Tangled: Contemporary Romance Trilogy

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “Yeah, I’m sure your fashion sense is exactly what it should be,” I told Damion. “As in nonexistent. You wear those custom suits all the time. I figure that’s fancy enough.”

  “Yeah, you could start wearing suits under your coveralls,” Damion suggested with a gleam in his eyes. “That way you could pretend that you’re some kind of secret agent.”

  I grunted and tried to forget about my phone. I wanted it to ring or to tell me I had another text. I wanted it to be Tansy changing her mind about this evening. That was literally the only thing I had been looking forward to today. Now I had nothing. Nothing but the rest of the day dealing with Beau and a second customer who was complaining that their car had a funny smell in it after Beau had worked on it.

  Damion reached over the desk and smacked my arm. “Seriously, dude, what’s up with you? You’re acting really odd.”

  “When Lena breaks a date with you, does she do it via text or does she call you? Does she come over to your place and tell you in person?” I didn’t actually want to go any farther and explain to my brother why I was asking, but I figured it was bound to be obvious.

  Damion frowned. “All of the above. I don’t know. I think she’s texted me before. She’s called. She’s mentioned it in passing. Why?”

  “Well, I guess I should just say it because you’re probably going to find out soon since women talk to each other…” I felt like I didn’t want to keep going. Couldn’t Damion just read between the freaking lines for once? “Tansy and I are dating. Kind of. Casually. Just sort of starting out.”

  “Starting out?” Damion was grinning so huge now that he looked like his face was about to split wide open. “Dude, that’s great! Awesome! I can’t even believe it!”

  “Yeah. Great.” I twirled my finger sarcastically in the air. “And day one of my dating experience is her sending me a text telling me that she can’t have dinner tonight because she already had plans with Thayla.”

  “Uh huh.” Damion looked expectant, like he was expecting there to be more. “And your point?”

  “My point?” I figured that would be obvious. “My point is that I feel like she shouldn’t be telling me that on the first day of our official dating life.”

  Damion started laughing then. I grabbed a piece of paper, wadded it up, and then flung it at him. He batted the paper back at me. “Hey! Don’t be mean now. I’m not trying to be rude here. But don’t you think you’re being a little controlling there, boyfriend?”

  “What? No!” I was appalled at the idea that I was anything of the kind. “I just want a bit of consideration. We just made the plans last night. She shouldn’t be cancelling because she wants to hang out with her friends!”

  “She probably already had the plans with Thayla,” Damion advised me. “Don’t you think?”

  “So.” I felt like a pouty little kid now. In fact, I had not thought about that possibility at all. But Tansy was social. She had friends and a social life and she spent time with people other than her coworkers. “I guess this is where you tell me that I’m being an ass because we’ve been dating for less than twenty-four hours and I’m already complaining that she’s not putting me first.”

  “I wouldn’t say that you’re being an ass.” Damion gazed at me for one long moment. A really long moment. Enough that I felt uncomfortable. “I think you’re being normal for a guy who just started dating for the first time in a really long time. I can’t imagine what that must feel like. You’re out there. You’ve just exposed yourself to the possibility of being rejected. It’s all kind of scary. At least I think so. When it happens to me,” he added as an afterthought.

  “Okay. So you know how it feels to be out there,” I muttered. “Don’t go all touchy-feely therapist on me.”

  “I have a therapist,” Damion said quickly. “He’s awesome. You want his number? You could really use some therapy.”

  “I don’t want a therapist!” I moaned.

  Someone knocked on the door. “Boss?”

  Beau leaned into my office door. Damion immediately got a strange look on his face. He lifted his hand to cover his mouth and nose. “Dude, Beau! What smells? Seriously? It’s like you started taking a bath in rendered animal fat or something!”

  “You smell it too?” I looked at Damion and frowned. “Customers are starting to complain that their vehicles smell after he works on them.”

  “I can believe it,” Damion muttered. Then he jerked his head at Beau. “So come on. What gives? What’s with the smell?”

  Beau pushed the rest of the way into my office and scratched his greasy head. “I’ve started putting a lot of garlic in my food.”

  “Garlic?” I wondered where this was going. Nowhere good. That much I could tell for sure. “Is there a reason for this or did you just discover a real love of garlic foods?”

  “It’s because of the ghosts and vampires.”

  Now both Damion and I were staring at Beau as though we were stunned speechless. I knew I had been busy and distracted lately. I just hadn’t realized that Beau had gone off the deep end while this had all been going on. Damion glanced at me. I glanced at him and then I shrugged.

  Damion sighed. He spread his hands. “Okay. I’ll bite. What ghosts and vampires? What are you talking about?”

  “The ghosts and vampires here at the garage.” Beau’s rheumy eyes got huge in his whisker-covered face. “You have no idea. They’re in here messing with tools every single night. They’re stealing stuff and moving it around and turning on and off lights and making a general mess! Then every single morning I have to come back in and clean up. It’s taking me almost an hour every damn morning!”

  “Did you know about this?” Damion frowned at me. “Vampires and ghosts in the garage? It’s like a kids’ book!”

  “I had no clue,” I told Damion. Then I looked at Beau. I leaned back in my seat and tried to ignore the horrible headache I felt coming on. I hated these tension headaches. Funny, but I never had them when Tansy was around. Wonder why? “Beau, I know that we talked about there being lights on in the garage one night and you told me that you didn’t come in and look because you were busy. So what changed? Has this been going on ever since? I thought you were postulating to me that it was Trinity Moberly.”

  “It is!” Beau burst out. “It’s her spirit. I think she’s a witch.” He turned to Damion. “Don’t you think she might be a witch?”

  “Oh, for sure,” Damion said sarcastically. “She probably sends a familiar in here every night to steal tools. You know, because she might be planning to sabotage the Hydrogen balloon at my wedding.”

  “I know!” Beau burst out. “It’s totally possible. I mean, I have to wonder what’s really happening with the girl. Marrying that guy she doesn’t even like just so she can get back at Mr. Damion.”

  “Beau,” I told him quietly. “Can you please just get back to work?”

  “Huh?” He looked confused. “Oh right. Val, I needed to ask you about that truck the guy came and picked up yesterday.”

  “What?” I felt like the proverbial deer in the headlights. “What are you talking about? What truck? Harvey Kraus’s truck?”

  “Yeah. That one.” Beau was bobbing his head up and down. “The guy is out front now saying that the thing didn’t get fixed right.”

  “You must be out of your freaking mind,” I muttered. I felt a shot of pure unadulterated irritation. “Okay. I’ll be there in a second.”

  Damion looked concerned. “Shouldn’t we be talking a little more about this hypothetical ghost and vampire thing? Come on, Val. Trinity is a witch and has a familiar? You can’t seriously be willing to leave this conversation right there!”

  “I have to go handle this bullshit warranty claim,” I muttered.

  I left Beau and my brother in the office sniping at each other about witches and warlocks and the probability that someone like Trinity could even have the brains to become a witch without blowing herself up.

  Harvey Kraus was certainly
up in the front waiting room area. He was pacing back and forth in front of a stack of tires. When he saw me, his expression went from worried to dark and stormy. Great. This wasn’t going to be fun. But I wasn’t about to do it inside the shop either. We were going outside this time and I did not care that it was only twenty degrees out there with a wind chill that would knock your teeth out either.

  “Come on, Harvey,” I said sharply. “Come outside and show me what you think is wrong.”

  “What I think is wrong? Harvey sputtered. “It won’t go into four-wheel drive! I had to have a neighbor pull me out of my own damn yard this morning! You said you fixed the transmission! So why won’t the four-wheel drive work?”

  I did not even ask what Harvey had been doing with that truck in his yard. I knew the guy lived out on a little dirt track in the back woods of Fenton’s most rural neighborhood, which wasn’t really saying much. But with a few inches of ice on the ground, grass sticking through, frozen mud, and God knew what else, I couldn’t imagine why anyone would be tooling around their yard to begin with.

  “That’s not the transmission, Harvey,” I looked at the truck. It was idling right there beside my building under the overhang that had once housed the gas pumps. We’d gotten rid of those years and years ago.

  I looked the truck over. It had auto locking hubs, so the problem wasn’t Harvey’s failure to properly use the vehicle. That happened far more often than one might think. I got down on the ground in my coveralls and ignored the icy cold slush from the parking lot that gradually began seeping through the thick duck fabric.

  “Well shit,” I muttered. “Harvey, I can fix this right now. Just give me a second.”

  Someone had loosened a bolt on the transfer case, the place where the driveshaft from the front and rear differentials met. The transfer case was responsible for engaging both and creating the four-wheel propulsion. The bolts were just hanging there. I knew this wasn’t something that we had accidentally forgotten to do. There was no way. You had to take the transfer case out of the vehicle in order to replace a transmission. You could not put the vehicle back together again and do the appropriate road tests if the transfer case bolts were just hanging loose.

  I jumped up and headed into the garage. I grumbled my way to the tools and grabbed what I needed. The enormous torque wrench was about as long as my arm. I held it carefully in my hand as I went back outside to fix this “problem.”

  Laying on the ground, I fit the socket onto the bolts and tightened them all up. They were new. It didn’t take much more than a major bit of elbow grease to get them where they needed to be. I took care of that quickly and was done. Then I stood up and gestured to Harvey.

  “Try it!” I shouted in order to be heard over the rumble of his diesel engine.

  I heard the transfer case shifting the vehicle into four-wheel drive. It sounded just fine. Great in fact. It wasn’t a grinding noise. It was just the sound of the well-oiled metallic gears rubbing against each other as the front axle engaged. I gave Harvey the thumbs up sign. Then the idiot started to drive off.

  That left me sprinting toward his window and banging on it. He put the window down and gave me a what the hell expression. I pointed at him. “You can’t drive on this road while it’s in four-wheel drive, Harvey. The road has to have some slip on it from ice or something in order to keep the transfer case from burning out. Just trust me. Okay? You don’t need four-wheel drive on wet roads until they freeze.”

  “Oh. Right. I think there was something in the manual about that.”

  The manual. Seriously? There was a freaking warning sticker on the damned glove compartment! I exhaled a sigh and then went back into the shop. It wasn’t my job to save Harvey’s truck. It was Harvey’s job.

  I looked at the torque wrench in my hand. That should not have happened. I could not help but think about Beau’s ghosts and vampires. What if there was someone sneaking into my shop after-hours and then sabotaging vehicles sitting out in the lot?

  I shook my head. I was being paranoid. I had to be. Why would Trinity Moberly-Kitson or her idiot husband even care about me or my shop? Why would they go to that much trouble when I wasn’t even their target? It made no sense.

  So who was the next likeliest suspect? Who else might want my shop to fail? I didn’t have an answer. But I was beginning to think that since I had no other plans for tonight, I really needed to stick around the shop and set a trap.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Tansy

  I felt bad. I did. I felt really bad about cancelling my plans with Val at the last minute and just sending him a text about it. Not that I wasn’t having fun with Thayla. I was. The two of us had already picked up several things for Stella Stein’s house.

  “And you say there’s an offer on this house already?” Thayla said slowly as she picked up another lamp and glanced at the price tag before setting it down. “So why are we looking for extra stuff?”

  “I’m hoping to create a bidding war,” I explained. “I know it sounds strange, but the poor woman has this horrible grandson who is draining her dry with his mooching. She had to take a loan on the house and it was paid for before. Her husband died years ago. She’s going to have to move in with a friend and try to start saving up again just to keep herself from having to go get a job or something. The poor woman is so wonderful! I just want her to get as much money as she can.”

  “So you think if you add some zing, you might attract a few more interested parties?”

  “Yes. The offer expires this Wednesday. I finally called Stella and told her, but she agreed that it was awfully low. We countered, and I told the other agent that the house had only been on the market for a few days and that we weren’t desperate, but the truth is that we are desperate.”

  “Bummer,” Thayla said glumly. “I always hate to hear that someone nice is having to take a hit.”

  “The thing is that she has a lot of really great stuff in the house. If it wasn’t for her horrible grandson, the place would sell right away. It’s so quaint and she’s got all of these antiques and stuff of her own.” I could feel an idea forming in my head. “Why don’t we take this stuff over there right now? You can go with me.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me!” Thayla said eagerly. “I think we’ve got more than enough. And the good news is that I’ve got the money to front her on this and then I’ll be able to use this stuff on my next job so I don’t have to charge poor Mrs. Stein for it.”

  “Thank you, Thayla.” I immediately felt kind of bad for feeling bad about not ditching her.

  The two of us got into my car and I started the engine. It was freezing inside the vehicle. The blower came on and the vents blew air across us both. Thayla suddenly turned to me with a very strange expression on her face.

  “Do you smell that?” She lifted her hand to her face.

  I was about to say no, but then I got a blast of foul Beau odor right in my face. “Ew!” I put my hand over my nose as well. “I swear it’s like the mechanic from Val’s shop stuck his personal perfume in my vents or something! Is that even possible?”

  “I don’t know.” Thayla reached out and shut off the heater. “But until you can take it back and get that looked at, I think I’d rather just freeze.”

  “Sorry!” I told her, feeling embarrassed. “I guess I have to call the shop then, huh? Fortunately I know a guy who works there.”

  “Yeah, fortunately.” Thayla laughed. “How do you think that’s all going to go? I know it’s too soon to really know much, but surely you can tell if the relationship is going to grow or if it’s just going to fall flat. Right?”

  “No. I don’t know any of that.” I sighed and steered my car toward Stella Stein’s place. “I wish I did. I wish I could say that I was just a great judge of character and that I knew when things were going to be good and when they were going to be a total waste of time. I was supposed to go out with him tonight, but I already made plans with you. So I’m just kind of hoping he underst
ands.”

  “Oh my word!” Thayla looked at me and made a face. “You should have blown me off! We could have done something tomorrow.”

  “No. I don’t want that to be part of this new relationship. You know? I’m tired of building my life around someone else’s. I think it’s important for him, and for me, that we both keep our friends and our regular social lives.”

  “Uh, not for nothing,” Thayla told me. “But I really think you should know that Valentino Alvarez doesn’t actually have his own life. That’s what I got from Eleanor, Lena, and Damion anyway. The guy works and goes home and watches shows on television about people fixing cars. He even watches that car auction show. Honestly, he’s pretty boring. So if you’re thinking that he’s going to have a life to keep going, you might want to reconsider.”

  I thought about that the rest of the way to Stella Stein’s house. It wasn’t far. Thayla was singing along with the radio in the passenger seat and humming to herself. I could not stop thinking about what Thayla had shared with me regarding Val. I knew the guy worked a lot. I knew he wasn’t exactly the kind of guy to hang out very much. But the idea that he was such a reclusive grouch that he had no friends and no life other than his garage was a bit daunting. How was I supposed to have a healthy relationship and still maintain my own hobbies and stuff if the guy I was dating couldn’t understand my need to continue my relationships with my friends?

  That made me wonder if the reason I had not gotten a response back from Val today wasn’t because he was just busy and that it was perfectly fine by him that I was hanging out with my friend tonight. Maybe he hadn’t responded because he was pissed off that I had broken my plans with him.

  I pulled up in front of Stella Stein’s house and got out of my car. Thayla was already out of the passenger seat and opening up the back door to get the stuff we’d just purchased out of the car. I helped her carry an antique lamp and a big mirror. She had a throw and some old-fashioned-looking pillows in a bag on her arm.