Tangled: Contemporary Romance Trilogy

by Dee Bridgnorth

  But that wasn’t the real reason I needed to leave Valentino Alvarez’s office. Nope. That had more to do with the whole animal attraction thing going on between the two of us. I was pretty sure that if I clenched my thighs any tighter I was going to cut off the circulation to my brain.

  Everything below my waist was throbbing. Did the man have any idea what his smoldering dark gaze could do to a woman? It should be illegal! I had just come over here to show him how to do a credit check. It wasn’t meant to be anything other than that. But the second I stepped over to this side of the desk it was like I had entered some kind of magnetic forcefield. I could feel his gaze raking me from head to toe. I could feel that deep, dark urge to turn and smolder right back at him. To look at him and lick my lips and then tell him that I wanted him as badly as I could tell he wanted me.

  Wait. No! That was insanity! Valentino Alvarez didn’t want me! He didn’t want any woman! He wanted to be single for the rest of his life.

  That doesn’t mean he wants to be celibate!

  Whoa. That thought was totally out of left field and completely inappropriate. I swallowed. There was a lump that kept getting stuck in my throat. I swallowed again. It didn’t move. I was going to gasp and choke here in a second. I could not draw a deep breath! My brain was too busy spinning wild tales of passionate love to be bothered with mundane things like breathing.

  “Thank you for your help,” Val’s voice was low and gravelly.

  When had I started thinking of him as Val? That was odd. The guy’s name was Valentino, but somehow that didn’t actually seem to fit him. He was so incredibly low key and practical. The name Valentino was almost too much. Val seemed a lot more appropriate somehow.

  “You’re very welcome.” I cleared my throat and forced myself to take a step back. Yes. The other side of the desk. That was safer. I folded my arms over my chest because I could feel my nipples peaking beneath my blouse and I needed to hide them. “I wonder if it would be possible to send the guy a letter telling him that had has forty-eight hours to pay for the work that you did, or you and your techs are doing to undo it. Tell you don’t have room to store his vehicle anymore. Notify him that you’re going to be removing the new transmission and that you will happily drop the truck off at his house once you’ve repossessed the parts you paid for.”

  Val’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Seriously? You think I should do that?”

  “Absolutely.” I pointed to Val’s computer. “Look at those credit cards. The guy has plenty of credit on them to pay for the work he had done. He just doesn’t want to do it.”

  Val scratched his neck and looked thoughtful. “You know, he did make a few choice comments to me about how he doesn’t believe a transmission should be that expensive to replace.”

  “So maybe that’s how he’s justifying what he’s doing,” I mused. “I bet he has a number in his head and he’s planning to come in here and start working on you, offering to settle for probably less than half of what he owes.”

  Val shook his head in open disapproval. “That’s not going to happen.”

  “So send the letter. Send it certified with signature confirmation so you know that he got it. Then you do what you have to do. That way your ass is covered. If he hasn’t paid for one dime of the work, and he tried to pass bad checks, you’re well within your rights to do that. You’re just offering to give his property back the way that it was.”

  “Except I can’t give him back his old transmission. I had to send it back to the shop where I bought the rebuilt one.” This seemed to trouble Val more than just a little.

  “Yeah, but you’re not charging him for the labor that you had to do in order to put the transmission in and take it back out. That was a lot of labor. So you can reinvoice him and write that off if you want.”

  “You’re diabolical,” he told me with a smile. “Remind me never to piss you off.”

  “You already pissed me off!” I teased. “Evidently I’m just scarier in hypothetical situations than I am in real life.”

  “Ha!” He was smiling at me with such brilliance that I felt a little punch-drunk by the whole thing.

  He stood up. I stood up. We were only inches from each other. His shoulders were so broad and he was so tall. I had to crane my neck back to look up at him. There was something so incredibly masculine about this man. I could not put my finger on it. He was just so real. There was no posturing. I didn’t have to imagine him fighting for a parking spot everyday just to assuage his male urges to dominate. This was a guy who got underneath a car and used a massive wrench to take the entire vehicle apart. His hands were huge. They were blunt tipped and they were the hands of a man who worked for a living.

  Oh God.

  Everything inside me stopped. Just stopped. And I did not know why until I realized that my instincts could see what was coming long before my intellect. My eyes slid shut when his arms closed in around me. Then his lips touched mine. Just a light brushing. The lightest touching of our mouths.

  But that was all it took.

  It felt as if someone had unleashed a tidal wave in the tiny office. I whimpered in the back of my throat as Val’s mouth dominated mine. He made love to me with his lips until I felt his tongue skating over the seam of my mouth asking permission to give me more. More. Yes!

  I could not resist. I eagerly opened my mouth and felt the softness of his tongue glide sexily alongside my own. I tasted him, the spiciness of his pure and utter male aura suffusing my entire body until there was nothing for me but this man.

  It felt so good. So. Damn. Good!

  I didn’t know what to do with my hands. They fluttered at my sides as my toes curled inside my boots. Finally, I pressed my palms against his chest and reveled in just how strong and solid he was. The heat rolling off his body was incredible. It made all of my nerves catch on fire. My skin tingled. My fingers curled into his thick thermal shirt. His coveralls were down around his waist. I slid my hands lower and felt his taut belly. The man was like one big block of muscle!

  He made a low noise in his throat as he moved his hands to my face. He cupped my cheeks so gently that I felt a wave of tenderness that nearly made my knees buckle. I had never been kissed like this before in my life. The slow, sensual movement of his mouth against mine was perfect. His tongue moved lazily in my mouth and sent a thrill rocketing down my spine.

  Then all at once I felt him shudder and the kiss ended. He drew back and stared down into my face. Our gazes met and held. It was as if the entire world had stopped turning right then. I could not breathe. I didn’t care. I just wanted to lose myself in those deep brown eyes. He was such a handsome man. Huge. Strong. Loyal. Maybe a little sarcastic. But I could see such tenderness and caring behind those eyes. It was a revelation to me. This man wasn’t what he seemed. He wasn’t a jackass trying to steal money from me. He was just a small business owner trying to scrape by.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  I watched his sensual lips move to form the words. He looked almost sheepish. He found my hands with his and lifted them to his lips. I felt a flutter of excitement. Hell. A flutter? There were flutters and frissons and tremors all over my body. I felt as though I were about to melt into a puddle right there on the floor.

  But there was something I needed to know. “Why are you sorry?”

  “Because I feel like I just took advantage of you. You’re here in my office. You were being very helpful and supportive and I just shove my way in like some caveman and start manhandling you. It’s sort of ridiculous. Don’t you think?”

  “Nope. I don’t think it’s ridiculous. I think it was two consenting adults realizing that a moment had arrived and simply taking advantage of it. Mutual advantage,” I added as an afterthought. “You know, because both of us thought that this might be a good idea.”

  There was a sudden knock on the office door. Val sighed and took a very deliberate step back from me. Then he dropped my hands. I cannot explain how bereft I felt in tha
t moment. I think the only word that comes to mind is disappointment. Like I was very, very disappointed that he was withdrawing even though I completely understood why.

  “Boss?”

  “What is it, Beau?” I could hear the exasperation in Val’s tone, but then I remembered Beau from that snowy Sunday morning.

  Beau opened the door and pushed his head through the opening. A wave of some foul smell came wafting into the office. I almost choked at the sudden smell. Lifting my hand to my face, I took shallow breaths and tried to keep my mind from going fuzzy and just blacking out. What on earth was this guy’s problem? And then I realized that this was the smell that still seemed to linger sometimes in the vents of my car. It wasn’t all the time. Just part of the time. But it was certainly a unique scent.

  “Boss, you won’t believe who just got here and says he wants to pick up his truck,” Beau drawled.

  I actually felt Val’s spine stiffen as his expression hardened. “Are you talking about Harvey Kraus?”

  “Yep, that’s the one.” Beau could not quite help his excitement as he hooked his fingers in the pockets of his coveralls and rocked back and forth on his boot heels.

  “Tell him I’ll be there in just a minute,” Val told Beau. “And shut the door.”

  Val waited until the door clicked closed before giving me an almost helpless look. “Now what?”

  “Well, this is better, isn’t it?” I suggested slowly. I could see his problem. The guy had come to the garage to pick up his property. “The truck’s body belongs to Harvey, right? But that transmission belongs to you. So, you just tell him that either he pays you the full amount due or you would be happy to remove your property from the vehicle and he can come back and pick it up in a few days.”

  Val shook his head. Then he started laughing. “Woman, you are one hard customer. I’m glad you’re on my side this time. I think I should just be glad that you decided to pay your bill instead of suggesting that I reclaim my parts from your car one at a time.”

  “About that,” I said suddenly. This really wasn’t the time, but I was absolutely curious. “My car sometimes smells like your mechanic.”

  “What?” Two lines appeared between Val’s eyebrows. “Like who? Beau?”

  “Yes! You have to admit that he has a rather distinctive odor.”

  “Not going to argue with you there, but I can’t imagine how it would be trapped in your car.” He was pulling up the top half of his coveralls, squirming to get his arms inside them and zip them up.

  “Oh. Well, I don’t know how that would work either. I just know what I smell when the vents kick on high.”

  “I suppose we could look at it,” Val mused. “Maybe the vents just need to be cleaned.”

  “Maybe,” I allowed. But I could not help but think that Beau the mechanic was just so nasty that he had rubbed his personal skunk oil on something in my car in order to create the most horrendous bouquet.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Valentino

  What is it about men that we truly believe to the bottom of our souls that we cannot show weakness or fear? Like the world will end and life as we know it will cease to be a thing if we show one of our peers that we are nervous or feel out of our depth with some situation or event. It’s daunting really. This whole expectation to be tough every second of every day.

  Maybe that’s why I could not bring myself to ask Tansy to please stick around while I talked to Harvey Kraus. I wanted her to maybe observe from a safe distance or just be there to offer moral support. Why was this such a big deal? The guy owed me six thousand, two hundred forty-five dollars and eighty-seven cents. That was a lot of money. A lot. And looking at his credit report, there was really no reason why he couldn’t pay his bill. It was almost as though he were just flat refusing. I always tried to keep in mind that I couldn’t know everything a guy was going through, but at the same time, that didn’t make me responsible for easing his financial burden.

  “Hello there, Harvey,” I told the man, utterly aware of the three other customers sitting in the reception room. “Would you like to come out back and see your truck? We can chat out there for a while if you like.”

  Harvey Kraus was a middle-aged man who worked for the city of Fenton in some kind of utilities position. I didn’t know what he did. I did know that he had a long-term, decent paying job with benefits and a pension and that this made him a pretty lucky guy in this current market. All things considered anyway.

  Harvey reached up and pushed a small hank of his thinning brown hair away from his face. “I figured you would just bring it around front so I could take it home. I had the wife drop me off. The truck’s been done for days.”

  “Your checks bounced,” I said flatly. “I told you that.” I could see the other customers in the room starting to stare and forgetting to pretend that they weren’t. This conversation was garnering a lot more interest than it should, but then maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. They needed to see me getting tough without someone about a bill.

  “Oh right.” Harvey bobbed his head. “I’ll have to get you another check.”

  “No.” I did not flinch. “I’m not going to take your check. I will take a credit card. Or you can run down to the bank and get cash. Since you were going to write a check, you must have the money.”

  “Well, I was going to ask you to hold it till Friday,” Harvey said uncomfortably.

  I exhaled a big huff of air. This was actually going to be easier that I had first thought. The guy wasn’t even trying to pretend that he had a problem. He was just lying to my face. I opened my hands as though that was somehow going to increase my earnestness. “Okay, Harvey, let’s cut the crap. Shall we?”

  “Huh?” His watery little brown eyes opened wide. “What are you talking about? That’s my truck. I want it back.”

  “Yes. It’s a truck that you paid a good seventy-five or eighty thousand dollars for. Then for whatever reason, you burned up the brand new transmission. The cost of that repair was six thousand, two hundred forty-five dollars and eighty-seven cents.” I think I actually heard someone in the reception area choke. “You were told that you had to pay the first half before the work started and the second half when you picked it up. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes. And I did,” Harvey said quickly.

  “No. You didn’t,” I growled. “You wrote me a bad check for the first half and tried to do the same for the second half. So if you want your truck, you have exactly forty-eight hours to come up with entire amount that you owe. Otherwise I will have my guys remove my property from that vehicle and return the truck to your driveway.”

  “Excuse me?” Harvey gasped.

  You could have heard a pin drop in that waiting room. I could feel people staring. I didn’t care. I had offered to take this conversation outside, but Harvey had just wanted me to bring the truck around to the front for him like I was just going to hand over the only leverage that I had in this whole debacle.

  “Six thousand dollars is a lot of money,” I told Harvey.

  He glanced at the people waiting as though he expected them to be on his side. “It is! It’s a ridiculous price for replacing one transmission! I think you’re gouging!”

  “Really?” I shook my head and walked back into the office. I snatched up Harvey’s file in its little plastic sleeve and brought it back out to show him. “Let’s see. In our initial conversation when you made the appointment, you told me on November fourteenth that the car dealership where you had bought the truck quoted you over seven thousand dollars for the work because the repair manual suggests sixteen hours of labor and they charge over two hundred dollars an hour for their labor.”

  “That doesn’t make it right to charge someone that kind of money!” Harvey insisted.

  “I see. So the fact that I had two guys working on nothing but your truck for two days is just my problem. And the fact that your new transmission cost four grand because you didn’t want a rebuilt transmission. You demanded a new one�
�also documented here by your signature by the way—all of that is my fault too?”

  “Well, no.” Harvey scratched his head. “You wouldn’t take that transmission out of the truck. You wouldn’t really do that, would you, Mr. Alvarez?”

  “It’s your truck, right?” I glared at him because I was getting really tired of this crap. Really, really tired.

  “Right,” he said slowly.

  “And the transmission still belongs to me. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I can get my four thousand dollars back for that transmission, right?” I knew the moment that Harvey realized where this was going.

  “Yes, I suppose you could,” he told me quietly.

  “And that’s a lot more than I’m ever going to get if I let you drive off in that vehicle.” I was getting angry. That’s not a good thing. But I couldn’t stop myself from going on. “I just want to know what you thought was going to happen. Did you honestly believe I was just going to kiss off six thousand dollars?”

  Harvey’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Well, no, but I thought you might give me a discount.”

  “And what? Not charge you for labor just because you blew the tranny out of a brand new vehicle?”

  “Not brand new.” He cleared his throat. “It’s just outside the warranty.”

  “Because you put sixty thousand miles on the thing the first year.” Uh oh. This was pushing into my danger zone. Now I could feel myself getting ready to step on my soap box. Danger! “That vehicle is not a commuter car! I can’t believe you think it’s practical to commute in that truck. You’re running it into the ground! And then you’re hauling a bunch of trailers with it that are heavier than the rating on the tow package and more than the vehicle’s recommended payload. You should beg me to take the transmission out so you can get another vehicle.”