Tangled: Contemporary Romance Trilogy

by Dee Bridgnorth

  I could not help but wonder what was driving this. “They’re company property. And you have tons of that crap at home anyway. You get to keep that. You were using your own contacts to begin with. Why do you have to have it back?”

  Then I saw Charlie’s gaze skitter right toward Owen Phillipson. I pointed at Kevin. “Did you hire Phillipson back?”

  “No. I thought you did.” Kevin shrugged his shoulders and then jerked his chin in Owen’s direction. “He’s here. Right?”

  “Uh huh,” I mused as I glared at Charlie. “So what did you and Owen’s brother, Ryan, cook up? Some story where you were forced to draw up unfair contracts for your clients using a master list that someone kept for you? And what? Owen was going to get your contacts list so that he could make sure to contact all of these people and assure them it was business as usual?”

  I couldn’t help it. I started laughing. It was funny. No. It wasn’t funny. But it was the sort of idiotic thing that made me want to scream my way out the door and never come back. These people never thought ahead! They never wondered what would happen after they had spent this paycheck.

  “Okay. You know what? I don’t care!” I told them all. I held up my hands. “Charlie, you want to give Owen your contacts. Go ahead. You want to pretend that you know what you’re doing when you make cold calls? Go right ahead. I’m done. I’m done with you people, this place, and I’m done with worrying about how I’m supposed to keep this place floating down the river now without any idea where we’re even going!”

  I grabbed my purse and my keys from my office. I didn’t have much in the way of personal effects. That wasn’t really my style. I was willing to leave my plant for the next person the way it had been left for me. That was pretty much it!

  “So,” Kevin asked me with a wink. “Are you ready to go upstairs with me and help me get my stuff?” He glanced over at Charlie. “The stuff I’m allowed to take, of course.”

  “Of course.” I felt exhausted, but happy. I was unemployed for the first time in years and I felt okay about it. “Maybe we can take the stapler or something. You know, just to be super passive aggressive.”

  “Oh!” He looked as though he had not just quit a job but had also suddenly found himself on top of the world. I was glad that he was so happy even if it made me exhausted to think about. “I love a good stapler. And permanent markers. I think if I can find a package of those I’ll be set.”

  “Well then, it’s a good thing that Ruth Powers is gone. She kept the key to the supply closet in her bra,” I told him breezily. Then at the last minute I turned and looked at Owen. “I will fill out your rehire paperwork before I go today. That should get you the benefits you need. But you should be careful. If this takeover hadn’t been such a mess, you’d be dancing at the end of a gibbet where your career is concerned.”

  Owen swallowed. I could see his throat bouncing from across the room. “I know,” he told me honestly. “I really do.”

  I thought about Owen for a minute. Then I thought about that horrible magazine. “You should do an exposé on this company and this whole takeover thing with your brother. You could be a secret source of information, of course, but I feel like this is the crap that your brother’s readers should really know about.”

  “Really?” Owen perked right up at that. “You think that the Hoppers would let my brother interview the staff here?”

  “No, but they aren’t here. Are they?” I snorted and shook my head. “Not only that, but they’re pretty overconfident about the potential bosses they hire too. They just make all kinds of assumptions about people.”

  “I guess they do,” Owen mused. “I think I’ll call Ryan right now. Before something else happens.”

  I followed Kevin upstairs to the office where Mr. Moss still had so much junk that it would be impossible for some other manager to really move in. I watched him carefully and quickly gather up only his personal items. It wasn’t like I was worried anyway. He wasn’t a bad person. He wasn’t even a vindictive person. And really, for whatever reason, the company had wanted him gone. So it wasn’t like he was doing them any overt harm even though he had plenty of reasons.

  “I’ll be glad to see the end of this place,” Kevin murmured as he strapped his bag closed and tossed a strap over one shoulder. “I’m sorry you got tossed right into the middle of that mess. It wasn’t my intention.”

  “They sure didn’t waste any time,” I murmured. “I’m assuming you took the job at Damion’s.”

  “I did.”

  I nodded. It wasn’t like I hadn’t figured it would be like that. I knew he would be taking a different job and leaving St. Louis again. It was just that I had gotten used to having him around again. And then there was this new and exciting physical relationship we had going. It was—well, it was a lot.

  “I’m sorry, Eleanor.” Kevin moved closer and lightly stroked my cheek. “I never meant to leave you here again.”

  But that wasn’t true. Now was it? Not really. “I think you did. Or maybe not. I don’t know. I knew that you weren’t planning to stay in town. I think that was obvious from the beginning. You wanted to go back to Kansas City. I get that. You have an apartment there. You have a life there.” I stopped talking. I couldn’t go on. I swallowed back the lumps in my throat because I realized there was something that I really needed to ask. “You don’t have a girlfriend or something there. Right?”

  “What?” He looked utterly taken aback. “No! God, no! Do you think I would have slept with you last night if I was in a relationship? I’m not like that. Not fifteen years ago. Not now. Not ever.”

  “I know.” And I did. “I just—I guess I always have this feeling between the two of us that we keep missing the opportunities. Like we’re on two different time zones and we just keep passing each other by.”

  “I get it. I feel that way too.” He put his arms around me. I let him because I wanted to feel that closeness.

  “We should probably go,” I whispered. But my voice was muffled because my face was pressed to his chest. “I know it’s totally inappropriate for me to be standing here with you. Totally inappropriate.”

  “And yet it feels so right so how can it be inappropriate?” he whispered.

  His hands stroked my hair and I felt him kiss the top of my head. The tenderness was welcome. I needed that contact and the closeness. I craved it. I hadn’t had this for so long that I forgot what it felt like. No contact. Nobody. I hadn’t had more than a dozen boyfriends and none of them had been serious. My sister and I weren’t that demonstrative. And my parents had been less so.

  “Maybe I can come and visit you,” I whispered. “Kansas City isn’t that far. And surely you’ll need to come back to St. Louis to meet with Damion on occasion. Right?”

  “I’m sure I will,” he murmured. “But what are you going to do about a job?”

  “I don’t know yet.” It was a bad time to be out looking for work. Holiday season and all that. But I felt oddly fine with it. “Maybe I’ll ask your sister to help me get a job at the store.”

  He started laughing then. “I think the two of you would get nothing done. You’d just be clucking all day long like old hens.”

  “I like your sister,” I told him softly. “Does that bother you?”

  “No. It surprises me maybe, but then a lot of things have been surprising me lately and I don’t feel like this is a bad thing,” he admitted. “I think I needed some surprising. Things had gotten far too stale and predictable and maybe that was all me.” He sighed and I could feel him thinking very deeply about something. “I wasn’t a very nice guy when I was in Kansas City, Eleanor.”

  “I can imagine. You weren’t all that nice when you first came back here,” I reminded him. “But I don’t think any of that merits what your employers did to you.”

  “Dan Hopper believes that I somehow outted his brother about Todd’s drinking problem. I kept thinking that Todd had just decided he didn’t want to be around me because it made Dan upse
t. I thought it was something that I’d done. Now I find out that it’s something they believe I’ve done, but I haven’t. Not at all. It pisses me off.”

  “It should piss you off,” I whispered. “But you can’t solve their problems. You can’t solve mine either. You’ve only got yourself to worry about.”

  “And my sister,” he told me suddenly. “I’m not leaving St. Louis until I’m sure that Brock Mortensen is out of the picture for good.”

  “Well then, I think you’re just going to have to wait until the best Thanksgiving feast ever,” I teased him. “You know, because all crazy family dramas happen around the Thanksgiving table.”

  And isn’t that the truth?

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Kevin

  I flung open the door with every bit of the Thanksgiving welcome that I did not feel. “Hello, Brock, come on inside.”

  It was pretty obvious that Brock Mortensen had not been expecting to see me on the other side of that door. His expression said as much. Actually, his expression said a lot. Most of it in four letter words that ended in hard consonants. The man was an insufferable ass on the best of days. Or at least that had been his general attitude when we were growing up and it did not seem to have changed a whole lot.

  “Hey Kevin, I, uh, didn’t realize you were back in town.” Brock shifted uncomfortably on the front steps. I got the distinct impression that my presence here at the house was changing Brock’s feelings about being here. Good. “I shouldn’t, uh, crash a family meal.”

  “What?” I stepped aside and ushered him into the living room. “Don’t be ridiculous. I thought you were marrying my sister. That means we’re practically family already.”

  “Oh. Right,” Brock murmured. “I didn’t realize that Thayla had told you about that.”

  “Uh huh.” I stepped back and closed the front door.

  My father was sitting in his recliner, but he was glowering at Brock with enough venom to give anyone second thoughts about being in the house. I wondered if we had all been wrong about Brock in one respect. He didn’t seem to be the type of man to push any kind of agenda. Maybe this would be a case of just telling him to take a hike and him saying okay fine. No fight. No mess. No muss. No fuss.

  That would be a welcome relief.

  About that time Thayla stuck her head out of the kitchen, presumably to see who had been at the door. “Oh Brock. You’re here. That’s good. Dinner is almost ready.”

  “Good.” Brock patted his round belly. My hopes for a peaceful confrontation slid right out the window when he gave Thayla a dirty look. “I could use some food. Someone didn’t bother to leave any grocery money in the house last week.”

  Thayla did not respond to this jab. She just disappeared back into the kitchen. But both my father and I stared at Brock with no attempt to hide our hostility. I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry. Did you just allude to the fact that my sister didn’t leave you any grocery money for last week?”

  Brock thrust his chin defiantly in my direction. “Yeah. Why?”

  I gazed at the man. He lumbered over to our sofa and sat down. The entire end of the structure seemed to sag at his added weight. It creaked ominously and I was reminded that my parents had bought the thing back in the eighties. Brock was a big man. At least three hundred pounds and just under six feet tall. He looked every inch the dock worker or merchant marine with his scruffy dark beard, his ruddy cheeks, rough skin, and the red nose. His hair was unkempt and stringy. It seemed to hover near his collar. He was wearing a blue denim button down shirt over a thermal undershirt with a pair of jeans that had seen both cleaner and more prosperous times. He looked dirty. There was a general atmosphere of grime that hung over this man like a pall.

  Why? That had been Brock’s question. Okay. Fine. I could work with that. So I switched directions. “Where are you working right now, Brock?” I asked in my most conversational tone of voice. This was the voice I used with every single possible candidate that walked into my office. The tone that got them feeling nice and ready to talk.

  Not Brock Mortensen. He just looked like a pissed off mule. “Nowhere.”

  “Nowhere. At all?” I prodded. “As in you’re not working right now?”

  “No.”

  “Wow.” I glanced at my father. He was not looking pleased. In fact, he looked downright pissed off too. “So that’s got to be a really tough when it comes to paying your own bills. How are you getting by? I’ve always wondered what unemployment pays these days.”

  “Not enough.” Brock scratched his neck. Finally, he was looking uncomfortable.

  “So let me get this straight,” I said slowly. “You’re not working. You’re collecting unemployment, but it doesn’t meet your needs. Then you’re what? Expecting my sister to just hand over enough of her paycheck to make up the difference?”

  “She gets plenty of compensation, if you know what I mean.” Brock’s eyebrows went up and down suggestively.

  My father actually got up out of his chair. He looked at Brock as he might look at a bug he was about to squash. “You are a pathetic excuse for a man. Do you know that?”

  Brock shot to his feet. His expression darkened and he looked mad as hell. “What did you say, old man?”

  “You heard me!” Dad shouted. “You’re a pathetic excuse for a human being! Stealing from my daughter? What kind of man does that sort of thing? She don’t owe you a damn thing! She can hardly make ends meet on her own and now you tell me she’s been giving you her money?”

  “And she’d better keep doing it too, old man.” Brock said threateningly. “You know what I do to old men who get in my way?”

  “Yes,” I told him mildly. “We do know. Are you threatening my father? Because I seem to recall that you’re on probation right now. Any violation of that and you’ll be right back in that jail cell. I know. We checked.”

  “Excuse me?” Brock suddenly didn’t look quite so confident. “Thayla!” He shouted for my sister at the top of his lungs. “Where the hell are you?”

  Thayla appeared, but my mother and Eleanor were with her. The three women were united in appearance and it seemed, in purpose. Thayla marched right up to Brock. I noticed that she kept a respectful distance though. Good for her. My sister is a smart woman.

  “Brock, I’m sorry to have to do this on Thanksgiving,” Thayla said in a clear and decisive tone of voice. “But I’m breaking it off with you. Now. For good. There will be no more money. There will be no more paying for your phone. If you want to keep the phone itself and go get your own service, you can. But I’m not paying your bills anymore. I’m done with that. I need to live my own life.”

  Brock’s expression turned from dark to very, very angry in a split second. He actually started toward my sister with his hands outstretched. I stepped in. The feral awareness that shot down my spine was very much a throwback to those days when men were men and women were property. But if that was the case, my sister was still my property.

  “You need to step back and step off,” I told Brock. I growled the words at him. I could see him curling his hands into fists. I knew what I was probably risking here. I didn’t care. This had to stop.

  From the corner of my eye I could see Eleanor’s pale determined face. It gave me courage. I wanted to do this for her, for Thayla, for everyone.

  “You won’t always be here, Kevin,” Brock told me with an audible click of his teeth. “You never know what might happen.”

  “Do you honestly think I need my brother to stand up for me or something?” Thayla’s voice rose and I actually found myself taking a step back in surprise. “I’m not a weakling, Brock. I’m not afraid of you! I’m not! You should be afraid of me. I’ve spoken with the detectives and with your parole officer. And if you don’t think they would rather see you end this farce of a time spent outside the penitentiary in favor of going back in, you’re wrong! They all expected you to fail. To do something stupid, like attack me or threaten me. And then they will hang you. Do you unde
rstand me? They will throw the book at you!”

  Brock stumbled back toward the front door. He looked surprised and more than a little angry. I could see the storm building behind his eyes and I knew that this wasn’t the end of it. He jabbed his finger in my sister’s direction. “You’re out of your mind. You don’t really mean it. You know that if you turn your back on me, nobody else will want you. You know that. You’ll be single for the rest of your life. Nobody cares about you, Thayla. Not like I do!”

  “God, I hope not,” Thayla quipped. “You treat me like crap! I hope nobody else treats me that way, Brock. I tried. I tried to love you. I tried to believe in you, to give you the benefit of the doubt. But you just threw that back in my face! How can I ever trust anything you say to me ever again?”

  “Lies!” Brock insisted. “They’re telling lies about me.”

  “No, they aren’t!” Thayla shot back. “I looked it up! Do you honestly think I’m so stupid that I can’t look up a court case? I went down there and looked it up. How do you think I got the name and number of your parole officer? I spoke to him too. And let me tell you, Brock Mortensen, you aren’t all that when it comes to people who should be able to trust you.”

  “You’ll be sorry,” Brock insisted.

  He grabbed for my sister and I did not waste one second more. I hauled back my fist and planted it square in his face. I felt the crunch of cartilage and bone. His nose bent out of joint and blood sprayed the front of his denim shirt. He grabbed his face with both hands and roared his discontent. I didn’t care. I pushed him back toward the front door.

  Eleanor was already there. She had that door open and the screen out of the way just as I sent Brock Mortensen sailing backwards through the doorway. He cartwheeled his arms, swinging them around and around as he struggled to keep his balance. The slick steps didn’t help. The rain had indeed turned to ice over the last few days. Even through a layer of salt on the steps the pavement was treacherous.

  “You bitch!” Brock shouted as he abruptly slipped and his feet went out from under him. His legs came up in the air and his body went down toward the ground. He landed like a ton of bricks at the bottom of the stairs. Then he sat there for a moment looking dazed and confused.