Tangled: Contemporary Romance Trilogy

by Dee Bridgnorth

  To her credit, she looked more interested than upset by my suggestion. “They are? How do you get them?”

  “You can go online actually. Find his case on casenet or something and look up the case number. Then you can ask for a copy of the transcripts. If you find the police reports it might tell you what you need to know too.”

  “You think that he’s lying to me,” she said dully. “About his innocence?”

  I wondered if this was the moment I had been waiting for. The one where I could slide in something else about a man lying and get information for myself. My palms were sweating and my heart was racing as I searched for the right words. “I used to think that a good man didn’t lie. Then I fell in love with someone that I honestly believed was the best man of them all.”

  “My brother,” she said flatly.

  I lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “I guess. But the day I was supposed to walk down the aisle someone told me a horrible tale about him. They said that he was the worst liar of them all. They said that he had fathered a baby with another woman and that he’d been hiding if from me.”

  “Oh. My. God!” Thayla whispered. Her eyes were huge and she looked almost ready to fall face down in her leftover pile of dumplings. “Who would say such a thing?”

  “According to my mother? It was your mother.” I held up my hand because I could see her about to take a breath and start arguing. “Stop. I know. All right? Don’t think that it hasn’t occurred to me about a million times that there was no proof. I took the word of my mother without any proof because she was my mom. That’s how we’re wired, right? And maybe, as my dear sainted mother pointed out about a thousand times over the last years of her life, I was already having my own doubts if I didn’t even take my worries to Kevin and ask him for the truth.”

  “Oh.” Thayla whispered the word. I saw her throat bob as she swallowed. “And now you’re suggesting to me that I actually have a record that I could look up. I could see if there were really lies being told about Brock, or if he was lying to me.”

  “Exactly.” I nodded at her over the remains of our meal. I think we’d both eaten our way through way more food than two women ever have a right to consume, but what did it matter? “You’ve got a chance to actually find out before you get to the church. You can seek out the truth and have a little bit of time and perspective to make your decision.”

  “I think I’ve been avoiding it,” Thayla whispered.

  I pursed my lips. It was tempting to tell her that it was her common sense knocking on the door. But that wasn’t going to be productive here. “It sounds like you already have doubts.”

  “Who wouldn’t after this much time of him never doing what he promises? How many times does a man have to break a promise or tell a lie before you start wondering if he was always lying?” Thayla exhaled a sigh and then poured herself more tea. She sipped quietly and stared over my shoulder toward the front door of the restaurant. “What do you think would be a good way to test him?”

  I shrugged. This wasn’t my choice. I swallowed. I knew what I wanted to tell her to do, but I couldn’t begin to absorb her consequences if she actually went through with it. “I can’t tell you that. You’re the one who knows him and you know if he’s going to be dangerous or not.”

  “That’s the question now, isn’t it?” Her expression was bleak. She was afraid. I could tell. It broke my heart. And it also made me a little angry with Kevin and their family. Did nobody realize that Thayla was going through this?

  “If it were me,” I said in a low voice. “I would pay half the rent when it’s due next. Just half. Maybe don’t pay the utilities at all. Don’t give him grocery money. Don’t give him anything. Just tell him your hours got cut or you had to help out your parents because you’ve been mooching off them.”

  “I don’t mooch,” Thayla said sharply.

  I waved my hand. “I know that. But any man who gets pissed at you for not giving him money because he would rather you mooch than be a stand up woman isn’t worth keeping, Thayla.”

  I let those words sink in for a moment. She knew I was right. I could see it on her face. I just hoped the rest of us were going to be strong enough to stand up for what was right when it came time to pay the piper. Because if the reports that I’d heard were in any way true, we were in for one hell of a fist fight.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Kevin

  Pacing. Pacing. Pacing. I’d gotten no sleep. I could not even relax long enough to sit down. I felt wired. I couldn’t tell you how much coffee I’d had. The office was still empty. I didn’t even know what time it was. I’d come back after having dinner with my mother the previous night. The old mouse-eaten cardboard box was still sitting in the middle of my desk. My notes from the call with Todd and Dan Hopper were still beside the phone. It was as if there were just too many things swirling around in my head. It was pretty much like circling the drain. Soon enough something would pull the plug and everything would just go down the trap and that would be it. My life would be over. My career would be in the sewer. That would be that and I could finally stop worrying.

  I moved toward the window. The gray clouds were still thick and heavy overhead. The rain had briefly stopped. Soon enough it would start up again. People were pulling into the parking lot. Their lights cut through the bleak early morning gray creating shadows that seemed to swirl around the trees and their naked branches. The blacktop parking lot itself was covered in dead leaves. I wondered what time it really was. Or what day. I wasn’t even conscious of that fact. Thanksgiving was coming up soon. I don’t know why, but I had set that as a personal goal of when I wanted to be done with this project and out of here. At the moment I could not see that happening.

  “Knock, knock.”

  Eleanor’s voice was so welcome that I nearly lost control of my face and showed her exactly how welcome. At the last second I was able to control the size of my smile. I hoped it at least looked somewhat normal and not maniacal.

  Eleanor walked just far enough through the doorway to be officially inside my office. “I would have spoken with your secretary—oh, excuse me—your administrative assistant before coming into your office, but I heard a rumor somewhere that you fired her last night.”

  She looked good. Different. What was it that made her look different? I couldn’t quite tell. She was still rail thin. But her hair was down again. It fell in soft waves around her elegant face. Eleanor had always had extremely delicate bone structure. Her face was almost elfin. Narrow cheeks, pointed chin, and a cute nose with beautiful high cheekbones, but for once she had color in her cheeks. There was a flush to her previously pallid complexion. Her brown eyes were bright with thoughts and ideas that I could not begin to guess at.

  “What?” Eleanor lifted her narrow arched eyebrows. “Was that rumor inaccurate? Because I’m pretty sure that Ruth Powers would not be currently cleaning out the administrative staff if you hadn’t fired her.”

  Eleanor’s words suddenly hit an actual shred of leftover intellect in my brain. “I’m sorry. Did you say cleaning out the administrative staff?”

  “Yup.” Eleanor gestured to my laptop. “Did you check your email this morning? The email chain I was privy to suggested that there would be a dozen or more resignations in your inbox this morning. Those girls like to stick together.”

  I hadn’t checked my email yet. But for some reason, Eleanor’s words didn’t actually bother me. I felt a laugh bubbling up in my chest and I wondered if Eleanor could see that I was cracking. I sank into my chair and braced my elbows on the desktop.

  “Are you all right?” She took a seat in the single overstuffed leather chair on the opposite side of the desk. I noticed she was careful to perch on the edge as to not to fall into the thing. “I’m getting kind of worried about you, Kevin Landau.”

  “Is that right?” I rubbed my knuckle over my eye. “Can I tell you something? Honestly?”

  She made a vague gesture to the box still sitting center st
age on my desk. “As long as it doesn’t have anything to do with the past. Sure. Shoot.”

  She was dressed differently too. What had made me notice that of all things? But she was! Her skirt was ankle length and she wore calf high brown boots that laced up the outside and looked pleasantly impervious to the weather. Her sweater was beige and it looked softer than duck down. It draped prettily around her narrow frame giving her body just a little more shape than her usual straight lined clothing. She looked like a million bucks, an elegant executive or a cosmopolitan woman that could be in charge of just about any situation that she encountered.

  “Eleanor,” I began softly. “You should know that Dan and Todd Hopper sent me here to St. Louis to fail.”

  “Excuse me?” Two lines appeared between her brows. “That doesn’t make any sense. This buyout has been on the radar here in St. Louis for a long time now. Let’s just say that Damion Alvarez was under pretty heavy scrutiny for months thanks to this. That idiotic reporter from Gateway Business Weekly was speculating for ages that Midwest IT was buying out the Gateway IT office here in St. Louis and Alvarez was moving his home office to the beltway. I don’t understand why your bosses would want this to fail. What purpose would there be in it?”

  “I’m not sure.” I felt like an idiot. Eleanor could make it sound so incredibly reasonable. It made me wonder if I was just being paranoid. “All I know is that I never knew that I was coming here until they informed me that it was happening. And mind you, that was on stage at a company function.”

  “Oh. Well, shit.” Eleanor bit her lip. “So they informed you they were moving into this market and they expected you to do it from the helm of a company that was basically stuck in the nineties?”

  “Exactly!” So she did get it. Maybe I wasn’t going nuts after all. Of course, I couldn’t stop staring at her and thinking to myself that she looked so incredibly pretty. That wasn’t exactly the best way to get something productive done, but maybe right now it was all I could ask for. “So here I am. Mind you, Dan Hopper has always hated me. He doesn’t like my methods.”

  Eleanor pressed her lips into a line. Her eyes were dancing though. What was that about?

  “I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I can just imagine what you might be like as a recruiter. That’s all. Remember when that other kid in the neighborhood tried to start up his lawn care business?”

  “Ralph Comstock.” Funny that I could remember that after all these years. “He was going to snipe my business.”

  “Right. So what did you do?”

  “I wrote up my first lawn care contract and had all of my clients sign it. I even gave them a discount if they signed up for both lawn care and snow removal services.” I felt like that was a reasonable response all things considered.

  Eleanor snorted and shook her head. “Exactly, you squeezed him out of the market. So I would imagine that any recruiter not willing to go out there and hit the pavement and the cold calls and bring in about a dozen permanent placements a month is going to look like a lazy useless bastard to you.”

  “Oh. I see.” I couldn’t exactly argue with her there. “So I have high standards. I notice you’re no different.”

  “Of course not.” She made a face. “We make money on commission. Why would anyone not want to get as many placements as possible? If I had to survive on my base salary I’d be in the poorhouse!”

  “Okay. So you get it.” I nodded. This made me happy. I don’t know why, but it did. “So here I am in St. Louis and I asked Dan and Todd last night about the email that they sent to you and Charlie about the salary and benefit packages.”

  “Did you?” She looked pleasantly surprised. Had she thought I’d just forget about it? That didn’t sit well. But whatever. I didn’t have time to worry about it right now.

  I still felt confused by this. “They informed me that if I was any good, I’d make it work. I managed to get them to increase salary offers by five percent, but they told me that if people wanted the better benefits package, they’d have to take a pay cut to get it. Simple fact.”

  Eleanor did not respond. I don’t know why, but I’d expected her to be outraged. Maybe it was because of the whole Owen Phillipson thing. Although I don’t know what kind of bearing that had on things. I hadn’t actually made a decision on that. I should have. I’d told the guy that I would. And really at this point if I could get one super motivated recruiter out there, why wouldn’t I want him?

  “When we put someone in a permanent placement, we don’t pay their benefits.”

  “We don’t pay their salary either.”

  “What if we double dipped.”

  “Excuse me?”

  It was almost as though I could see her mind working. Wheels turning, intellect booming, I think the woman was probably about a million light years ahead of me on the intelligence scale. Had it always been like that? I remember always feeling a faint bit of superiority because Eleanor is younger than I am. Like those few years somehow gave me an edge that she would never hope to surpass. I think I was totally wrong on that.

  “If we could sell the clients on a six-month trial period, we might be able to pull this off,” Eleanor mused in a thoughtful voice. She looked as though she were still thinking this through.

  “Six months? How is that even possible?” I was already shaking my head. “That’s basically a temp job.”

  “Yes, but if we work it right, we could offer companies six months to try a new employee. We’ll explain that they have to cover the employee on their benefits plan, but that we’ll pay the salary. They obviously pay a slightly reduced monthly fee for the employee and a modest percentage fee when the permanent placement happens after six months.”

  “How do we know they don’t get six months out of the employee and then ditch them, job over?”

  “Statistically, if a company puts six months into a new employee there’s just too much of a time investment for them to want to let them go. That’s how temporary placements turn into permanent hires.” Eleanor waved her hand as though this wasn’t an issue. “And honestly, if they don’t want the employee after six months, it probably wasn’t a good fit.”

  “So how do we prevent that?”

  “We don’t, but we control the circumstances and criteria. Come on, Kevin.” She gave me a withering look of exasperation. “What happened to that contract speak of yours? Box them in!”

  She was right, of course. That was the answer. In a very weird way it actually made this company more competitive in a very creative way. “Wow. I really have to give you points for innovation.”

  “Thank you.” She tipped her head toward me. “It’s kind of what I do. Now we just have to get Charlie to coax the companies we work with on board.”

  “Think he’ll do it?”

  “If Charlie thinks that he can squeeze a few extra bucks out of anything, he’s usually game. And he knows these people. Most of them are members of his country club. I don’t know why the idiot works at all. He doesn’t want to and he’s lazy as shit. I swear he just likes the schmoozing and staying away from his wife.”

  I couldn’t actually wrap my mind around that concept. If I was going to bother being married to someone, it was going to be someone I wanted to be with. I couldn’t stand the idea of spending so much time, energy, and financial resources on a person I didn’t even want to be around. Which brought my mind right back around to the baby mama concept. Did she really believe me capable of that?

  “So, are we going to talk about the whole administrative assistant thing?”

  “What?” Oh. Right. I’d totally forgotten about that. I didn’t really want to talk about it. I’ll admit that I didn’t care. “Were they really that vital to the running of this organization?”

  “I don’t know. You have to turn on your computer and see if you can figure out who quit. That will tell you a lot. Ruth? No. You’re fine without her. She didn’t know her way around the actual job. She was far too busy trying to get dirt on everyone
for Mr. Moss. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve got an email from him in your inbox too. Likely something about not firing Ruth because she’s useful to him as he tries to keep an eye on what’s happening and probably something else about how he’s annoyed with all of the texts, voicemails, and emails he’s been getting from her complaining about the way things are going.”

  Wow. That was a huge speech. Eleanor actually chuffed out a little huff of air after she was done as though she were out of breath. I didn’t want to talk about this. I didn’t want to talk about email. I didn’t want to look at email. I just wanted to pretend that none of this was happening.

  “Eleanor, we need to talk about something.”

  “What’s that? I think we’ve done pretty good this morning.” She glanced at the clock on my wall. “And it’s barely seven o’clock.”

  “I don’t care about the time. I care about the fact that you honestly believe that I could have fathered a child with some other woman and kept it from you.” I swallowed. The sound of my blood roaring in my ears told me well enough that this was a huge deal to me whether or not I could recognize and admit that readily all on my own.

  “You want to talk about that?” She actually scrambled to her feet. “Now?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, I don’t.” She backed toward the door, nearly tripping on her boots as she went. “This is hardly a good place or time for that, Kevin. And you keep telling me that it’s not true. So what is there to discuss?”

  I could hear the sounds of other people coming into the office. The workday technically started at eight. Maybe these were the dedicated employees who wanted to keep their jobs this close to the holidays. Good. Motivated workers were effective workers. But that did not mean I did not want to talk about this one situation with Eleanor.

  “Eleanor, please?” I stood up too. My hands were shaking. I clasped them in front of me because I didn’t want her to realize how much it meant to me that she would believe something so awful without ever discussing it or confronting me with it.