Tangled: Contemporary Romance Trilogy

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Ray wiggled his fingers at me, spun a little pirouette, and then headed off toward his own car. This sucked. I really didn’t want to drive separately because Ray had promised to kick in for gas. But I couldn’t see riding with him either because I wanted to make sure I could leave the open house whenever I needed to if I met a new client who wanted to go look at other properties right now. That happened sometimes. It was the reason us younger, hungrier agents often ran these open houses for agents with more experience and less need to pick up every single potential lead that might wander into an open house.

  “Fine!” I called after Ray. “You drive yourself in your pretty smelling car. I’ll beat you there and get five new clients before you even get your pretty little butt out of the driver’s seat!”

  He waved over his shoulder at me. More specifically, he waved his middle finger over his shoulder. Ray was a good friend, but in the end we were still competing for clients in what was always a very tough market.

  The snow started up again pretty much just as soon as I got on the little two-lane highway that fronts our real estate office. The office now belongs to a woman named Gail Abernathy who pretty much got the place by default after she decided to divorce her philandering husband. Gail was still embroiled in that divorce but very eager to keep the office profitable. Now that her skeezy husband, Bob, wasn’t around, it was actually a pretty decent place to work.

  I pulled out into the Monday midday traffic and soon found myself braking and hitting the gas every three seconds along with the rest of the people on the busy road trying to get anywhere in this ridiculous bad weather. It was only maybe three miles to the open house. I could see Ray Fines in his much newer, much prettier, SUV about five cars behind me. It was hard not to be jealous. I wanted a nice SUV with plenty of room to take clients house hunting if they needed a ride. I just didn’t want the payment. Not now. Not yet.

  I sighed and drummed my fingers on the steering wheel as the car in front of me hit the brakes yet again. Sheesh! My car really did smell. What was that odor? I remembered the guy who had fixed it yesterday. What had he said his name was? Beau. Yeah. That was it. Beau. Beau with the gross hair and the long underwear. Hey. That rhymed. Like I was making up a song about some redneck mechanic.

  My phone began bleating from its usual resting spot in the cupholder. The freshly repaired screen showed an unfamiliar number. I snatched it up. After all, it could be a potential client! And if I was going to keep myself from needing my parents’ financial assistance and therefore opening myself up to the possibility of marrying some green-card-needing cook, I needed to sell some houses!

  I touched the screen to answer the phone call. Of course, that was right when all of the traffic in front of me came to a screeching halt. I hit the brakes. My car started to slide. I squeaked in terror and wondered if I was about to become someone’s bumper ornament.

  And that’s about the time I heard someone on the other end of the line. “Hello?”

  “Hello?” I struggled to control my car with one hand on the steering wheel while I used the other to hold the phone to my ear. “I’m sorry. Hello? Is someone there? This is Tansy Economides of Upscale Realty. Can I help you?”

  “Are you driving?”

  The voice on the other end of the line sounded disgruntled, rude as hell, and almost insulted that I would pick up a phone call while operating a motor vehicle. It wasn’t like that was illegal after all.

  “Yes. Can I help you?”

  I barely managed to get the words out before I realized that my turn was coming up fast on the left. I hit the brakes again. This time the car in front of me shot forward out of my way and everyone behind me slammed on their brakes to avoid ramming right into my backside. I could see the grille of the vehicle behind me looming large and in charge through my rearview mirror. I felt the inescapable urge to squeal but just barely managed to choke it back. I didn’t think the person on the other end of the line needed to hear that. It would likely only increase the rudeness and I really didn’t want to go there.

  “Seriously, you’re driving and talking on the phone? Why would you even answer?”

  “Why did you call?” I retorted. This was getting ridiculous. I needed to get to the point. I was entering the subdivision where the open house was to be located and I needed to use my phone in order to refresh my mind on the address. “How can I help you?”

  “This is Valentino Alvarez down in Fenton.” He paused. I was frozen, so the pause probably stretched really long. Valentino Alvarez? Eek! He cleared his throat. “Remember? Alvarez Engine and Transmission Repair?”

  “Yes. I remember.” Maybe I should have given the guy an earful about how I was just as disgusted with his employee’s horrid body odor as he apparently was with the fact that I was driving while talking on the phone.

  “So you came in yesterday and one of my mechanics replaced a fuel filter.”

  Lie. Total. Lie. This guy was acting like I had made an appointment. I could set him straight on that fast enough, now couldn’t I? “Actually, it was something to do with the battery. Like last time. Remember? You went to the auto parts store and got something. I think that was you. Right? Wasn’t it?” Actually I knew it was him. So why did I feel such a bizarre need to play dumb? Ugh!

  I pulled into the subdivision and steered to the far right curb. I had no idea where the open house was located. There were signs all over the place, but they were pointing in any number of dizzying directions. Fortunately for me, as soon as I pulled over Ray went whizzing by in his bright red SUV and I hurriedly steered back into the road to follow. Ray apparently knew exactly where we were going. Good for him. He wasn’t getting financially gouged by a mechanic right now, was he?

  “The guy yesterday didn’t touch your battery. He replaced your fuel filter.” Valentino Alvarez sounded flat. Annoyed too. What the hell? “You came in when we’re closed. You stood there and banged on the door until my after-hours emergency guy answered. Then he felt bad for you because you were having car trouble in the snow and had driven a long way. So he fixed your car. Lady, I’m not asking you to pay for his labor. He already said he’d give you that for free. But I am going to send you an invoice for parts.”

  “Excuse me?” I was outraged! “There were no parts! I didn’t see him put anything in!”

  “Did you wait in the garage? I was under the impression you were in my waiting room.”

  Wait. How did he know that? I wondered if he had creepy cameras everywhere. Had they installed cameras in my car? Was he watching me right now? “How would you know where I waited?”

  “Because we don’t have customers on Sundays and there were muddy, wet prints all over my waiting room floor this morning.”

  Um. Wow. I didn’t have anything to say to that. But the attitude was still daunting. Like the kind of daunting where you sort of feel like the guy is such a jerk that he deserves whatever he gets.

  In front of me, Ray pulled into a spot on the curb in front of a very attractive little cookie-cutter house that was a bit on the small side but had great curb appeal. He parked and got out. The empty driveway was already covered in snow. That meant we were going to have to pray that the homeowner had left some kind of snow shovel handy and maybe some ice melt too. People did not buy houses when they fell and broke a hip in the driveway before walking in.

  I parked behind Ray and prepared to get out of my car. The engine sputtered and practically died without me even turning off the key. “And now I suppose you’re going to try to tell me that the strange behavior my car is exhibiting right now has nothing to do with your shoddy mechanic work too, right?”

  “Excuse me?” He sounded pretty miffed. Maybe I had gone too far. Then he grunted into the phone. “If I had to guess, you haven’t changed your oil in ages. Your car is leaking something like a quart of oil a week and your engine is probably having a tough time running, much less having to deal with this recent bout of cold.”

  “Excuse me?” I was insulted.
Of course I had the oil changed! Well, when I remembered. “You don’t get to judge me, Mr. Valentino Alvarez. I take perfectly good care of my car!”

  “Lady, I was under the hood of your car last week. I can assure you that you do not take good care of it. You don’t think about it at all. You drive it like it’s a disposable cup and you’re going to just get another one when this one dies.”

  “Why are you being so rude?”

  “Because I’m having a bad day and I’m sick and tired of people telling me that they shouldn’t have to pay for their car repairs,” he retorted angrily. “I feel like everyone I have spoken with today believes that I am some kind of donations-only repair shop!”

  Okay. Now I felt a little bad. It wasn’t like I was complaining about a shoddy repair that I’d paid a ton of money for. I hadn’t paid the guy at all. He had ever bought the parts at the auto store all out of his own pocket. I hadn’t thought much about it at the time. Why was that? Was I developing some kind of weird hang-up where I believed that people owed me? Good Lord, I hoped not!

  “You know what?” I said into the phone as I made my way carefully up the snow dusted driveway. “Fine. I’ll come in and pay for the repairs. Whatever. I’m not going to argue about it. Besides, you can look at it again and figure out what the mechanic did wrong because it’s still acting weird. And now there’s a funky smell too.”

  “A funky smell?” The guy sounded so doubtful that I wanted to reach into the phone and knock his block off. “You want me to fix a bad smell? Did you try a car wash?”

  “I couldn’t smell anything before I brought the car in yesterday. So why is that? Huh? I think it’s pretty clear that this means you guys spilled something on my carpets.” I tried to sound as though I were the kind of person who knew what car fluids smelled like. I didn’t. But at least something was getting taken care of. Right?

  “Fine. You come in and pay your bill and we’ll have a look at the smell problem.” He sounded so obviously skeptical that it did not make me think any higher of him. “Have a nice day, Ms. Economides.”

  “Thank you.” I hung up quickly and looked at Ray.

  He was frowning at me. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. I’m just trying to figure out why this mechanic is all of a sudden trying to claim that my car has all these problems. He didn’t say a word about it the other day. He seemed to think that it was fine. Now it’s at death’s door! Ridiculous!”

  Ray made a face as he carefully opened the front door. Then he glanced at the far end of the cozy little front porch. “Oh good. They left out a snow shovel. You want to go ahead and start?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. You. Your boots are already ruined.” He gazed down at my mottled-looking, mushy leather-covered feet. “It won’t matter what you do with them now. They’re trash.”

  I rolled my eyes. Whatever. I wasn’t going to argue with him about it now. There was no point. I needed the driveway cleared. He could go inside and get things ready there. Maybe this would be a chance for me to one up Ray and meet some potential buyer right there in the driveway. Yep. I would already have the house half sold before the people even walked inside to see Ray.

  “Go on.” Ray lifted an eyebrow. “Get shoveling, my dear.”

  I exhaled a muttered sigh. “Who holds open houses on Mondays anyway?”

  “Desperate real estate agents, that’s who.” Ray shook his head. “It’s lunchtime. People do all kinds of things on their lunch hour.”

  “Not in the snow,” I muttered.

  But I grabbed that shovel and I got the front walk cleared before the very first car pulled up. And when a young couple got out of the car and headed up toward the front door, I was there to greet them with a huge smile and a ready offer to take them to as many houses as they had time to see this afternoon. As long as they didn’t want to take a ride in my car. I still hadn’t been able to clean out the smell.

  Yeah. Desperate was my middle name right now.

  Chapter Six

  Valentino

  Irritating. That was the word coming immediately to mind when I thought about Tansy Economides. And believe me, as much as I tried not to think about the woman, I could not seem to stop myself. She was on my mind constantly. Constantly! It was so irritating. I sat at my computer and tried to finish up my invoices. I couldn’t manage to keep my mind on the work. So I went out into the garage and tried to work on something with my hands.

  After I had been standing in the center of the tool storage area for something like fifteen minutes without actually doing anything, Mike finally slanted me a worried look and cleared his throat. “Hey boss, you doing okay? Is there anything I can get for you?”

  Get for me. Like I was some ham-fisted newbie who didn’t know where to find a wrench. Great. Nothing could make a man feel like a loser quite as quickly as having his friends tell him he looks like one. What was wrong with me?

  “Did you talk to Beau about that car he worked on yesterday?” I suddenly asked Mike.

  Mike was doing a fast oil change and brake inspection on a minivan. He did not emerge from underneath the vehicle’s hood in order to respond to my question. “Yesterday was Sunday, boss.”

  “I know yesterday was Sunday.” I could not quite keep the snap out of my voice. I took a deep breath. It wasn’t Mike’s fault that the Economides woman was obviously a cheap ass who expected a whole lot of something for her nothing. “But there was a woman who popped in early and Beau changed the fuel filter on her car.”

  “Oh. That.” Mike reached for a specialty wrench and the minivan’s oil filter. “I don’t know. I guess Beau told me that the car’s a mess.”

  “Did he say anything to you about the woman?” Why was it that I wanted to talk about the Economides woman? Why did this matter? It was stupid. I should not care about that woman at all. “Did he tell you if he thought she was nice or pushy or anything else?”

  Suddenly Mike’s head appeared as he leaned around the minivan’s hood to look at me. There were grease streaks on his cheeks and forehead. That is pretty much how we roll around here. But the expression on his face was not the norm. He looked spooked.

  “Boss, I don’t get it,” Mike admitted. “Why are you so interested in this woman? She’s just your typical car owner, isn’t she? Doesn’t do regular maintenance. Assumes her car is pretty much like a microwave. You use it until it dies and then you get another one. You know, typical. I know that Beau was bragging about how he wasn’t charging you for the labor to help this woman because she seemed to be really freaked out. I think Beau figures he did a good deed for you and for her.”

  “For me?” I was utterly taken aback. This horrible landslide of doubt started to roll over me. “What are you talking about? I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I think the woman was pretty convinced that whatever you’d done to her car the other day at your brother’s party broke it.” Mike quickly stepped back and held up his hands. I realized that my facial expression must have given away the jolt of sheer anger that whipped through me. “Don’t shoot the messenger, boss. And it’s not like Beau was saying that he agreed with her. He was just mentioning that almost everything under that hood needs replacing or maintenance and that it’s too bad she’s one of those chicks who believes that when a car won’t stop, it’s basically one possible problem.”

  “One possible problem,” I muttered. Folding my arms across my chest, I muttered to myself and rubbed a hand down my face. Of course, this likely smeared grease all over my face too. Good thing I don’t care. “So this chick was bitching about me personally, huh?”

  “She’s a chick.” Mike said it like this was the answer to all of the world’s confusion. “She doesn’t get it. She probably doesn’t know shit about cars. Period. That’s not your problem, boss. She didn’t even pay for the work.”

  “Exactly!” I burst out. Ugh! Why did I care what Tansy Economides thought about me? “You can’t even get any appreciation around here. Not a
t all! You do something nice for somebody and then five minutes later they want to know why their freebie didn’t come complete with a gold-plated bullshit meter!”

  Oh, for crying out loud! I needed to get out of here. Mike was now staring at me in slack-jawed wonder. There was an oil filter wrench hanging limply from his right hand and he looked as though he were waiting for my head to start spinning around. I exhaled a big sigh.

  “Sorry,” I told Mike. “If anyone needs me, I’m in the back sorting tires.”

  “Sure, Val. Whatever.”

  I spun around on my boot heel and beat it outside. God, it was cold. The air was beyond brisk. It was to that point where even the mid-afternoon sun wasn’t quite cutting it when it came to warming up the air. Every breath felt like there were little knives mixed in with the dampness. It just cut right through me.

  I was wearing my usual coveralls over a pair of thick cargo pants and a sweatshirt. Pulling a hat and thick work gloves from my pocket, I gazed at the stack of used tires and decided that this was the perfect place to forget about Tansy Economides.

  When we replace tires, which is fairly often, it’s not always because every single tire is a complete loss. People like to replace two or four or even five tires at once. It’s easier and sometimes better on the vehicle if all of the tires are the same age and wear. So when we “dispose” of old tires for people, the truth is that we generally keep two or three from each batch depending on how many there were to begin with. We send the totally worn out tires to the recycler. And the others we clean up and put on a rack. We check them for leaks or other problems and then we offer them to people who are broke and in need of a cheap temporary replacement tire.

  Right now the stack of old tires was pretty precarious. As in, the techs had been rolling and tossing tires out here pretty steadily for three to four weeks thanks to this bizarre weather pattern we were having. You’d laugh your ass off if you knew how many people panic and buy tires when the weather gets bad. Like fresh rubber is going to somehow help them on a road that is covered in three inches of ice. But still. Good tires in bad weather are a good thing.