Tangled: Contemporary Romance Trilogy

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Chapter Seven

  Kevin

  I couldn’t get Eleanor off my mind for the rest of the day. I was still imagining her living in her parents’ old place by herself when it was time to leave for the day. I did not miss the fact that Eleanor’s light was the only one still on inside the building. I wasn’t about to go down there and tell her that it was time to go home and eat something besides a salad. If she honestly had enough work to do that she needed to stay until six o’clock or later, that was her business. It wasn’t like I was requiring her to stay there.

  Ruth had left long ago. She had informed me that she and the other administrative staff got there at seven o’clock and left at four because that was the schedule that Mr. Moss had required them to keep. I felt like she was probably warning me that this was the schedule that they expected to keep. I didn’t care to tackle that mountain just yet. I was actually hoping that Eleanor would be willing to help me understand exactly what the admins did and whether or not they were essential or could be pared away bit by bit to trim the fat around this very fatty office hierarchy.

  The drive home took the typical amount of time. In other words, forever. I felt my brain going back over every single bit of the conversation I’d had today with Eleanor. I could not say why this was. I didn’t even know why I cared. I just felt as though the idea of her trying to raise Lena by herself in her dead parents’ house was probably the worst punishment that anyone like Eleanor could suffer through.

  I exited the highway and drove deeper into Tower Grove. I found myself following a very old route as though my brain had decided to do a drive by of Eleanor’s old house regardless of how the rest of me might feel about it.

  I had first come down this street as a sassy fifteen year old with a lawnmower looking for new customers. Eleanor’s father had been one of my first and my longest. I don’t think the guy had any idea that I would eventually start dating his daughter or that we would become engaged, but he was certainly supportive of the notion when it happened.

  The house was a typical eighties style one-level ranch home with mixed red brick and white vinyl siding. There was a big picture window in the front room and small, high set windows in the bedrooms and kitchen. It looked exactly the same. Neat. Tidy. Not a single leaf dared mar the wet lawn and there was black mulch carefully placed around the shrubs that sat in front of the raised cement front porch.

  This was a slab house. The kind where you had to run to the hall bathroom and hide in the bathtub when one of the plentiful spring and fall tornados came through the area. My parents had an old limestone basement for that purpose. Now everything had a basement. But I could remember Eleanor talking about her parents placing her and her sister in that bathtub with a mattress over their heads during the worst of the storms.

  I cruised on past the house, turned right at the corner, and kept going. The neighborhood still looked pretty much the same, just older. It had been spared some of the neglect and financial depression that had struck other areas of Tower Grove. By the time I got back to my parents’ place I was feeling damned curious about what had really happened over at 1020 Midland Street.

  “You’re home!” my mother said excitedly as I walked into the house through the kitchen door.

  My shoes were wet. Everything was wet. It wasn’t like the rain had quit during the day. It hadn’t even tapered off. My dad still seemed to be camped out in front of the television in his recliner. I idly wondered if that kind of long term sitting would net him bedsores.

  “Do you want me to put my wet shoes in the utility room?” I asked Mom.

  Why this question made her tear up I will never know. “That would be lovely, honey. Thank you so much! What a thoughtful boy.”

  A thoughtful boy? What was I? Seven? And why was this a big deal? And then on my way around the corner to the utility room, which also opened into the garage, I saw my sister’s shoes littering the bottom of the stairs. And when I said littering, I meant littering. As in there were at least four pairs of various styles of shoes just dumped there as though Thayla kicked them off before going up to her room and then forgot their existence. What the hell? She was forty-two years old and lived with her aging parents. Wasn’t there a point where you did not expect your mother to pick up after you?

  “What’s the deal with Thayla’s shoe storage issue?” I asked my mother in what I hoped was a light tone of voice when I walked back into the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator and pulled a soda out. I had every intention of helping my parents with the groceries while I was living here. Did Thayla help?

  “Oh, you know. Thayla’s always had a problem picking up after herself. It hasn’t exactly changed since she turned about twelve.” Mom sounded as though she were working really hard to sound lighthearted about that.

  Mother was stirring something on the stove. Spaghetti sauce. Wow. Fancy. The smell coming from the oven was probably buttery homemade garlic bread. My dad didn’t like that sort of food. We must be having company.

  “No wonder you’re excited about her and her new husband getting their own place and making a mess that they have to pick up themselves,” I mused.

  Something in my mom’s expression tipped me off. I don’t know what it was, but I was suddenly very, very aware of a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew Brock Mortensen. I knew what Eleanor had told me about his status as an adult. That information did not suggest that Brock would be much of a provider. So… How was that going to work?

  “Mom,” I began quietly. “Please tell me that Thayla is not planning to live here with her new husband after the wedding.”

  My mom started stirring a bit too enthusiastically. “It’s just for a few months. You know. Until they get on their feet. It’s hard for a young couple starting out these days.”

  “Mom!” I pinched the bridge of my nose. I felt a huge headache coming on and didn’t want to think about what was causing it or how it might go away. “That might be true when they’re in their teens or twenties. Maybe even early thirties if they had a ton of school debt. But Thayla is forty-two years old! She should already be on her feet!”

  “Don’t be so hard on your sister,” my mother muttered. “She’s just a late bloomer. I’m just happy she’s getting married.”

  So happy that my mother was going to play maid to my forty-two-year-old sister, her thirty-seven-year-old alcoholic criminally lazy husband, and probably to any children they were foolish enough to bring into this world. I could not deal with this anymore right now. I was going to go in search of my sister and rip her head off.

  “Tell me about Mr. and Mrs. Schulte,” I barked at my mother. Then I cleared my throat. “Please? I’m sorry. I spoke with Eleanor briefly today and she told me that they passed on.”

  My mother swung around so quickly that she nearly burned her hand on the open flame gas burner. “You want to talk about Eleanor?” Then my mother’s frown deepened. “Wait a second. You spoke to Eleanor? Why? How? I was under the impression that you had no interest at all in ever seeing her again while you were in town.”

  “It’s complicated,” I told my mother lamely. Why hadn’t I realized that I would have to explain the whole thing if I asked for information? I cleared my throat. “Oddly enough, Eleanor works for the company that I’ve been sent here to, uh, reorganize.”

  “Oh my word!” Mother gasped. “You’re going to have to fire her?”

  “What?” I wondered where that had come from. “No! That’s not going to be an issue. Eleanor is probably the most efficient and productive employee in the entire firm.”

  “Oh. Well then.” My mother pursed her lips as though she were deciding what version of events to give me. That wasn’t a particularly good feeling. I just wanted the version. Not the glossed over one, the slanted one, or the one that would somehow paint Eleanor into a martyr who needed rescuing. “I suppose it wasn’t all that long after you left town when Wanda Schulte had that heart attack. I swear it was probably all the yelling she did at her
husband and that poor Lena. The woman was never satisfied with that girl. I swear.”

  I noticed that my mother never said that Wanda wasn’t satisfied with Eleanor. Just Lena. Most people might say that Lena was to be pitied. I felt like Eleanor was probably the one to deserve sympathy. The woman was such a freaking peacemaker that she’d probably spent her life trying to make her mom and Lena get along.

  “It was all quite sudden. And poor Louis. He just couldn’t cope. You know how it is with men.” My mother shook her head as though I should know exactly how it was with men since I was one. “They just can’t function. And Eleanor had this great job so she was supporting him and her sister right along with her father’s pension check. I swear that girl has been taking care of Lena since birth.”

  “I would agree,” I told my mother. “But I understand that Lena is marrying a very wealthy man and is extremely happy.”

  “And working in real estate,” my mother added. “I heard that too. But you have to wonder. Wanda nagged both of those girls have to death wanting them to do better for themselves.”

  There was something in my mother’s manner that bit deep. “What aren’t you saying, Mom?”

  “Nothing.” Mom went back to her sauce, suddenly paying close attention to the stuff. “Nothing at all. Why would you ask that?”

  “Because I know you?” I had a horrible feeling that I could already guess what it was she was trying not to say. “And I’ve never heard you talk so negatively about Wanda Schulte before either. So how about you just say it out loud and we can stop pretending that this isn’t what you’re thinking.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “So, you’re not still angry with Wanda Schulte for managing to convince her daughter not to marry me at the last minute?” I prodded my mother with the words that I’d been afraid to say for at least fifteen years.

  “Who told you that? Did Eleanor say that?” My mother sucked in a huge breath of air and seemed as though she were about to cry. “It was awful! Just awful! That horrible woman convincing her daughter to run away from the church and then coming out pretty as you please and smug to boot in order to tell us all that the wedding was off!”

  I don’t know what I felt inside at that moment. A lot of things. There was a healthy sense of disbelief, but it was tempered by a feeling of just being glad that the wondering was over. And maybe I felt glad too that it hadn’t been Eleanor’s decision. At least not entirely. “I don’t care what Wanda Schulte did, Mom.”

  “I do!” my mother yelped.

  She looked so forlorn that I reached out and pulled her close for a hug. The woman felt strangely frail in my arms. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d hugged my mother. It had been years. I loved her. I did. And I didn’t want her to feel like she should have done something to defend me from the apparently spiteful mother of a girl I had been in love with all those years before.

  “Mom, it all worked out for the best. If Wanda didn’t want me marrying Eleanor she would have made us both miserable.” I considered this statement. It was no doubt true. There weren’t a lot of things worse than a really bitchy mother-in-law. “You would have been angry with yourself for not being able to change Wanda’s mind. It would have been a mess. Please don’t beat yourself up about this. All right? This is all for the best. I’m sure it is.”

  “Are you sure?” My mother gazed up at me teary eyed. “Are you happy, Kevvie? Are you really?”

  For crying out loud! I sighed. “Yes. Mom. I’m happier now than I would have been if I had married Eleanor when I was twenty-two years old.” This was marginally true. I didn’t have any way to know what life would have been like if Eleanor and I had gotten married.

  “You two were such a sweet couple,” my mother whispered. “That girl loved you. I know that she did. I just don’t understand what happened!”

  “Mom. The sauce…”

  “Oh my goodness!” My mother launched into homemaker mode and at least this topic was averted for the moment.

  I watched Mom taste the hot red sauce before humming and muttering to herself as she added a few things here and a few things there. She was totally preoccupied with that now. But I wasn’t. I could not help but think that if someone had asked a week ago if I was better off not being married to Eleanor I would have said yes without hesitation. Now though, after seeing her and speaking with her a bit, I might actually have to think about it. And what did that say about me? Was I starting to soften toward the woman? Was I falling prey to the same feelings that had gotten me the first time I’d seen Eleanor Schulte as a teenager? Maybe I was.

  I have to get out of this stupid city…

  Chapter Eight

  Eleanor

  If I made a list of things that I believe are monumentally stupid, bridal showers would be at the top of the list. Unfortunately, this did not stop me from getting an e-vite to my sister’s bridal shower to be held by one of her old friends at the real estate office where she used to work as an administrative assistant. We were four days into this supposed merger, which was more of a straight-up sale turned hostile takeover. There was no time to waste on frivolous things. But the hostess, Tansy Economides, has lived in St. Louis all her life and grew up not far from the rest of us in Tower Grove. I should not have made time for this event even if it was my sister’s bridal shower. I was in the middle of trying to decide whether or not I would help or hurt my fellow St. Louis Software Staffing Services employees by putting in a good word for them. How could I actually be considering attending this thing? I was out of my mind. But I could not quit thinking about the worry that Kevin Landau had expressed about his sister’s involvement with Brock Mortensen. If my sister had been involved with that bastard I would have been freaking out. It made me want to help him. Even if that made me an idiot.

  Which was why I was standing at the front entrance of a little apartment complex clubhouse instead of sitting at my desk still trying to contact every potential hiring candidate our company had been looking at recently to tell them that there would be a pause in the process, but that it had no effect on their suitability as a potential employee. Okay. So maybe being at a bridal shower was way better than making those awkward calls.

  “Eleanor!” Tansy answered the door with a huge smile on her face. “Come in! I wasn’t sure you’d make it. Lena said you’re absolutely slammed at work. So glad you’re here though! Come in, come in!”

  Tansy ushered me into the clubhouse. I could hear everyone else upstairs. There were lots of really girly noises that made my stomach knot. I followed Tansy up a short flight of stairs. Tansy is very short. I felt like a giant even climbing the stairs behind her. My sister sometimes refers to Tansy as disgustingly adorable because she looks like the heroine in one of those Greek rom-coms. She has silky dark brown curls that hang most of the way down her back and enormous brown eyes. She is curvy and cute, but honestly I don’t see any reason for Lena to be envious.

  I spotted my sister as soon as I reached the top of the stairs leading to a cozy loft area that boasted floor-to-ceiling windows, cut crystal chandeliers, and even a little kitchenette area where there was a long counter currently covered in sweets and pitchers of Mimosas sitting beside tall champagne glasses just ready to start the drinking.

  Thankfully the room hadn’t been decorated in a steampunk theme. The only hint of a bridal shower theme at all was the white frothy cake with a little bride and groom atop it. Lena was holding court at the back of the room regaling one of her older friends with tales of how she had unexpectedly met her future Mr. Prince Charming.

  Lena has the same brown hair I do. She just keeps hers long. The wavy mass hangs more than halfway down her back and today she had pulled up the front and left a good amount to fall becomingly around her shoulders. Her eyes are blue though. It’s something I’ve been jealous of our whole life. I got the brown eyes and Lena’s are the most incredible shade of aqua blue that you could imagine possible. When she laughs they get
all sparkly. And Lena is always ready to laugh. She’s curvy and athletic and she can eat a beastly amount of food and never seem to gain a substantial amount of weight. She goes to the gym, which I abhor, and she loves yoga. My sister is outgoing and vivacious and she will probably get her happily ever after just because she is too stubborn to accept anything else.

  The bitch. Ugh! I waved to Lena and she barely managed to stop talking long enough to wave back. I felt like a tenth wheel. I was just here because I was the sister. It was kind of humiliating. But I tried to remember that I wasn’t here to make nice with the bride or her friends. I was here to get information.

  That required a second look around the room. Tansy had gone to a different high school than we had. But at least five of the other women present had gone to our school. Of the five, three of them were either Lena’s age or younger. But Alice Phipps had been a year ahead of me in school. That put her closer to Kevin. Plus, she was already beckoning me closer to her chair. That was always a bonus.

  I picked up a folding chair and plunked it down on the carpeted floor right beside Alice Phipps. “I haven’t seen you in ages, Alice. How have you been?”

  “I’ve been busy,” Alice said quickly. Then her eyes grew big and excited. “But I heard that Kevin Landau is back in town. Is that true? What could bring him back to St. Louis after being gone for fifteen years? That’s insane!”

  Well, that had been rather unexpected. But maybe I could still turn this situation in the right direction if I were careful. I swallowed because an unexpected lump had appeared in my throat after hearing her say Kevin Landau. “Kevin is back,” I confirmed with a slow nod. “He’s just in town for a short while because his Kansas City based company bought an office here in St. Louis. I’m sure he’ll go home after it’s finished. He didn’t seem to have any interest in sticking around.”