Tangled: Contemporary Romance Trilogy

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Yes. A suit. The oily real estate agent who had been hitting on and hitting it with every female in his office was wearing a black suit with silver buttons and a royal blue dress shirt open at the collar. There was a bit of graying chest hair visible in the vee of his dress shirt. It made him look like some creeper from a strip club over on the East Side.

  “Lena, you need to excuse yourself from these proceedings.” Bob spoke in a very loud and clear voice that not only carried throughout the not-so-big conference room, but seemed to pound unnecessarily against the windows and walls. “I can’t imagine what would possess you to show up here this morning.”

  “That would be my request,” I told Bob without missing a beat. I had asked Lena here. Like hell I was just going to stand there and let Bob run her over with the proverbial bus. “I want her here. Lena is the one who found this house. She arranged the inspections and the repairs. She knows more about this deal than you do. I want her here. And when I’m the one spending one point two million dollars, I expect to get what I want. Is that understood?”

  The title company girl pressed her lips into a tight line and studied the page in front of her as though it had just become the most fascinating thing on the planet. The other real estate agent looked as though she were trying hard not to laugh. I got the feeling that she didn’t like Bob all that much.

  Fortunately for all of us, Lena is an absolute natural at this stuff. She stepped around me and pulled out a chair at the table. “Hello, Sherisse.” Lena held her hand out to the other agent. “So good to see you again.”

  “Lena.” Sherisse dipped her head and returned the handshake. “Thank you so much for handling all of the paperwork on this sale. My seller is really impressed with how quickly you got this sale through the inspection phase.”

  “Of course.” Lena slid her gaze toward me as I sat down. “Mr. Alvarez was very eager to get moved and since the house was already empty I could only assume that your seller wanted it to close quickly as well.”

  I cleared my throat. I hadn’t actually realized how much was involved in this whole closing thing and that made me want to at least mention the fact that these people had pretty much turned the city upside down just to get me what I wanted. “I also want to say that I’m appreciative of your seller’s willingness to negotiate on the cost of the repairs.”

  There was a heavy pause in the room. The title company employee seemed to freeze right there in her seat. She had been looking at what I had assumed was a checklist of items that needed to be signed. Now her pen was poised above the first item on the agenda as though she never expected to cross it off. What had happened?

  Lena seemed to have the same thought. She looked at Bob. He had a checklist in front of his seat at the table but had essentially come empty handed to this closing. Flopping back down in his chair, he pasted that oily smile on his face and then pointed that condescending attitude right at me.

  “Son, that’s not exactly what you agreed to,” Bob told me with a toothy grin that begged for a good punch in the face.

  “Excuse me?” I felt my mind slipping back into that business mode where I negotiated million dollar employment contracts for twenty or thirty IT professionals at a time. “I read through the documents last night. I signed a document specifying that the driveway repair, the sump pump repair, the pool updates, and the drainage issue in the rear corner of the property that had caused the sump pump issue to begin with had been repaired at the seller’s expense because they were considered a lack of maintenance on the seller’s part.”

  “That’s true for everything but the driveway.” Bob’s shark grin was getting impossibly wider. Soon enough his face would swallow up pretty much everything else in the room. “When it comes to street creep, well that’s just something that happens. So you footed the bill for that repair.”

  “Excuse me?” I laid my hand flat on the tabletop and wondered if they could see that my knuckles were turning white. “That was a ten thousand dollar repair.”

  “Exactly.” Bob bobbed his head. His hair didn’t move. It was glued in place. I wondered if his wife had kicked him out of the house yet or not. “Which is why you could hardly expect the seller to pay for it.”

  There was a roaring in my ears. That was not what I had agreed to. I hadn’t read the documents that I signed. That’s true. But Zelda would never have let me sign something saying I was going to pay ten grand in repairs. And I trusted that Lena wouldn’t have done that either. “Then I’m no longer willing to pay asking price.”

  Sherisse was fidgeting in her chair. The title company girl—she had to have a name, but I had no idea what it might be. The poor woman looked as though she were ready to bolt. What was going on here? It felt underhanded and I had been involved in enough shady dealings to know when someone was trying to pull one over on me.

  I turned to the obvious source of the bullshit. “Bob, would you care to explain to me how I came to be paying ten thousand dollars for a driveway repair that I was assured would be covered by the seller?”

  Bob actually picked up his hand and pointed his index finger at Lena. “You should just go ahead and ask your little call girl. She’s the one who said you would sign whatever was put in front of you without even reading it.”

  I stared at Bob. His expression was completely smooth. There was even just a hint of a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. Did he honestly believe that I would believe that Lena was part of some scam to get ten thousand dollars out of me for some bullshit driveway repair? I didn’t believe for one second that Lena would do that. It wasn’t her style. It wasn’t her nature. It just wasn’t her. The woman was as straightforward as it got. No. And it pissed me off to no end that Bob Abernathy was just going to sit there in his chair and try to pull a fast one on me.

  “Wow,” I said quietly. I shook my head and then I turned my glare on Bob. I didn’t hide my thoughts from him and I reveled in the way that he started to squirm. The ass needed to squirm. “That is just unbelievable.” I turned and pointed to Sherisse. “So, are you in on this too? Or are you just taking his word for it when you know that it isn’t true?”

  “It’s just a driveway repair,” Sherisse said, trying to keep her voice calm and even but failing when it cracked over the word repair. “If you wanted the repair, you should be responsible for it yourself. It’s not my seller’s problem.”

  There was a big binder sitting in the center of the table. It was the inspection report. I wasn’t really sure why it was there, but when Lena went for it without a moment’s hesitation I realized that it was for reference.

  “Sherisse, that’s not true.” Lena’s words were gently chiding but not rude or aggressive. She found the part of the inspection report that she wanted and flipped the book around for Sherisse to see. “Right under this section about basement issues and the sump pump problem that had resulted in foundation cracking and leaking, the inspector details the effects of the street creep that has happened to the house over the last decade since its construction.”

  “That’s so your buyer will know that he needs to keep on top of the problem,” Sherisse said lamely.

  Lena rolled her eyes. “Oh, like your seller did during the decade that they’ve had the property since it was built? Come on, Sherisse. This statement proves that the street creep was ultimately responsible for the leaking around the foundation in the basement walls and the fact that the sump pump was having to work overtime because of poor drain tile installation in the corner of the yard that prevented proper draining of rainwater away from the foundation.”

  It was Greek to me. Or rather I understood exactly what Lena was saying. But the point she was trying to make was a little hazy. Still. She had just gone to bat for me. This was why I had wanted her here and I was not sorry. I could count on this woman. We actually made a damn good team. I wondered what she would be like in a boardroom with a bunch of corporate executives trying to squeeze the best IT personnel deal from me that they could. I had a feeling
Lena would knock them out of the park.

  Chapter Thirty

  Lena

  I kept my gaze on Sherisse. She was the one who would get me the honest answer in the end. Something underhanded was going on and I knew that it started with Bob. I just wasn’t sure how far along it went. And yes. It was just ten thousand dollars. Ten thousand dollars! When the asking price of a house was over a million dollars, ten grand became play money. It was less than a third of what each of these agents would get paid or their part in this drama. But that really wasn’t the point.

  I had never been so determined to stand up for a buyer’s rights as I was right now. The second that Bob Abernathy had pointed that finger at me and said I was the one who told them to stick it to Mr. Alvarez, I thought the whole thing was done. I figured Damion would tell me to get out of the room and out of his life and never come back. These three real estate professionals were telling him that I had promised them he would pay an extra ten grand on top of the asking price, but he never doubted me for a second. I could see it on his face. The feeling that gave me was so over the top that I was almost giddy with the need to fix this. Right. Now.

  “Sherisse?” I prompted. “What did you promise the seller? Come on. Be honest. I’m going to assume that they already closed.”

  “An hour ago, in Chantilly,” Sherisse admitted. Her skinny little throat bobbed as she swallowed with an obvious case of nerves. “It’s done.”

  “No. It isn’t.” I reached for the closing paperwork in front of Daria. She was one of the younger employees here at Midway Land &Title, but that didn’t matter. She knew that I knew what she had in that packet. “Daria. Could I please see the addendums to the contract that Mr. Alvarez signed?”

  For just a second I thought that Daria was going to refuse. She bit her lip and that was when I knew that she knew! That was it. I snatched that file from her and started flipping through pages until I found exactly what I wanted. It was the part of the contract that happens post inspection when there are addendums that covers repairs. There were two sheets that I wanted. And I knew exactly what Bob had done the second I saw the sheets.

  “Damion, is this your signature?” I set the two sheets in front of him. “The first page is the estimate for the repairs on the pool, the sump pump, the foundation, and the drainage issue. The work is ongoing, but the contractors have been paid for the bids that they submitted. In this first page, we see that the seller agrees to pay for the costs out of pocket.”

  Damion put his finger just below the signature line where his elegant scrawl took up half the page. “This is my signature,” he confirmed.

  “This second page,” I said loudly, “is an addition to the addendum that states you are going to reimburse the seller for ten thousand dollars of the cost of repairs to the driveway.”

  “I didn’t sign that.” Damion snorted and pushed the paper away. “Look at the signature! That’s not even mine. It’s not even a left-handed signature! The slant is all wrong.”

  And that was the kicker that Bob probably never even considered. Sherisse was now looking green. No doubt she’d suspected the double cross. Maybe Bob had even told her. It would have been like him. Pull as many people into the scheme as possible to increase the damage if he got caught and force other people to cover for him in case they could be caught as implicit accomplices.

  “Bob,” I said with no lack of sarcasm in my voice. I shoved the falsely signed page at him. “Care to explain this?”

  “You did it.”

  “No. I didn’t.” I wanted to punch him in his oily face. “I terminated my employment three days before the date on that thing. You think I falsified the signature, post dated it, and then quit?”

  “Makes perfect sense to me!” He sounded expansive. “You were always doing stuff like that.”

  “Are you out of your head?” I looked at both Sherisse and Daria. “I think all of us want this deal to close.”

  “Yes.” Sherisse sounded panicky. “But I can’t go back to my seller and tell them there was a ten-thousand-dollar boo boo! They already ponied up forty-plus grand for the repairs! They need their payout from the house!”

  “So how about you guys take the ten grand out of Bob’s commission since he’s the asshole that lied and falsified the signature?” I suggested this casually, but I think we all knew that it was a punishment move and purposeful as hell on my part. “I think that’s fair. Do you guys think that’s fair?”

  “What?” Bob’s voice was filled with outrage. “You can’t do that! It would be stealing from me!”

  “Stealing? Come on now, Bob? You were trying to steal from Damion. You just got caught!” I set my jaw and stared at him. Eleanor always calls this my mulish look. “How about you do this and the rest of us won’t call the state real estate board on your ass?”

  “You bitch!” Bob muttered. He rubbed a hand down his face. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve been to me?”

  “Do you have any idea how many lies you told to me over the last four years?” I snarled right back. “You’re lucky that I don’t make you do this and then report you anyway. I still could! You falsified a signature on a document and tried to make your client pay out an additional ten grand, Bob. You would never get another client in the region!”

  “She’s right, Bob,” Sherisse told him quietly. “I suggest you take the deal and walk away. We’ll write up the new addendum and have you and Mr. Alvarez sign it and that will be the end of it. We can close and I can hand these keys to your buyer.”

  Sherisse was lightly touching a ring of more than a few keys sitting on top of a manila folder that no doubt contained all of the other necessary information for Damion to take possession of his new home.

  The amount of pressure in the conference room right now was incredible. This was a one-point-two million dollar sale. At a commission of seven percent to be shared equally between both seller and buyer agents, that was forty-two thousand bucks a piece! Sure. It wasn’t the one hundred and eighty grand split that the two of them could have made off of a bigger sale. But it wasn’t chump change either.

  “Bob,” I said quietly. “Don’t make me call your wife.”

  There was a collective gasp. Yes. It had been a bit of a low blow on my part. But I wanted to remind the slimy old bastard that I had his balls in a vice. He was a liar and a cheater and I had stood up for him!

  Oh, how that burned! I couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer. “I told Damion this morning that I didn’t need to be here. I told him that you had his back and that you were a good agent. I told him that the closing table was where you really did your best work. I said that about you and this is what you try to pull?” I was so mad right now that I almost wanted to tell Damion to walk away. But he loved that house. It was ridiculously huge, but he loved it and it had all of the security features that he needed. “You absolutely suck, Bob Abernathy!”

  He was wide eyed and looking more than a little uncomfortable. I didn’t care. I pointed to Sherisse. “Draw it up. Upscale Bob had better do what’s right for once or he’s going to find himself on the cover of St. Louis Lockup Weekly in the morning!”

  Damion reached over and lightly touched my hand. Then he nodded to Sherisse. “Let’s do it like this and I’ll pay the asking price. If Bob refuses, I’m going to walk and none of you will get shit because I’ll go find a for-sale-by-owner property and let Lena do the paperwork for me. I’d rather pay her the eighty-grand commission out of my own pocket.” He glared at Bob. “And I can afford to do it.”

  Sherisse glowered at Bob. Then she nodded to Daria and held out her hand for a fresh addendum page. “Bob, are you going to agree or are you going to cost me this sale? Because I’m not going to just smile and laugh this off and neither will my seller.”

  “Fine!” Bob suddenly seemed to explode. He leaped up from the table and started to pace back and forth behind the conference table. “You’re all just trying to screw me over. That’s right! Just get some more
money out of Bob! He’s going through a divorce. He won’t miss the cash anyway because his wife is taking him to the cleaners thanks to someone telling her that there have been a few missteps in my marriage!”

  I felt my mouth pop open. I think everyone else’s did too. We were all staring at Bob as though we expected his head to start spinning around. Was he crying? I would swear that there were some sobs coming out as he muttered and fluttered and essentially lost his freaking mind right there in the conference room.

  Daria slipped out to go and print off the addendum page so it was nice and official. Sherisse stared first at Bob and then looked at me. “You quit. Nobody ever thought that you would.”

  “He wasn’t going to sponsor me for my license,” I managed to tell her over the sound of Bob’s whining.

  Damion reached down and took my hand. He gave it a little squeeze. I felt as though my heart was dancing. Damion had stood up for me in a situation where I never would have expected someone to do so. He didn’t know me that well and yet he trusted my character so much that he was willing to believe I hadn’t tried to further myself and my position in my company at the expense of a near stranger. That was—well, it was just something special.

  Daria came hustling back into the room. No doubt she’d been out there telling everyone who would listen that she had a closing story they would never believe. Bob might not get reported to the authorities for his underhanded and illegal dealings, but his reputation was never going to recover from his decision to value ten thousand dollars above his client’s interests.

  “Here you go.” Daria set the addendum in front of Damion. “Sign here and this assures the seller that they will be getting the reimbursement for the repairs from the commission portion of the sale.”