles most of my appointments.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.” I got out of the car and slammed the door.

  Lena drove off and I found myself standing there in the disgusting soupy heat of late September wondering what had happened, when it had gone so wrong, and whether or not I cared. She was one woman. I had enough troubles with women. This whole issue had come from listening to my damned therapist. Why did I go to therapy? That was stupid. I shouldn’t be listening to someone else tell me what he thought I meant by what I was saying. I knew what I meant. I just had to stick with it.

  I started walking down the sidewalk. It was only half a block from the garage. Surely I could make it that far without dying of heat exhaustion. Hypothetically, of course. Then I was going to have to deal with my parents and with my brother. I had promised Valentino that I wouldn’t tell our parents I’d bought the building when he needed financial help. He was going to be pissed at me when he found out that Dad knew what had happened. Not that it mattered. Everyone was apparently pissed at me right now. I might as well just make an effort to make this cumulative, right?

  “Hey!”

  I squinted in the bright midday sunlight and found myself looking at Beau. The guy was waving his hands back and forth over his head while standing in front of an open bay at the garage. I was a little surprised that I could not see the scent waves coming off him in the sizzling afternoon heat.

  “Hey!” Beau waved again. “Val says he wants to talk to you right now. Like yesterday.”

  “Oh he does?” I did not speed up my steps. “I have to get back to my office, Beau. You’ll have to tell Val to call me or something.”

  And then Valentino appeared in the next bay. His expression was dark. “Yeah. Not likely. You’re not going anywhere until you explain to me why you felt the need to make Dad pissed at both of us.”

  Right. Work. Who needed to work? Apparently not me.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Lena

  “Lena?”

  “Yes?”

  Tansy peeked over my counter as though she fully expected me to throw something at her. That was ridiculous. I had never lost my temper like that before in my life. And recently I was in a perfectly good mood. A fine mood. I was getting more work done in the most efficient manner possible. I don’t think I had ever been this productive before in my life.

  “Did you get that closing paperwork?” Tansy’s voice was so small that I was tempted to throw something at her to make her to squeak and just get it over with. She was acting ridiculous.

  But instead of lobbing the manila folder with her closing paperwork over the counter. I simply laid it on top and went back to my computer screen. I was researching property for another one of Bob’s clients. This one wanted a yoga studio in-house. That was a surprisingly difficult thing to find if a buyer wasn’t willing to put any construction into the property after closing. But I was confident that I could find something. That’s what I did after all.

  “Um, Lena?”

  “What?”

  Tansy sighed. “Never mind.”

  “Just say it.”

  “Well. It seems like—I mean, maybe you’ve just been so busy that you don’t have time to relax.” Tansy’s voice kind of trailed off.

  “That’s what you wanted to say?” I looked up at her and raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? You think I’ve been working too much to relax? I’m perfectly relaxed.”

  Funny, but I had to force myself to let go of a pen while I said this. I had a white-knuckled grip on the thing. But that wasn’t because of stress. I was just tired of people trying to make something out of nothing. Nothing, of course, being my brief association with a certain male client belonging to Bob Abernathy.

  “Yeah, it’s been two weeks since all of that, uh…drama.” Tansy bobbed her head. “I was going to ask you if you had seen Karl at all.”

  “Karl? Who cares about Karl? I would assume that he’s living out a happily ever after with his new girlfriend. They’re perfect for each other. I’m sure their individual drama keeps them both busy as hell.” I was done talking about this. Done. Done. Done.

  “Yeah. So have you spoken with Damion Alvarez at all?”

  I stood up from my seat so that I could look directly at Tansy. I narrowed my gaze at her and wondered if she could feel my irritation as keenly as I could. “Why would I have any reason to speak with him?”

  “Because he’s nice?”

  I snorted. “He’s one of Bob’s clients. I’m sure I’ll see him at some point if he has to come in and sign papers. But he asked me to deal directly with his administrative assistant and that’s what I’ve been doing.”

  “Right.” Tansy nodded. “So, you know that it’s October, right?”

  Did I know that it was October? There was a huge desk calendar about five inches from Tansy’s face. Yeah. I knew. “Yes. October. Why?”

  “The Seventeenth annual St. Louis Real Estate Board Fall Festival in Forest Park is Halloween night. Are you going to go with us?” Tansy pursed her lips and I wondered if she actually wanted me to go. I don’t think she was sure.

  That stung. But maybe it was a valid question. I was working a lot lately as though I were driven to force Bob to see that I was the kind of person he needed to sponsor for my license starting in January. It was only two months away. Did I have any business going to a party when I could be doing something productive like picking up leads for new listings by visiting all of the model homes in the area to hand out our business cards?

  Really? On Halloween night? Make excuses much?

  “I hadn’t really thought about the party,” I admitted to Tansy. “I’ve been really pushing for Bob to sponsor me starting in January. The new class starts then. It would only take three months and then I could sit for the exam. By the time the summer market picks up I could be a licensed agent.”

  “Yeah.” Tansy bobbed her head, but her brown eyes were shifting right and left as though she knew something she didn’t want to tell me. “I suppose if you wanted to become an agent that would be the way to do it.”

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Tansy!” I snapped.

  She heaved a huge sigh and rolled her eyes a bit. She was wearing a cute little vintage dress in a blue color that complimented her olive-toned skin. Lately I had been in a black and beige mood. I looked like a spinster schoolteacher from someplace like rural Iowa. Iowa. Why does that sound so remote? It’s probably not.

  Tansy’s throat trembled as she swallowed. “So, I was eavesdropping the other day.”

  There was a long pause and I waited as long as I could stand it, which was probably only two seconds. My gut was already tying itself in knots. I don’t know why, but I felt like this was something I wasn’t going to want to hear. “And?” I finally prompted when I couldn’t stand it any longer. “Who were you eavesdropping on?”

  “Bob and his sister.”

  “Bob’s sister?” I could not understand why this made a bit of difference to anyone. Bob’s sister lived in Kansas City. She always visited around the holidays. They were probably planning the family Thanksgiving. “Mallory is nice,” I reminded Tansy. “At least she’s nothing like Ms. Abernathy’s relatives.”

  Tansy sucked in a breath to say something else, but the front doors flew open at that moment and Tansy and I found ourselves looking right at Bob. He had a huge arrangement of fall flowers in a cute basket. It overfilled his arms and probably made it difficult for him to see what we were doing right now. Which was good. That man could smell gossiping for miles.

  “Lena!” Bob belted out my name as though he couldn’t see me standing behind the counter. “I’ve got something for you, Lena!”

  I rolled my eyes. Tansy was choking back a laugh that sounded near hysterical. “I’m right here, Bob,” I told him. “And I think we’ve had this discussion before. Haven’t we?”

  “Well, sure!” B
ob set the basket on the countertop and leaned around it to grin at me. “But you’ve just been working so hard that I thought I would say thanks.”

  “Is that right?” I pursed my lips. Was this where I needed to tell him that an appropriate thank you would be for him to agree to sponsor me this January? Surely that was obvious. “Well thanks, but I don’t do flowers.”

  “Sure you do. All women love flowers.” Bob suddenly seemed to realize that Tansy was standing there. She was short, but not that short. What was up with Bob? “Tansy, don’t women love flowers?”

  “I suppose they do,” Tansy agreed with him. Then she qualified her statement. “Especially when a guy screws up really bad.”

  Bob’s smile froze on his face. He apparently did not like Tansy’s comment. But he didn’t say anything else. He just patted my hand and gestured to the basket overflowing with fall flowers. “There’s a card in there for you, honey.”

  “Thanks, Bob.” I managed not to roll my eyes as he sauntered back to his office whistling all the way.

  Tansy barely managed to wait until Bob was out of earshot before her words just seemed to explode from her lips. “Bob told his sister that he would be happy to sponsor his niece Chloe for her license here in St. Louis. He also told Mallory that you would be at Chloe’s disposal to show her everything she needed to know about the office and about selling real estate in general. He called you the best administrative assistant he’d ever had and said he couldn’t imagine not having you here as his admin.”

  For just a moment I was almost certain that I had misheard that. Maybe it was a compliment. Maybe Bob had meant that he would never run the risk of me going elsewhere in St. Louis to sell real estate? Maybe he was willing to do anything to keep me here at this office in any capacity. This was positive. Right?