Tangled: Contemporary Romance Trilogy

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “When those close…” It actually looked like the vein in his forehead might be in danger of exploding. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “I know that it can take up to sixty days for a closing to happen and then probably more than that before a real estate agent gets their commission!” he snarled. “So do you honestly expect me to believe that you just coast along on canned soup and not pay rent until that happy day occurs?”

  “When my savings runs out. Yeah.” I’m not stupid. I realize that this sounds like a really bad plan to anyone who isn’t forced to live it. But I was just getting my feet under me in real estate and it’s not an easy business to get off the ground. “It’s not the fifteenth of next month, but it’s at least something. I’m not trying to sit here and tell you that I’m never going to pay the bill or that I’m going to make ten dollar payments for forty months.”

  “You might as well have,” he grumbled. Then he pointed to the door. “Just get out of here. Now. And for the love of God, do not think you can just bring your car back in here every single time it dies!”

  Whoa. Hang on here. What did that mean? Was he honestly expecting my car to die again? Like soon? What? Why was he going to send me out there with it if the thing was in such bad shape?

  “That’s not very gentlemanly of you,” I said uncomfortably. I chose these words mostly because I didn’t know what else to say. “I feel like it’s unfair too.”

  “Yeah. And why whenever a woman doesn’t get exactly what she wants, does she default to the whole gentlemanly double standard? Because lady, you’re not acting much like a lady.” With those final words, he very deliberately turned his chair so that his back was to me. “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.”

  Yep. I had been summarily dismissed into the world with my apparently substandard car and I had a feeling that this was not a good thing. Not good at all.

  Chapter Eight

  Valentino

  “She’s a brat. A total and complete brat!” I could barely control the slide on my voice. The range kept slipping into the gravel range as I growled and complained to my younger brother.

  Not that it did any good. Damion just sat there on his posh sofa and stared at me as though I had sprouted a second head. I think he was amused by the whole thing. Like I was somehow making all of this up.

  Finally, Damion stirred from his contemplative silence. “And you said that there have been break-ins at the shop?”

  So I might have used that as an excuse to come and have a chat with him, but honestly I was far more concerned about this debacle with Tansy Economides than I was about Beau’s assertion that he had seen lights on in the shop the other night. But I nodded and smiled because I figured it was best just to play nice with my little brother.

  “Yes. Beau swears that there were lights on. But he couldn’t be disturbed from whatever his evening activities were to go and find out who or what was behind them. I’m not sure I would give much credence to his theory that it was Trinity Moberly though. Hasn’t that woman pretty well gotten over you by now?”

  “You would think,” Damion said drily. “She’s married someone else. But that doesn’t seem to mean that she and now her husband aren’t still bugging Lena and I on a pretty regular basis. They seem to derive some sick sense of power from showing up pretty much everywhere that they thing they can get away with harassing us.”

  “Seriously?” It seemed absolutely ridiculous to think that two grown-ass people could be so intent on getting attention from a former lover that they would actually keep on stalking their exes even after they had married someone else. “So let me make sure I have this straight.” I cleared my throat with no small amount of pomp and circumstance. “You broke up with Trinity. She refused to accept it. She stalked you for the better part of a year so tenaciously that you actually moved to a gated community to put a guard tower between you and her.”

  “Sounds right so far.” Damion waved his hand as though he were telling me to get on with it. “You forgot the part where she married someone else—the stalker ex-boyfriend of my current fiancée—and then now the two of them are continuing their stalker behavior because apparently the only thing that glues their relationship together is their mutual hatred of us.”

  “That is just sick,” I muttered. I was shaking my head. “So do you honestly think it’s possible that your stalker couple—is that what we’re calling them? Yeah. Do you believe it’s possible for your stalker couple to still be breaking into my garage and stealing tools in order to further torture you and Lena?”

  “I don’t know.” Damion shrugged. He didn’t look particularly concerned. “Let’s go back to talking about your friend Tansy Economides. You think she’s really a bitch? I have to admit that I’ve never gotten that vibe from her. Never once.”

  “Well maybe that’s because you’ve only interacted with her when Lena is around,” I suggested. What was I? Some kind of psychologist that I would sit there and pretend to analyze Tansy’s behavior? “Because let me tell you. When it’s just her and she’s in your face accusing you of lying about the work that you and your staff did on her car, it’s a whole different ball game.”

  “Ouch!” Damion actually lifted his hands as though he were warding off a blow. “Sorry, I’m just feeling the hit that your ego took when she suggested that you lied to her. Harsh!”

  “Really?” I rolled my eyes. “I did not come over here to the land of snobbery and locked gates for you to tell me that you agree her assessment of me was harsh. I want to know what you know about her being unbalanced.”

  “I don’t know anything about her being unbalanced.” Damion tilted his head and gave me an odd look. “What happened exactly? Why do I feel like you’ve got your own reasons for thinking that Tansy is a bad person?”

  “She reminds me of Cari!” I burst out suddenly. Of course, as soon as the words were out I wished that I could take them back. See, I did not discuss my dead wife with anyone. Not my family. Not my nonexistent friends. Nobody.

  “Cari.” Damion murmured the name. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard you actually say her name out loud. You never want to talk about her.”

  I made a face. This wasn’t good. I had really screwed up. At this point I couldn’t just pretend the words hadn’t slipped out of my mouth though. I cleared my throat and resettled my position in the overstuffed chair. It might have been comfortable if it wasn’t so fluffy. I felt like I was sinking down to the floor and my knees were coming back up to smash against my chin.

  “So when you say that,” Damion began slowly. “Is it a bad thing? I mean, are you angry with Tansy because she’s reminding you of the woman you loved so long ago and so strongly that you’ve never seemed to get over her? Is that what makes you angry? Tansy is reminding you of Cari and you loved Cari and that means maybe you might actually like Tansy?”

  “Wow,” I said after a few moments had passed. I felt like I wanted to smack my palm against my head. “Seriously? That is reaching. Big time reaching. Like you’re looking a little too hard for something that might make me fall in love again.” I frowned at him. “What the hell, dude?”

  Damion gave me a dirty look. “You’re such an ass. I was trying to be serious here.”

  “So am I.”

  “You?” Damion snorted. “Mister I’m-still-so-in-love-with-my-dead-wife-that-I-refuse-to-ever-date-again-lest-I-accidentally-tarnish-her-memory!”

  I felt the pressure building behind my eyes. It was going to explode. There was no doubt in my mind that it was going to happen. The only question was whether or not I could make it out of here in time or not. I needed to get out of here before I lost my temper and said something that I would regret as soon as it came out.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. I was beginning to feel the start of a migraine coming on. That wasn’t good. It usually meant that I was shoving everything that I felt and thought and all of the words that I wa
nted to say into a tight little wad down in my gut. My doctor said I was pretty much guaranteed to give myself a heart attack or a stroke if I kept this up. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any answers on how to get rid of the demons that rode like a monkey on my back. Therapy, he said. Yeah. Right.

  “Val, have you ever considered switching to decaf?” Damion asked quietly. “Or how about therapy? Have you ever considered therapy?”

  I had forgotten that my brother was a huge fan of therapy. He went every single week. I think at one point in his life he had been going to see his therapist three times a week. I couldn’t afford to do that. I couldn’t even afford to go once a month. My health insurance was crap and therapy was expensive.

  “I don’t drink caffeine,” I grunted at my brother. “I just need you to stop talking to me about how you think I’m secretly worried about falling in love with someone who I find to be interesting like Cari was.”

  “Look, I get that you loved your wife. She was a nice woman. I barely remember her, but then it seems like a lifetime ago and you are older than I am.” Damion seemed as though he wasn’t going to let this go. “I just want you to know that it’s okay to find someone else. I know you’ve said for years now that you have no interest in another woman, but I want you to know that it’s okay if you do. It doesn’t mean you loved Cari any less.”

  His words seemed to be coming from the end of a long tunnel. All at once I could not hold it in any longer. “I never loved Cari!” I snapped at him.

  It was almost like I had screamed the words shut up. Damion’s mouth closed with an audible click and his eyes opened wide. Then he tilted his head to the side and looked as though he were about to choke.

  “What do you mean, you never loved Cari?” Damion sounded gritty and upset. “You adored her. You once told me that she was the standard to which every other woman you would ever meet was measured. You told me that there would never be anyone else after she had occupied your life.”

  “And you made the assumption that those were compliments,” I grunted.

  Damion looked confused.

  I figured that I might as well finish it. I had stepped in it. Now I might as well just keep going. “She is the standard to which every other woman in my life is measured. I mean that to say that I assume every single woman I meet is a grasping, whining, lazy whore.”

  “Holy shit!” Damion spoke so loudly that I expected to see Lena come running into the room.

  “There will never be anyone else in my life after her because I am not that stupid,” I continued. “I am not foolish enough to ever let another woman anywhere near my bank accounts, my belongings, my car, or anything else of value because they have no other desire than to consume. They consume everything in their path and they have absolutely no shame in taking what’s yours and claiming that it belongs to them.”

  “But you doted on Cari.”

  “If I didn’t dote on her, she would make my life at home a living hell,” I snarled. Wow. It felt good to get this out. I had never said it before. I’d never even allowed myself to think it. Now I knew that the old cliché was true. The truth will set you free. “If you had any idea how many tongue lashings that woman could give me. She would withhold sex for weeks. Then she would dole it out minute by minute until she got what she wanted only to abruptly tell me once again that her body was off limits and not open for business.”

  “Okay. So. Wow…” Damion looked as though he were now scrambling for something to say to get the conversation back to something good.

  But I had been bottling this up for what felt like a million years and I wasn’t anywhere near ready to stop. “When I would really do something to piss her off, you know, like go to work and stay there for a whole day without calling her twenty times a day because this was well before cell phones were a thing. But if I did that? I could be guaranteed that there would not only be no food ready for dinner when I got home, but there would be no food in the house. She would throw it all out or lock it up. And if I stopped and got dinner because I knew this was going to happen, my debit card would get declined because she would go to the bank and empty my account into hers.” I felt lightheaded with anger and the heady sensation of just letting it all out after so many years of hanging onto it. “And this one time when I really pissed her off she sold my car.”

  “Wait just a damn second here!” Damion put up both hands as though he thought he was going to slow me down. “Are you telling me that Cari sold the Mustang? I thought you just sold it so that you could have the money to buy a new project!”

  “Are you out of your mind? I bought that car when I was fifteen years old and restored it myself. Cari sold it for five hundred bucks to some guy her brother knew.”

  “Five hundred bucks?” Damion howled. “That bitch!”

  “I told you!” I couldn’t help it. It was all too preposterous. I started to laugh.

  Now Lena did come into the living room from the direction of the kitchen. She popped her head in and looked at us each in turn. “Are you all right? I feel like there’s some kind of major catharsis going on in here and I really don’t want to interrupt, but you’re starting to sound a little bit scary.”

  “Scary is a good word,” I told Lena. “We’re just talking about my late wife.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.” Lena’s features arranged themselves into a mask of empathy. “Damion told me that she was a wonderful woman and that you’ve pretty much never gotten over her loss. I’m sure it’s painful to speak of her.”

  I don’t think Lena appreciated the way that Damion and I reacted to her statement. There was a moment of silence while the two of us absorbed what she was saying. And then right after that we both burst into laughter as though we had just heard the funniest joke ever.

  Lena’s brows drew together in confusion. “O-kay. Care to explain what’s happening right now because I can assure you that I have no idea.”

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Damion said as he exhaled a huge breath of air. “I know we’re probably acting like a couple of lunatics. But I have just now been informed that all of these years our family has made the assumption that Cari was this wonderful woman that had totally captured my brother’s heart.”

  “And that isn’t true?” Lena looked from me to Damion and then back at me. “You weren’t so incredibly in love with your wife that it spoiled you for any other woman?”

  “Try the opposite,” I told her drily. “I don’t want any women in my life because my wife was the biggest bitch on the planet and I don’t ever want to run the risk of getting mixed up with another woman like that in my life.”

  “Wow. Okay.” Lena managed to handle this new information with surprising calm.

  Damion cocked his head and looked at me. “Wait a second. You honestly think that Tansy Economides is that big of a bitch?”

  Leave it to Damion. I sighed and shook my head as I watched Lena’s face go from sympathetic to hard in the blink of an eye. She pointed at me. “What’s that? You think Tansy is a bitch? Are you out of your mind? Tansy is one of the sweetest people that I know!”

  I sighed. Yep. Apparently, Tansy Economides was really good at presenting one face to the world and to anyone she wanted to like her. And then there was her other face, the one that looked like the biggest bitch on the planet. That was the one she showed to me.

  Chapter Nine

  Tansy

  “Whoa, he said what?” My friend, Thayla, squawked as though she were about to lay an egg. “You can’t be serious! He actually said the word beeyotch?”

  “Yep. Pretty sure that’s what he said.” I nodded and shoveled an extra plump steamed dumpling into my mouth. “I’m sure that was right before he was about to accuse me of witchcraft and call for a dunking stool.”

  Thayla snorted and grabbed her napkin to cover her mouth as her eyes watered. It took a few moments for her to regain control of her breathing. Then she shot me a dirty look. “Can you not say stuff like that when I’m trying to swallow?”


  “Sorry.” I bared my teeth at her. “You know, in some totally convoluted way you’re related to this guy.”

  “No. No way.” Thayla was already shaking her head when Lena Schulte breezed into Wong’s Dumpling House and waved to us even as she was whipping her scarf out from around her neck. Thayla pointed at Lena. “She is related to him. By marriage, of course. Not me.”

  “Your brother is marrying her sister,” I reminded Thayla. “So, in a manner of speaking Valentino Alvarez is your brother-in-law.”

  “Once removed,” Thayla belted out. Then she wrinkled her nose and looked confused. “Is that what they mean by once removed, do you think?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. Then I thought about all of my Greek relations. “I think people use that phrase to pretty much mean whatever they want. Once removed. So like one step away from being, I guess. Sure. Why not? Valentino Alvarez is your brother-in-law once removed.” I made a face at Thayla. “Congratulations. You’re related to a total asshole.”

  Lena plopped into a chair and reached for the pot of hot mint tea to pour herself a cup. “What on earth are the two of you talking about?”

  So I brought her up to speed. I might have embellished a little bit. Maybe. Just a little. I felt kind of bad though. I was careful to make sure she understood that Valentino hadn’t actually done anything bad to my car.

  “Four hundred dollars?” Lena was aghast. “Oh my word! I feel so bad! Your car broke down at my open house party. When Damion and I asked Valentino to go and fix the stupid car I had no idea he was going to gouge you like that!”