Tangled: Contemporary Romance Trilogy

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Karl’s smile didn’t even slip or falter. Instead, he held his hand out to Damion. “Karl Kitson. I manage the Ilse de St. Louis Country Club. Have we met? I feel like I recognize you.”

  “Damion Alvarez.” Damion took Karl’s hand, but then he stood up to his full height and gazed down at Karl. Damion had at least two inches and a bit on Karl. “Owner and CEO of Gateway IT Staffing.”

  Finally, Karl’s smile seemed to falter. He had to look up at Damion for one thing. That wasn’t something that Karl ever appreciated. And then there was the whole thing about Damion having a way more prestigious job. That was bound to really piss off Karl Kitson. The man prided himself on being the biggest bully on the local scene. Or at least on my local scene. As horrible as it might sound, this was actually very satisfying to witness. Karl was getting his comeuppance and I wasn’t even sorry enough to worry about what this was going to cost me in the long run.

  “CEO. Wow.” Karl abruptly let go of Damion’s hand.

  Damion slid back into the booth and looked utterly comfortable there. He looked back and forth between Karl and me. “I’m sorry, how do you two know each other?” Damion gave me a pointed look and I felt as though I were in danger of exploding. Like my head was actually going to pop right off my shoulders with the force of my blood pressure rising. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you mention a Karl Kitson before, Lena.”

  My mouth was almost too dry to respond. “Karl and I dated years ago,” I managed to say. “Years and years now. We occasionally run into each other around town but not frequently enough for it to be of any note.”

  Oh, yes. I had just said it. Karl’s expression turned absolutely icy. If there was a gauntlet to be thrown, I had just smacked him across the face with it. He drew himself up and then glared at me. “I suppose if that’s how it is, I’ll just make my way back to your office. I saw Bob a few minutes ago. I haven’t seen him in a while. I’ll just have a quick chat.”

  That little shit! I almost choked on my tongue trying not to swivel my head around fast enough to press my nose against the deli window in order to see if Bob’s car was really there. I had to freeze. Freeze. Solid. Stay. Still. Karl was playing games with me. I couldn’t let him win!

  “Bob?” Damion seemed totally unruffled. “He’s my real estate agent. He’s out of the office for the day. Maybe it’s been so long since you’ve spoken with him that you’ve forgotten what his car looks like.”

  Whoa! I almost lost the battle not to snort like a pig and then laugh my freaking ass off. Karl’s eyes were now officially bugging out. Any wider and his contact lenses were going to pop right off his eyeballs. He rolled his head around and we could hear his neck cracking. Then he shook his head.

  “See you around, Lena.”

  Karl exited the deli and stomped off toward his car. He did not look pleased and he did not appear to be on his way to my office complex, which was good. I didn’t need him sticking a bug in Bob’s ear about me. The guy was a total ass and he could only be counted on to make trouble.

  “That is one piece of work,” Damion commented after a moment or two had passed and the tension in the nearly empty deli had come back down to a manageable level. “That guy and Trinity should get together. They could make each other miserable.”

  “You know, I’ve often thought about that,” I admitted. “Haven’t you? It’s like if they could just find something—no, someone—else to fixate on, they could finally let go of us.”

  “Sure. I was just thinking about that last night.” For just a moment Damion looked as though I had caught him doing something naughty. “Okay, so I even got some of my IT bench guys working on this earlier today.”

  “What?” I couldn’t help it. I leaned forward in my seat and felt my heart start to race for reasons that had nothing to do with Karl’s unwelcome appearance or what Damion and I were discussing right now. “Are you serious?”

  His dark eyes were twinkling with the kind of mischief that I happened to find irresistible. “Hey, they work for me. Right? I have to pay them anyway. At least according to their contracts, they have three months before I can let them go. I almost never have guys sitting on the bench between jobs for longer than thirty days. So if I can get some of these IT gurus working on something that will benefit me… Why not?”

  I knew from hearing my sister moan and whine about the topic that this whole bench thing was a big deal. As in, huge. I think her employees got twenty days before they had to take a massive pay cut if they couldn’t bring in any revenue. I couldn’t help but admire a CEO who would more than triple that number. But that was beside the point at the moment. Wasn’t it?

  “When you say working on this,” I began slowly. Lifting my fork to my lips, I licked the last of the yummy potato salad sauce off the plastic tines. “What exactly do you mean?”

  “Well, I’m trying to hire someone to date my ex.” He actually managed to say that with a straight face too. I could hardly believe it. My mouth was literally hanging open.

  “To date your ex,” I repeated. “Like you’re hiring an escort?”

  “No. Not exactly. We could try it with yours too if you want.” He was giving me a weird sort of sideways look.

  Was this a test? I cleared my throat. “I don’t know. That seems pretty low. I hate being stalked and followed. I don’t want to be part of making that happen to anyone. Not even Karl.”

  “No. It’s not like that at all. It’s just inserting their information into a local dating website database while skipping the part where they sign their name.” He looked a bit chagrined. “I guess I had never thought of it quite like what you described. I’m not trying to punish Trinity. I just want her distracted. Too distracted to remember she’s pursuing me at any rate.”

  “I see.” And I did. “What about the fees? These companies get fees, right?”

  He grinned broadly. It was an odd expression. I didn’t understand what that was about. Then he reached across the table and took my hand. The touch was electric. I felt the zing all the way through my arm, down my legs to my toes, and straight back up to my brain where everything was starting to fog over.

  “You’re a good person, Lena.” His voice was soft. He turned my hand over and looked at my palm. Then he began to carefully trace the life lines stretching from the base of my wrist to a spot between my second and third finger. “And I’ll admit that I didn’t even think about the fees. We will pay the fees.”

  “How can you do that?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, but that’s something for the IT guru guys to figure out. Not me. I’ll be honest with you, sometimes they manage to do some pretty scary stuff using nothing more than a tablet and the internet.”

  “Nerds,” I told him in a stage whisper. “They’re totally going to take over the world. Just you watch. One day we’re going to wake up and we will be enslaved to a race of super beings who grew up taking apart their video game systems and using them to empty their parents’ bank accounts.”

  “I would believe it.” Damion did not let go of my hand. I wondered if he realized that he was still holding it. I’m not sure I cared at that point. “That’s why I went into this business. I started seeing how dependent people were getting on their computers. It was almost as though there wasn’t a single office that couldn’t run without them. So, I decided that the service I wanted to provide was the best nerds’ money could buy. And I was going to hire a stable of them and be their pimp.”

  “Wow. So, the prostitution thing didn’t work out, huh?” I couldn’t help it. His choice of words was hilarious. “Let me guess. Those girls ran all over you.”

  “Exactly.” He bobbed his head up and down. “Nerds are so much easier to deal with. They’re not all that intelligent when it comes to social things and all you have to do is help them get total nerd domination bragging rights and they don’t even care if they’re the highest paid nerd in the building.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.”


  He gently set my hand back on the table. “Some days I think I do. Then I get blown away by something like this business with Trinity and I feel like I’m back in middle school again wondering why this girl is acting so weird when all I want to do is turn in my math homework and finish our group project.”

  It was an interesting bit of insight into the man’s head. But I would be lying if I didn’t admit I had a hard time believing that anyone who looked like Damion Alvarez had ever not known that he was good looking. He had spent his life as a beautiful man. That left a mark on someone whether they were willing to admit it or not.

  “Well, we should probably get back.” I said this quickly. Things were getting too intimate. Strangely so. I wanted it to go back to the lighthearted banter and the part where we were talking about the possibility of him buying a house in Lionsgate. “Actually, I guess I should get back. You can go wherever you’d like. I promise.”

  “So I’m not a hostage then?” He stood up and began to clear away both of our baskets as though he were totally conditioned to be a gentleman. Yet another bit of evidence that this was a really good guy.

  “Not a hostage,” I assured him. “But I will turn into a smashed pumpkin if I get back after Bob’s afternoon appointment.”

  “Appointment,” Damion shook his head. “That man is the sort of guy who gives men a bad name.”

  “True.” I couldn’t really argue with that. “But he’s a spectacular negotiator. If you really want one of those homes in Lionsgate, he’s going to get you a better deal than you ever imagined possible. I promise you that.”

  “All right then.” He eyed me up and down in a way that made my skin tingle until it caught fire. “But only because you’re vouching for him.”

  Hmm. I didn’t really know what to think about that. Vouching for Uptown Bob? That could be icky, sticky, tricky business.

  Chapter Eleven

  Damion

  I could tell that I had unsettled Lena. I hadn’t meant to. I really liked this woman. Not the kind of hey baby, can I get your number sort of thing either. You just didn’t have to spend very long with her to realize that she wasn’t like that. Not at all. This was a real woman. A person. She was the sort of person I could see myself hanging out with after work. The kind of person who could make you laugh and make you think and probably run circles around me in the ethics department.

  Funny, but when I had told my guys to find a back door into the local dating websites and then utilize it to get Trinity a bunch of phone calls, texts, and emails, I hadn’t even looked at it from the perspective of what if I was finding her a stalker. And I sure as heck hadn’t worried about fees. That was their problem. Right? But what if someone did that to my business? I would have been pissed. Even fifteen or twenty bucks was a lot when you were a small business or an internet startup.

  All of this stuff was just circulating inside my head as we walked back down the street toward the real estate office. I had already made certain that Bob’s Cadillac was nowhere near the parking lot. That had been a pretty low blow coming from Mr. Karl Kitson. A man whom I would be personally checking out once I got back to my office. I wanted to know everything from what kind of cereal he ate for breakfast to what color of underwear he liked. Except finding out about his underwear probably wouldn’t take much effort. He was likely one of those idiots who would happily tell anyone who asked whether or not he wore boxers or briefs.

  “Um, Damion?”

  I was totally spaced out. It was true. But somehow being with Lena didn’t require me to do much in the way of talking. At least not unless I actually had something to say. It was almost like I had already discovered that she was one of those unique people who could share a silence. Rare creatures indeed.

  “Damion.”

  “Huh?” Dammit. What was wrong with me?

  I turned to look down at Lena, but she was utterly focused on something down the street. Something standing in front of her office. Oh hell. Trinity was leaning against my loaner car. She was actually twirling a tire stem puller in one hand. And, of course, all four of my tires were sitting on the rims. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Lena snarled.

  I had been so focused on Trinity’s sudden and unwelcome appearance that I had failed to notice that Lena was practically vibrating with self-righteous anger right there beside me. She marched up to Trinity as though she were about to do battle. Her spine was straight. Her hands were propped on her hips. And for a second I actually thought that she was about to grab Trinity by her choppy short hair and ram her face into the hood of my car.

  “Who you think you’re talking to, beeyotch?” Trinity pouched out her lower lip, put one hand on her nonexistent hip, and the other was waving in the air as though she were on a daytime talk show. “You better get your skank ass away from my man!”

  “Your man?” Lena snorted with enough force and derision to scare a bodybuilder away from his free weights. “You must be out of your mind. I don’t need your man, honey. I don’t need a man at all. I freaking work here! Mr. Alvarez is one of our clients and you just stepped on the wrong toes.” Lena pulled out her phone. She dialed a number with amazing speed and barely waited two seconds before someone answered. “Yeah. This is Lena Schulte down at Upscale Realty. I have a woman here who just assaulted a car belonging to one of our clients. Yes. Right here in the parking lot.”

  It was surreal. Absolutely surreal. Trinity’s expression was priceless. There was something almost mystified about it. She was staring at me and staring at Lena as though she couldn’t figure out what was going on.

  A lemon yellow Cadillac swerved off the main road and pulled into the parking lot. I wanted to groan out loud. What in the hell was this? Bob? Not good. He was going to…

  “Mr. Abernathy!” Lena was still on the phone, this time marching her way past Trinity toward the spot where Bob had managed to park his vehicle in a position that was mostly perpendicular to the curb. “Mr. Abernathy, this woman just destroyed Mr. Alvarez’s tires! He was coming to the office to see if you were back from your meeting. Look what she did!”

  That was the moment I discovered that Lena Schulte is the most brilliant strategist on the planet. The woman is diabolical. Absolutely diabolical. The second that Bob Abernathy saw Trinity, it was like watching a bird dog go on point. If the man’s ears could have pricked, they would have. As it was, he raked Trinity with a look from bottom to top and apparently liked what he saw.

  “Young lady, did you really use that on the car?” Bob’s tone hovered somewhere between fatherly and lecherous and one hundred percent creepy. “No. I can’t believe a pretty girl like you would ruin four tires like that!”

  Trinity’s eyes were bugging out. She stumbled back a step, but the sound of sirens roaring down the street seemed to drive home the point that she was in more than a little bit of hot water. She looked right and looked left. There was really nowhere for her to go.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Trinity drew back her arm and launched that stem puller toward the bushes.

  I tried to move to catch it, but Lena was lightning quick. Her hand shot out and she snatched that tool right out of midair. She looked at me and winked. “Ten years of fast pitch softball. I was an All-State shortstop.”

  Maybe it was just that. The one moment where Lena looked at me and the two of us were unguarded. Whatever it was, I could see Trinity focusing on that as though she were about to blow a gasket. She scowled and then she pointed at me.

  “You’re going to be sorry. You get me? You think you can run around on me and cheat your way through the female population of St. Louis. Well, you’re wrong. You’re going to be sorry. You both will be.”

  “Honey, don’t talk like that now.” Bob Abernathy put his arm around Trinity’s shoulders.

  I actually had to cringe as I watched good old Bob rubbing Trinity’s arm with the palm of his hand. Trinity made a face and shoved Bob’s tentacle-like hands away f
rom her. “Ugh! Get away from me, you creepy old man!”

  Bob’s interest seemed to die an immediate and definitive death about the time the cops pulled into the parking lot. Lena hadn’t been joking. There were two cars and by the time they slid to a stop in the parking lot there were four police officers stepping out with their expressions set in jail mode.

  “Lena?” The officer in front was an older guy, probably in his fifties or older. “Hon, who owns the car?”

  “That’s our client. Mr. Damion Alvarez.” Lena gestured to Damion. Then she pointed at Trinity. “She was standing here with this.” Lena held up the stem puller. “She tried to toss it.”

  “You caught it, huh?” The cop grinned. Then he glanced at Damion and Bob. “This girl used to play a mean game of softball with my daughter. Can’t slip anything past this one.” The cop scowled at Trinity. “And you! What kind of crazy woman ruins four perfectly good tires?”

  “He’s a cheating bastard!” Trinity spat at the policemen.

  Damion pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. This was getting so old. He looked at the officer and actually felt sad for the guy that he was going to have to take Trinity down to the station. The woman could really turn on the crazy when she wanted to. “If you look, I’ve filed a restraining order on her. Her name is Trinity Moberly.”

  “A restraining order, huh?” The cop chuffed out a sigh. “Always glad to see that those work as well now as they always have. All right, Miss Crazy Pants, let’s go.”

  Trinity began to struggle. She moaned and groaned and tried to brace the bottoms of her feet against the side of the police car as though she were about to unleash some serious kung fu moves.

  “Oh no you don’t!” One of the younger cops managed to get hold of her, but that only made it worse.

  The cops wrenched Trinity’s hands from her front side to her back side. They had her smashed against the trunk of a police car. It made no difference. Her face was squashed, but not so squashed that Damion couldn’t see her fighting like hell to get loose. She was shouting epithets at him, at them, at Lena, and pretty much at the world.