Tangled: Contemporary Romance Trilogy

by Dee Bridgnorth

  I pushed the button to transfer the little twit on the other end of the line to the voicemail of an even bigger twit. Candace Longmeyer was one of the top producers at Upscale Real Estate. In my opinion, which isn’t exactly expert but could be considered pretty damn close, Candace had lots of clients because she cut corners, did a lot of lying, and had huge boobs.

  Yes. That’s right. Boobs sell houses. Didn’t you know? It’s a fact. I am not in possession of a large chest. This is why I am the administrative assistant here at Upscale and not one of the agents. Well, that and the whole real estate license thing. I’ve been trying to scrape together enough money to take the class and then the test, but money isn’t the easiest thing to come by. Not when your boss is Upscale Bob who barely pays minimum wage and still thinks he should be able to get at least eighty hours a week out of you.

  “Lena!” Tansy Economides flopped onto the tall counter in front of my desk. “Do you have those documents for me? I totally forgot to email you last night. I’m so sorry!”

  I put a manila folder on the counter. “Who’s the man? Huh?”

  “You are!” Tansy is very short so she was practically hanging on the counter trying to see me over the top. She is also disgustingly adorable because she looks like the heroine in one of those Greek rom-coms. Silky dark brown curls that hang most of the way down her back and enormous brown eyes that probably came from a distant relationship to Helen of Troy. She was curvy and cute and sometimes I was more than a little envious. “I am so sorry. This closing has been driving me crazy. The buyers have to be the most uptight couple ever. I’m not kidding! They wanted a microbial test on the pool. Can you believe it? The lady is apparently convinced that there could be MERSA in the water.”

  I wasn’t sure what it said about me that this was the not the first time I’d heard this ridiculous worry. Usually it was when there were retention ponds in the subdivisions though. “I suppose everyone is germophobic these days, huh?” I was kind of half ignoring Tansy. She’s my friend. I love her to death. But sometimes it feels like she’s the walking disaster and yet she got her very Greek family to pay for her to get her real estate license. My very American parents wouldn’t contribute a penny. In fact, before their deaths two years ago they continually told me to go ask my sister for a real job.

  Ray Fines came sauntering by the desk. The guy always looks like a million bucks. But that’s partially because he’s flaming gay and knows how to work it. Ray tossed his perfectly coiffed blond hair and laid his palm flat on my countertop. “Upscale alert. Just warning ya’ll.”

  I handed Ray a file folder with a fresh fax that had come in that morning. He wiggled his fingers and then wiggled his cute little chino-wearing butt down the hallway toward his office.

  “Did he say Bob was coming?” Tansy scrambled to get her closing paperwork together. “Sorry Lena. I have to run. I can’t afford to talk to Bob until this deal is done and closed. He’s been telling me for a week just to do it. Like I can just snap my fingers and make one set of people fork over half a million bucks to another set of people without making sure they’re totally happy with what they’re paying for. I am not a miracle worker. Or a therapist!”

  Tansy was still muttering as she headed down the hall toward her own office. She was scheduled to be in the conference room in half an hour to finish the closing paperwork. At that point the deal would be really done. That meant she really didn’t need to worry about Bob. She was just avoiding him because she didn’t want to deal with creepy Upscale Bob. I got it. If I could’ve hidden under my desk, I would have.

  I did contemplate faking an important phone call so that I wouldn’t be just sitting here when he swept through the front doors. But that tended to backfire in the form of the dial tone blaring into my ear at precisely the wrong moment. Nope. I was just going to have to grit my teeth and try to keep good old Upscale Bob from trying to get up my skirt. Literally.

  “Hey there, Lena. Good morning!”

  I didn’t mention the obvious, which was that it wasn’t morning it was eleven forty-nine. That was noon. Noon was afternoon. But that was all semantics, right? “Good morning, Bob.” I should have called him Mr. Abernathy because that was his name. But he got really persnickety about that.

  “I brought you something, hon.” Bob’s grin was toothy and—well, it was just toothy.

  I didn’t want to take the bait, but how was I supposed to pretend that I hadn’t heard that? The guy was trying to blind me with his bleached white smile. Of course, the orange hue of his spray tanned skin kind of enhanced that blinding white teeth thing. Then there was the glossy gelled hair sweeping back from a forehead that still didn’t look right after Bob’s hair plug surgery two years ago. He was a sixty year old still trying to look thirty and failing. But you didn’t dare tell him that.

  “You have messages, Bob,” I said quickly. Maybe that would distract him.

  But no. No there was no distracting him from the enormous bush’s worth of greenery and flowers he pulled out from behind his back. “I picked these up for you this morning.”

  My brain froze. The temperature of my cerebral cortex actually took a nosedive and reached zero degrees, a real feat when the outside ambient temperature was something like a hundred and ten degrees today.

  What was I supposed to do? I didn’t want flowers from him! And then finally my brain chugged back into motion. “Oh Bob, those will look lovely here in the office. Thank you for getting those for everyone to enjoy.” I beamed up at him trying to look as sincere as possible. Maybe if one of us was sincere it would make the interaction slightly less awkward.

  His fake smile faltered and suddenly became that much more real. How amusing. The guy was married. He kept doing shit like this and I kept rebuffing him politely because I was so generous that I was trying to make it look like he wasn’t a serial cheater who tried to sleep with every woman in our office. Candace.

  Bob rested his elbow on the high counter and leaned over to look down his nose at me. Does that move actually work with some women? Like, if you look down on them, they automatically assume that you are as awesome as you think you are? Men are idiots. And that is my firm opinion on that subject.

  “You know,” Bob drawled in his Midwestern accent that could not decide if it was going to be southern or northern. “I’m the guy in charge around here.”

  It was really hard not to look at the front doors where his name was etched into the glass or the back wall of our reception area where his name had been stenciled onto the wall by some artistic floozy he had been sleeping with about eighteen months ago. The literature was covered in his name. The horrible aqua and wine-colored brochures that matched the carpet and the black padded chairs. It was all plastered with his name or his logo, which was just a stylized version of his initials. Upscale Real Estate was just one big Bob Abernathy advertisement. Yeah. At some point in my four years of employment I had figured that out.

  I can play dumb when I want. It’s not actually that hard. I’m a brunette, so I don’t have that blonde bimbo thing going for me. But I can certainly bat my eyelashes and turn on the big blue eyes. My eyes are certainly blue enough. “I’m not sure what you mean, Bob. Of course, I know that you’re the guy in charge. You’re Upscale Bob, the go-to guy for real estate in some of the most upscale neighborhoods in the St. Louis Metro area.”

  I had almost slipped and said pretentious. Because that was probably more accurate. St. Louis was a bizarre city. Or rather, county. But I’ll get to that later. Right now I was more worried about the flowers that were sitting on my desk. Bob was schmoozing because that’s what he did. He even had the first four buttons of his shirt undone as though he thought he were in some eighties television show.

  “I could really make that real estate license dream of yours come true, you know?” Bob waggled his eyebrows in an almost suggestive manner.

  I felt my heart jump into my throat. He had been taunting me with this for the last several months. It was possi
ble for a man like Bob, a broker, to sponsor an up and coming agent through the class and the licensing process. Then the broker would get a cut of the new agent’s sales commissions for the first year or two as a kind of payback until the fees were compensated.

  “You would do that?” I couldn’t help it. I sounded suspicious because I was. “What would I have to give you in return?” I realized how this sounded. Dammit! “How much in sales commission above and beyond the cost of the class and the test?”

  He was grinning like a total perv. Ugh! My skin was actually crawling. He looked like he had been rolling around in baby oil or something. How did he shake hands with prospective clients? It was almost like his hand would just slip away, maybe even smack someone in the face on accident or something. Ew. That was just gross. I did not want to know what else the old lecher did with his greasy hands. My sex drive was going to be permanently damaged by this guy’s disgusting advances if I didn’t put a stop to it soon.

  “Well now.” He was officially trying to look down my shirt. Good thing I dress like a nun. I have made turtlenecks a year round fashion statement. “I guess we would have to have a chat about that kind of thing. Compensation is such a tricky subject.”

  The bells on the front door jingled. Bob did not even budge from his suggestive pose. Good thing for both of us that I’m far more alert and intelligent than he apparently is. I spotted the visitor immediately and went into disaster mode.

  “Hello, Mrs. Abernathy!” I said brightly. “Don’t you look wonderful today! I love that suit. The periwinkle really compliments your complexion.”

  “Oh Lena, you are always such a doll.”

  I’m never sure what’s more hilarious. Watching Upscale Bob leap out of his oily skin as he tries to pretend that he wasn’t trying to seduce me right here at my desk, or the fact that his wife was always totally oblivious to what was going on.

  Gail Abernathy is a nice enough woman. She just happens to have really bad taste in men. The poor woman married Upscale Bob back before he was upscale. Even worse for Bob is the fact that it was Gail’s family money that gave him the cash to start his real estate business. Gail’s own father was in real estate.

  Sometimes I wonder if the reason Bob complains about Gail is that she’s aging gracefully when he’s been looking more and more like a train wreck these last few years. She’s got a few lines and wrinkles, but they sort of compliment her very distinguished-looking silver hair and her tall willowy body. She’s taller than Bob. And she’s probably smarter too. But the poor woman has a blind spot when it comes to her philandering husband.

  “Oh, look at those flowers!” Gail exclaimed suddenly. “What a beautiful fall arrangement! Where did it come from?”

  Bob’s eyes went so wide it looked as though they were about to bug out. He was opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water. How is it that guys who cheat can be so very bad at coming up with excuses in the moment? They can lie if they have a minute to make something up. But when it comes to the on the fly explanation, they just suck!

  I stood up. There was a card at the very bottom of the arrangement near the lip of the pretty cut crystal vase. I nicked the card as I was pretending to push the flowers a bit closer to Gail Abernathy.

  “These are for you, Mrs. Abernathy. Mr. Abernathy brought them in just this morning. He said that you were stopping by and he had gotten you something special since the two of you haven’t had much of a chance to spend time together lately.” I beamed at the wife and felt her husband looking at me as though he didn’t know whether or not to hate me or love me for saving his balls from the fire.

  “How beautiful!” Gail actually blushed and her smile was so big that for a second I felt bad for lying. She was so happy. Was that wrong? “Bobby, that is so sweet!”

  Gail flung her arms around her husband’s neck. I confess to being a bit surprised that her arms didn’t just fly right off his oily skin. He stared at me over her shoulder. I didn’t know if he was appreciative or not, but I would sure as hell be bringing up this little incident the next time we talked about sponsoring a real estate license.

  Chapter Three

  Damion

  Part of the problem with running an IT recruiting firm is that there isn’t a whole lot in the way of exercise or physical activity necessary to do the job. In fact, it’s pretty sedentary. Meaning that if I didn’t make it a point to go to the gym I would start to look like all of the other people in this business. Big butts or big guts. One of the two. It didn’t really matter which one it was. At least not in my book. The entire point was that I didn’t want to look like that. Ever.

  “Hey Damion, did you want to join the spinning class?” The girl at the front counter didn’t even look up. That was how I liked it. She was in love with her job at the gym and her girlfriend. It was such a relief. Sometimes I wished that all women were lesbians. Then they wouldn’t care what I look like or what my bank account looked like. They wouldn’t want anything to do with me. Period. “You can go on in. I put you on the list.”

  “Thanks, Ava.” I waved at her and headed for the locker room first to dump my stuff in my locker.

  My gym is old. Or at least it’s in an old building. Clayton is like that. It’s an older suburb of St. Louis City. My actual firm is located in Chesterfield. A short drive, but a much newer area with lots of new buildings and a burgeoning population of people in the age category that usually indicates at least an interest and a natural affinity for the IT industry.

  I could have lived closer to the office. But I like it here in Clayton. Or at least I used to. I threw my bag in my locker and couldn’t help but wonder if it mattered whether or not it mattered if I used the lock. Hell. I should probably just leave my stuff out in the open so some stalker named Trinity could come in and paw through it. Maybe if she didn’t have to work at it, the challenge would be gone and she’d get bored.

  Pipe dream.

  I headed directly to the back of the gym where they kept the stationary bikes. A dozen or so gym members were just starting to pick their cycles and get loosened up. I chose my usual one. I always use the same cycle. And I almost always wear the same clothes. Black sweat shorts and a black tank top. It’s all a part of my OCD. I’m really not that bad. At least my therapist says I’m not that bad. Maybe I shouldn’t believe him. He might be telling me that just to make me think that the therapy is working. Damn. How can you tell if therapy is working or not? Is there some kind of evaluation I can do? Preferably online of course.

  I love the sounds of the gym. The radio going. The sound of stationary bikes whirring. The clank of weight machines. It’s the kind of thing that gets my blood moving. I don’t really pay all that much attention to the other people per se. I’m usually too self-focused for that.

  “All right, you guys, let’s kick it into high gear!” The stereotypical bouncy spinning class instructor got on her bike and pretty much started at ass-kicking speed. I didn’t care. I was ready. I needed this.

  Fifteen minutes in, my thighs were burning and my calves were cramping and I was loving every second of it. Sweat poured off my forehead, but the air conditioning kept the temperature nice and tolerable. I reached for the water bottle I had stowed right in front of my stationary bike. I needed just a splash of fluid to keep myself from fainting dead away.

  “Here you go, baby. Suck that down.”

  I fumbled the water bottle and dropped it. Water splashed all over the industrial carpeting but I didn’t give a shit about that. I was too busy trying to figure out how my water bottle had crawled out of the drink holder. And then my physical activity endorphin-soaked brain finally got it.

  “Trinity! What the hell?”

  I stopped pedaling so fast that my feet came loose. The pedals spun free and whapped me on the inside of my calves. Trinity was standing there grinning at me as though this happened every day. I tried to leap off the cycle. My legs got caught. I could feel the bike going down. It was like a horrible snapshot of some i
mpending disaster that I couldn’t do a thing about.

  Trinity gave a dramatic grasp and put her hand over her heaving bosom. “Damion!”

  The last thing I registered before I hit the ground was her outfit. It was horrible. Tight spandex hugging every last curve and probably crawling up into her crack. Her orangey fake tan went all the way up to her panty line and the woman was wearing leg warmers that matched her passion pink leotard. Her boobs were practically spilling out the top of her outfit and she looked like the human version of workout Barbie.

  My cycle had tipped right into an entire line of them. Thankfully they weren’t occupied. But that meant there was no weight to keep them from toppling over in turn. Like dominoes they hit the ground and shattered into a million pieces. My legs were trapped beneath the cycles and it as like kicking free of a broken robot or something as I tried to work myself free of the mess.

  Of course this entire time the spinning class has come to a complete halt. The instructor is no longer looking perky. More like horrified. Her hands are over her mouth and she’s probably trying to decide whether she should tell me now or later that I’m going to have to pay for all of this broken equipment.

  One, two… There are nine cycles now littering the floor of the gym. Everyone is looking at me. Or rather they’re looking at Trinity because she is now sobbing hysterically as though she was the injured party.

  “Oh my God!” Trinity wailed at the top of her lungs. “He’s going to be paralyzed! Look at him! He’s probably never going to walk again!” She pointed at the instructor. “You killed him! You and your stupid class! He’s dead! We’re suing this gym!”

  “What?” I finally managed to get myself up and out of the debris. It wasn’t a graceful exit. I didn’t care. I was mad as hell. I stomped over to Trinity and grabbed her arm. I spun her around so hard I think her head might have gone all the way around. But the crazy witch needed an exorcist anyway so what did that matter? “What is your problem? What are you doing here? Three hundred yards, remember?”