I stood just inside the office’s glass doors and watched the gloomy afternoon clouds creep across the washed out blue sky. Sometimes December could be depressing. It was cold and damp and even though there was no doubt that Christmas was one of the best times of the year, I could not help but think that the weather made it a bit difficult to feel optimistic.
“Oh my, girl,” Ray drawled as he walked out of the back hallway with a handful of paperwork that obviously needed faxing. “You look like shit! Didn’t you start dating that scrumptious piece of Alvarez tail? I would think that hitting something that yummy would make a girl look satisfied at least!”
Ray meandered over to the fax machine that was behind the big round desk once occupied by Lena Schulte. We hadn’t actually hired a replacement. The new owner had decided it wasn’t worth it. We were all taking turns answering phones, taking messages, and dusting the office. Since nobody wanted to pay an administrative assistant, it was all working out just fine.
I slumped against the counter. Since I’m so short I can barely look over the top of the thing without standing on tiptoe. I hung there by my fingertips and glared at Ray. “You know, it’s really impolite to tell a girl she looks like hell and then insinuate that she’s not doing it right with her new sex partner. Hypothetically. Because I’m not going to confirm or deny for you that I might or might not be having sex with Valentino Alvarez.”
Ray scoffed and snapped his fingers. He looked rather dapper today, which just made me feel all the more washed out and exhausted. “Girl, we are working seven days a week trying to close deals and sell houses. Don’t you be trying to tell me that I’m being rude. I’m doing you a favor here. I’m just trying to tell you that you need to get rid of that old hag look you have going on if you want your career to go anywhere.”
I thought about the Musgraves and their cheapo offer. I considered the weirdness of watching Karl Kitson look at houses without ever going inside because all he cared about was where they were on Google maps in relation to the Lionsgate subdivision. Maybe my parents were right. Maybe I should just go back to the Greek Maiden and forget about this real estate stuff.
“Ray, I love you,” I told him wearily. “I really do. But can you give me an opinion that is not colored by your own personal style for once? Just try to be logical here.”
“Um. Okay.” He actually looked affronted. “And for the record, my personal style permeates everything. Girl, you don’t get an opinion from me that isn’t totally saturated with my own awesomeness.”
“Right.” I pinched the bridge of my nose and started to wonder if this was the point where I was going to have to smack him. “So if you were going to stalk someone and be totally crazy a la Karl Kitson and Trinity Moberly”—I let that hang for a second because let’s face it, that is just a weird situation in general—“would you or would you not think that it was a good idea to somehow pester the shit out of the family members of your stalker target?”
“The family members?” Ray mused. “Hmm. I don’t know. I suppose it would make a difference as to how those family members were all tied together. Right? Because if they were all depending on the same financial pie, then maybe that would be the angle.”
“No. Damion Alvarez is not dependent at all on the garage that Val runs. It was the family business, but Val is the only one still involved with that.” I shook my head for a moment and then I realized that I didn’t exactly know if that was true or not.
Ray snapped his fingers. “Ha! You’re not sure about that. Are you? Never underestimate crazy bitches like Trinity Moberly, darling. They do their homework more thoroughly that anyone else on the freaking planet!”
I had to hand it to him. Ray was right. Nobody could do homework on a target like a stalker. They were better than private investigators and more thorough than the FBI. It was entirely possible that I didn’t’ know the details of what was really happening with Val and Damion and the garage and their family.
I had just opened my mouth to say just that when Ray sucked in so much air that I wondered if there was any oxygen left in the room. He was pointing at the parking lot and making weird noises with his mouth as if he could not get his words out. I turned to look where he was pointing and suddenly felt the most horrible urge to do the same.
But sputtering and acting speechless wasn’t going to do me a damn bit of good because there was no mistaking who and what was walking across the parking lot toward our front door.
“Isn’t that your mother?” Ray squeaked. He sounded terrified. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I’m going to have to finish faxing this stuff later. Your mama scares me.”
“No!” I protested. “Don’t leave me here!”
But no amount of moaning or groaning was going to change what was happening right now. My mother was striding across the parking lot wearing one of her long thick black skirts and a suit jacket over her white blouse. Her graying hair was swept up into a huge bun atop her head and her boots were sporting a military shine that just barely managed to catch the last dying rays of sunlight before they were hidden behind a bank of gray clouds that seemed oddly appropriate for the moment at hand.
“For the love of God,” I muttered. “She didn’t… Tell me she didn’t!”
But she had. My mother was not alone. Behind her trotted a little man about five feet tall with a portly little belly, a head full of thick unruly blond hair, and a moustache that was almost epic in its thickness and ability to swallow the bottom half of his face. The guy had to be at least fifty. No. That was exaggerating. Maybe forty. That was probably more accurate given the circumstances. But I had a really bad feeling that this was my potential husband. This was my arranged marriage walking across the parking lot trailing along like a little pull toy behind my domineering mother.
Mama pushed her way into my office and spotted me immediately. “Ah! Perfect. There you are. I didn’t want to have to search every office since there is no proper secretary in this place anymore.”
“Mama, there’s never a need to search every office in the building,” I told her with what I hoped was a very neutral expression on my face. I didn’t feel neutral, so I had to struggle with pretending that I was. “You know where my office is. If I’m not in there, then I’m out looking at property with a client.”
“Right.” Mama waved her hand dismissively. The brush off was obvious. “I brought someone for you to meet.”
“Is that right?” I tried to offer the man who was probably Anatoli my non future husband a smile. Neutral. It was all about neutral right now. “And who is this? One of your cousins from Greece?”
“No.” Mama clucked disapprovingly. I didn’t care. I didn’t! Okay. So maybe I did a little. Except I could not afford to right now. “This is Anatoli. The young man I told you about the other night.”
“Right. I remember you and Papa talking about the new cook from Greece.” I took Anatoli’s hand and pumped it up and down. “Welcome to St. Louis, Anatoli. If you need help getting a place to live, just let me know. I’m in the real estate business as you can see.”
My mother actually rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous, Tansy. He is staying with your father and I until he gets a more permanent situation.”
Anatoli looked as though he wasn’t really following the conversation. It took me a moment to realize that the man did not actually speak much English. My mother jabbered to him in Greek, which I’m not all that good at deciphering. I spoke it when I was much younger, but my command of the language has sort of evaporated with age.
Mama gestured to me and then she said something that I was able to interpret. I almost choked right then and there. “Mama!” I said sharply. “You cannot promise this man that I’m going to marry him and get him a green card! Are you out of your mind?”
“Of course you will marry him and get him a green card,” Mama said dismissively. Apparently, we were not even pretending to ask or to cajole or coax or anything of the like anymore. “You have nothing else to stop
you from taking care of this for your family.”
Panic made me foolish. I swallowed the lump in my throat and forced the words past my frozen lips. “I’m actually dating a man who just proposed to me, Mama,” I told her with the biggest, broadest, and probably the fakest smile that I could slap on my face. “I haven’t had time to tell you yet because I’ve just been so busy with all of my clients.”
“You’re what?” Mama’s eyes bugged out. I think I actually felt her aura get bigger and angrier as though she were using some kind of Jedi mind trick to try and smash me to the floor and crush my spirit. “You cannot be serious, Tansy. No man dates a woman and asks her to marry him in just a week. I saw you only a few days ago. You said nothing about this.”
“I don’t have to tell you everything, Mama,” I said primly. I was bluffing. She knew it. And yet I was about to sell this like a brand new condo with a huge fat commission on the line. “And Valentio Alvarez is a wonderful man with his own business. His brother is one of the most successful men in St. Louis. I’m proud to be joining their family. And just because I don’t tell you everything doesn’t mean you know everything. You’re rather hard to talk to. And you never gave me a chance to say anything. You were too busy trying to plan my life for me.”
That, at least, was true. From the corner of my eye I could see Anatoli looking back and forth between Mama and me as though he had no idea what was happening. He just had a goofy sort of half smile on his face. He looked nice. I really hated it that he had been brought here and promised something that my parents really could not deliver. But I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my freedom so that he could stay in the country and make spanakopita for my parents’ restaurant. If I did that, if I allowed myself to be guilted into doing something stupid like marrying this man, I might as well just quit. I might as well just accept that I was going to be a waitress at the Greek Maiden for the rest of my life. In fact, I would be resigning myself to the life of an actual Greek Maiden. The eternal maiden. Like some virgin in an old Greek tale sacrificed to the oracle or some other such nonsense.
Nope. Not me. Not Tansy Economides. I wasn’t going to do that. I was going to make sure that my life was what I wanted it to be. Sort of. Maybe. So I smiled at my mother and then shook Anatoli’s hand one more time.
“It’s so nice to meet you, Anatoli,” I told him. “Welcome to the family. I’m sure you and my parents will be quite happy together.”
If my mother could have throttled me right there, she would have. I was almost certain. But she didn’t do anything more than turn on her heel and stalk her way back out into the gloomy parking lot. Anatoli tripped behind her. There was still a smile on his face and he continued to look around as though everything he saw was new and fascinating. The poor guy had no clue what he was in for. But I did. And that meant I had to find a way to get myself married and off the market before my mother figured this whole thing out and managed to rope me into her arranged marriage after all.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Valentino
“Okay, stop right there.”
I glared at Damion. I didn’t want to stop right there. I needed to keep going or risk my head exploding. Did he not get the fact that I was in desperate need of a chance to purge this information from my system? I needed him to tell me that Tansy was being completely unreasonable here and stopping right here was not going to make that happen.
“Did you just say,” Damion murmured thoughtfully, “that Trinity has been breaking into your shop and sabotaging customer vehicles for the last few weeks?”
“Yes! But that’s not the important part,” I snapped. I pointed at my brother. “No. I’m not kidding here. That’s not the important part.”
“How is that not significant?” Damion snapped right back at me, which was a bit surprising because he usually didn’t snap. Not at me anyway. He was even tempered and usually he treated me as though my concerns were laughable to him. “That woman has been breaking into your business and messing around with people’s cars. You just told me that she loosened the bolts on some transfer case belonging to a customer that you had previously been in a bit of a stand-off with because he had refused to pay his bill.”
“Yes, but that’s over,” I told Damion. I really didn’t want to rehash all of this ridiculous Harvey Kraus nonsense. It wasn’t important. “I already fixed Harvey’s truck. The vehicle is like new again. It’s over. It’s done. It’s paid for. I don’t see why any of that matters anymore.”
“Gee. Maybe because that suddenly makes the call I got from my legal department a whole lot more comprehensible.” Damion grunted at me and reached for a pad of paper on the desk in his home study.
It was Sunday. I had come to Lionsgate to find my brother at home. He’d told me that Lena was out with Thayla shopping for wedding notions. I was not sure what the concept of wedding notions for a steampunk-themed wedding might include, but I didn’t ask because I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
The house was quiet. It was enormous. I swear I could hear my voice echoing down the hallway as though I were standing in the door of Damion’s study and shouting at him from the front door more than a mile away. I could not begin to imagine how he and Lena were comfortable in this cavernous space. But then I wasn’t a millionaire. I was just a mechanic. Certainly not the same thing.
Which brought us back to Damion’s strange comment. “Legal department?”
“Yes.” Damion flipped a few pages on the legal pad until he found the page he was evidently looking for. “Ah. Here it is. My legal department at Gateway IT Staffing got a phone call yesterday from a man who identified himself as a customer of my family’s garage in Fenton. He wanted to advise me that his vehicle had been tampered with while under the custody of my family business. He also stated that he had been informed that the building itself where his vehicle had been impounded pending payment of his repair bill belonged to my company and that he and his lawyer considered this a liability on my part.”
There was a long drawn out pause. For just a second I could not begin to imagine how all of this fit together. And then it made a sudden kind of shockingly horrible sense. I cleared my throat. “Did you say,” I began, “that he said he had been informed that the garage belonged to your company.”
“Yes,” Damion confirmed.
Well. I had been wondering what benefit it was to Trinity to bother me when it was my brother she was really after. I was pretty sure I had my answer. “So basically Trinity is trying to make you liable for damages done at my garage,” I muttered. “That bitch!”
“You know, I hate to say I told you so,” Damion drawled obnoxiously. “But I freaking told you not to keep her as a customer! I told you! I told you that it would come back to bite you, Valentino!”
“Uh huh,” I snarled. I was not going to shoulder the blame for this. And actually, why were we talking about shouldering blame or laying it anywhere? “You realize if you hadn’t started dating this crazy bitch in the first place, none of this would have happened!”
“So she’s in jail?”
“They called me,” I told him dismally. “She was released on bond.”
“Dammit!” Damion rubbed a hand down his face. “So she could be out there right now waiting to do something else to create some horrendous liability?”
“In theory.” I didn’t feel bad at this point about making my little brother sweat a little bit. This was all his own damn fault anyway. “So basically she’s doing damage and then advising people that they should sue you because you have a financial interest in the building—”
“I’m your fucking landlord,” Damion reminded me irritably.
“—and she thinks that by doing this she will somehow convince you to go back to her?” This was still hazy to me. Damion was getting married. Trinity was already married. There was nothing left for her to gain.
“I don’t know. Maybe this has gone way past some weird desire to convince me that she’s the only woman for me,” Damion hypothesi
zed thoughtfully.
“All the way to what?” I snorted. “Punishment?”
Damion gave me a dry look of disdain. “That’s what a million dollar lawsuit would be. Don’t you think?”
“Million dollar lawsuit?” I was almost sure I had misheard him. “That seems a bit excessive for a few loose bolts on a transfer case.”
“And yet that’s what your friend Harvey Krause was threatening.” Damion sounded pretty damned grumpy. “So maybe it’s not so excessive after all. My lawyer said that he was ranting and raving about the possibility of driving off the road or flipping his truck. Evidently he was stuck in his front yard for hours and had to have a neighbor help him out or something.”
“But that wasn’t a life or death situation. And a few loose bolts on a transfer case meant he couldn’t utilize his four-wheel drive, but there was nothing about it that compromised any part of his vehicle’s safety features.”
“No. But he could probably still take me to court over it.” Damion was grunting as though he were trying to come up with the worst case scenario that he could possibly come up with. “If he took me to court,” Damion muttered, “I would have to unload that building.”
“What?” This was news to me. I had only asked my rich bastard of a brother for a loan because the taxes had been ridiculous a few years ago. He didn’t own the whole building. He just owned a piece of it. “You can’t just unload your tiny part of my building,” I reminded Damion. “The agreement was that I’d buy it back.”
“So you can pay for that right now?”
“No!” Was that where this was going? Really? My rich brother was trying to gouge me for the money that I had borrowed from him years ago? “What an ass. Seriously. You get one threatening phone call and all of a sudden you’re trying to get me to cough up fifty grand right when I just managed to pay my quarterly taxes?”
“I can’t have that kind of liability right now,” Damion insisted. “And I don’t know if that’s really what’s going on right now or not anyway. It’s not like I’ve had a sit down discussion with my legal team about this possibility. I was just saying it might be a possible way for me to become not liable for whatever Trinity’s been doing.”
Tangled: Contemporary Romance Trilogy Page 67
