Tangled: Contemporary Romance Trilogy

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “I’m going to sue!” Trinity screamed at the top of her lungs. “Police brutality! Police beating! You’re hurting me!”

  One cop apparently felt bad but not for long. Trinity’s heel came up and nailed the poor man in the nuts. He sucked in a huge breath and doubled over. A second officer took his spot and kept his thighs tilted to prevent Trinity from nailing another set of nuts.

  “You perverts! You’re raping me!” Trinity moaned and sobbed and now she acted like they were trying to rip her clothes off. Her behavior was beyond bizarre. To this day I’ve never seen anything like that insanity before or since. It was almost like the cops were trying to corral a wild animal. A rabid one.

  Trinity shrieked like a lunatic and struggled to get her hands back around to the front. It finally took two cops to hold her still enough to put cuffs on her hands. It took another five minutes to spin her around and around and finally shove her face first into the back seat of a car. By that time the four officers were breathing heavily and looking more than a little harried. They spotted Lena a quick wave and then took off. I could hear Trinity’s shrieks until the police car turned back out onto the main road and picked up speed.

  The three of us, Lena, Bob, and me, were totally speechless with something akin to horror. There were no words. I was humiliated. I felt like the world’s biggest ass. Here I was bringing this bullshit into these people’s lives without apology. I would not have blamed them if they both looked at me and told me to hit the road.

  “Well, then,” Lena finally murmured. “That’s over at least.”

  I saw her throat move. It seemed like a million years ago that we’d had lunch at the deli and talked about houses and dating services for our exes. Even dealing with her idiot ex, Karl Kitson, hadn’t been like this.

  “Bob, how was your meeting?” Lena asked in a shockingly normal tone of voice. I was in awe of her composure. If I had tried to speak right then I was pretty sure I would have been spitting out gibberish.

  “Oh, you know,” Bob said slowly. He glanced at her and then at me. His trademark lecherous grin spread across his face. “Everything got off just great at the beginning of my meeting. And in the end it all went off with a bang.”

  I wanted to groan. The guy was insufferable. And yet all Lena did was roll her eyes. Then she looked pointedly from Bob to me. “So Bob, Damion was just telling me a few minutes before all of that… Ahem. He’s really considering Lionsgate and came here to chat with you a little more about making an offer.”

  Bob stared off down the road in the direction that the police cars had vanished. “Yes. Lionsgate. Superior security for the modern man. I think we should go put an offer together right now. How about you, Mr. Alvarez?”

  Like I was going to argue at this point. I was already halfway to the front door of the real estate office. I knew better than to say a word about the fact that they were being so cool about this. I suppose in the end I had stumbled upon the perfect real estate agent to help me with this problem. Upscale Bob was probably the biggest womanizer I’d ever come across. The guy had to have dealt with some crazy women before in his long years of philandering. I might not approve of the guy’s lifestyle, but Lena was absolutely certain that Bob was the guy to help me. Maybe this was why.

  “Yes. I think Lionsgate is going to suite me just fine,” I told Bob. At the last second before stepping into the real estate office, I gave Lena one last look. “Ms. Schulte, I hope you will accept my sincerest apologies about this ridiculous incident. I had no desire to drag you into the middle of that, uh, scene.”

  “It’s no trouble at all, Mr. Alvarez. I’ll just call the police department here in Chesterfield and have a little chat with them about the situation. I want to make sure they hold her at least long enough to allow you the time to get safely out of the area.” Then Lena glanced at my car. “And is there someone I should call about the car?”

  “My brother.” I stepped back out of the front door of the office and away from the delicious air conditioned air. Fishing in my pockets, I finally found a business card for the garage. “Just have my brother deal with it. Thanks. He’ll bill me directly.”

  “Will do!” Lena said with the kind of bright smile that has the ability to make even the craziest solution seem manageable. I really liked this girl. It was impossible not to respect her willingness to get in there and get the job done. “You gentlemen focus on your offer. I’ve got everything else.”

  Wow. Did Abernathy even know how lucky he was? Probably not. Or maybe that was why Lena was still an administrative assistant and not a real estate agent in her own right. It was hard to say.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lena

  Okay. Totally narrow escape there. Well, sort of. When Damion had told me about his stalker, I have to admit that I didn’t actually think that Trinity was that bad. The woman made the Fatal Attraction list. She was bat shit crazy and I did not feel bad about throwing a fellow girlfriend under the bus with that statement. I’d been in situations in the past where I kind of felt sorry for the girls. I mean, they’d had expectations of a guy. They’d either given it up in the bedroom or they’d invested a lot of time and energy into being there for him because they thought that this was going to be a forever kind of thing.

  Yeah. Trinity did not fall into that category at all. I could not even begin to imagine that she had been lied to. Damion didn’t really seem like that kind of guy. More like Trinity smelled money and wanted it for herself. She reeked of gold digger.

  I plopped down at my desk behind the big counter. Holding the business card up, I gazed at it and tried to imagine what the place was like. The card wasn’t what I’d expected. It was plain white, cheap pasteboard. The front end of an old-fashioned-looking tow truck crouched on one corner. The words ALVAREZ ENGINE & TRANSMISSION arched across the bulk of the space. There was a small line of text with an address. Then a phone number. The card was smudged with something red and something black and it kind of smelled noxious. Weird.

  I picked up my phone and dialed. I was about to talk to Damion’s brother. Why did that feel like it mattered? Wait a second. If his brother ran the place, he probably had a front desk person to answer phones. That went a long way toward calming me down.

  “Alvarez engine and transmission, Valentino Alvarez speaking.”

  The voice on the other end of the line sounded almost bored. No. Distracted. The guy was totally on the computer! I could tell. Hmm. Maybe it was a family thing. This obsession with technology. Wait. I was supposed to be talking now. It was my turn. Damn! “Hello, my name is Lena Schulte at Upscale Realty in Chesterfield. I have your brother Damion here in our office.”

  There was a pause. I couldn’t even hear the clicking of keystrokes on the other end. Finally there was an enormous sigh. “Shit—sorry—I mean crap! What has that woman done now?”

  “Woman?”

  “Trinity,” Valentino Alvarez said flatly. “The only reason that Damion would need you to call me is if Trinity Moberly made yet another vehicle undriveable.”

  “Tires,” I told him. I don’t know why, but if there had been any lingering doubts in my mind that Damion might possibly be exaggerating, they had totally evaporated. “Although I understand she slashed a set in the past. She used a stem puller this time.”

  “Dammit.” There was more cursing. It was muffled though as though Valentino was trying to cover the phone while he had his little tantrum. “Uh, excuse me. I don’t usually do that in front of women.”

  “Totally understandable.”

  “See, that beast was in here the other day getting an oil change.” There was a crash and then a squeak. Apparently Valentino was getting up or perhaps searching for his keys. “She’s a customer. You know?”

  “Oh.” For just a moment I felt this burst of outrage on Damion’s behalf. His brother was letting his crazy ex get her oil changed? What the hell? And then my brain kicked in and I realized that Valentino probably couldn’t risk pissing off the Trinity
beast either. “Damn. You’re in a bad spot there.”

  “No doubt,” he snorted. “After she left my tech kept claiming that she stole some tools. I figured he was just blaming a convenient target because Beau is about the most absent-minded guy you could imagine.”

  “And now you think maybe your tech was telling the truth.” The gravity of that sank in and I felt so bad for both brothers that for a second I was tempted to call the police and tell them to send Trinity to the state mental hospital for evaluation. “I cannot even imagine how horrible it would be to realize that she’s using your own tools to damage your cars. That’s kind of…”

  “Diabolical,” Valentino muttered. “Tell Damion I’ll bring him another car and pick that one up. Can I get your address?”

  I rattled it off. He was down in Fenton. It was going to be a while. At least it would have taken me a while to drive that far. I got the feeling that Valentino didn’t necessarily follow the same rules as everyone else. Still. When I hung up, I couldn’t help but felt a shot of envy for Damion that he had a family who would drop everything just to come and help. Eleanor would have told me she was busy or working, which was her favorite thing to say in order to remind me that her job was important and mine wasn’t.

  My phone trilled. I glanced over at the screen and almost groaned out loud. How did she do that? It was like Eleanor could tell that I was thinking about her and automatically knew that it was the perfect moment to bend me into doing something that I normally would not do.

  Tonight. Dinner. The Italian place. We need to catch up. I’ll pick you up at home at 6. Her text was actually bossier than her actual voice. How is that possible?

  I don’t know how long I sat there at my desk contemplating that request. Request. Ha! It was an order. And that crap about catching up? She was going to sit there and pump me for information about Damion. I knew without even being told that this was the way things were going to go if I met her for dinner. But if I didn’t go… I might as well guarantee that she would show up at my little townhouse and camp on my doorstep until I let her into the house to say her piece.

  “Fine,” I muttered at my phone as I texted her back. “But I’m not going to tell you squat so you bring it, Ellie poo!” Oh, my sister hated that nickname. I had called her that when we were little kids.

  “Psst!” Tansy hung her head around the corner from the hallway and effectively snagged my attention. “What happened out there? I saw cops!”

  “That poor guy has the worst ex you can possibly imagine.”

  “Wow.” Tansy snorted as she came out of the hallway and into the reception area. She stood on tiptoe to lean over my desk. Her huge brown eyes were enormous. “You’re saying that? If you think his ex is bad, then the woman must be deranged because I always thought you had the worst ex ever.”

  “Trinity Moberly makes Karl Kitson seem slightly pushy.” I could actually say this with a straight face. That was pretty impressive. The truth was that the more contact I had with this Trinity person, the more I figured that I could deal with Karl’s clingy, nosy bullshit. “So I called the cops because she was violating her restraining order. She also pulled his tire stems. All of them.”

  “Can you imagine?” Tansy snorted and shook her curls. “Some women have no pride. Seriously. I just don’t understand how they can think that it’s okay to pursue a guy that hard.”

  I thought about Damion’s idea to set Trinity up with another date through a dating service and his offer to do the same for Karl Kitson. I could see why he thought it might be a good idea, but I actually had my doubts that it would work. At least not with some generic dating service. Trinity was going to need some other kind of incentive.

  I didn’t want to talk about this anymore. I didn’t want to think about it. I looked up at Tansy. “Did your deal close?”

  “Yes!” She bounced on her toes and her excitement was palpable. “Thank you so much for your help! Hopefully this will go a long way toward convincing my parents that I should stick with real estate. I don’t want to run a restaurant. No. Nay. Never.”

  “I hope it works,” I told Tansy. I felt like I should be happy for her, but there was a part of me that was perfectly aware of Bob Abernathy in his office writing up an offer for a house in Lionsgate listed at 1.2 million dollars. That could have been my sale. I had done the research. I had found the house. I had convinced the client that this was the perfect place to suit his needs. I just wouldn’t get the credit or the commission.

  “What’s wrong?” Tansy frowned. She was hanging even further over my desk in order to better see my face. “You look depressed. Is this whole thing with Karl Kitson just totally ruining your day? I absolutely understand that. It would drive me out of my mind!”

  “No. It isn’t that.”

  I stood up so that Tansy could stop strangling herself on the high counter. That was when I noticed a set of flashing yellow and blue flashing lights entering the parking lot. It was a huge flatbed tow truck. I stepped out from behind my desk in order to better see what was going on. Surely it was too soon for Valentino Alvarez to have gotten here from Fenton.

  “Tansy, I’m going to go and see what’s up in the parking lot.” I glanced at her. “Did you get that email I sent you? It’s a lead on a new client.”

  “Thank you!” Tansy gushed. She was already bolting back toward the hallway and her office. No doubt she was going to follow up on that lead until she and the potential client were blue in the freaking face. “You are the best! My God, if you ever get your real estate license I’m going to be screwed!”

  I did not comment on this. It wasn’t funny. And I know that Tansy is a sweet girl and that she didn’t mean anything by it, but that was a truth that stung like hell. I fed Tansy leads and I helped her and right then as I headed out the front doors of the real estate office into the steamy St. Louis fall afternoon, I wanted to scream that I could do this job better than Tansy, better than Ray, better than Bob! And maybe that was arrogant. I don’t know. I can be arrogant. But at this very second it was how I felt.

  “Hey. Are you Lena Schulte?”

  I blinked. Damion’s older brother. There was no other possible identity for the guy standing in front of me. If you took Damion and got him dirty and put him somewhere other than an office, this is what you would get. It wasn’t that Valentino Alvarez wasn’t good looking. He was just—well, the word intimidating came to mind.

  “Lena Schulte,” I murmured. “Yes. I’m Lena Schulte. You must be Valentino Alvarez.” I forced myself to offer him my hand and I smiled. Basic manners 101, right? “I can’t thank you enough for coming out here to help Mr. Alvarez with this car situation. He’s really lucky to have you in his corner.”

  Valentino Alvarez snorted. Then he shook my hand. “Little Damion. Yeah. He’s lucky all right. If the guy would stop driving women out of their minds, maybe they would quit destroying my cars.”

  I bristled. I couldn’t help it. “I’m sorry, have you met Trinity Moberly? She is absolutely unhinged. I cannot imagine how your brother could have done anything out of the ordinary to contribute to that mess.” I propped my hands on my hips. I was just getting warmed up and even though I knew I should just shut my mouth, my brain could not force my gut to do it. Maybe it was because I was still so burned up about my sister’s pushiness and the way that Tansy was riding my coattails. I don’t know. But Valentino had just become the target of my wrath.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Damion

  I was pretty sure I needed to save my big brother. Except I didn’t actually feel the urge to do it. It was too tempting to stand there in the reception room of Upscale Realty and just watch the expressions flit across Valentino’s face as he did his level best to take his foot out of his mouth. Or rather, whatever he had done in the first place to earn the righteous wrath of Lena Schulte. She was giving my brother the third degree. I couldn’t hear it. But I was totally familiar with that stance. Hands on hips, leaning slightly forward, head bobbin
g back and forth with each syllable. It was almost as if they took girls aside in elementary school and taught them how to do this.

  Bob Abernathy was standing beside me. He cleared his throat and looked uncomfortable. “Wow. I don’t usually see Lena get that upset about anything. And I believe I probably push her farther than I should.”

  I swung around to face Bob. This was too perfect of an opening. “You know, on that topic. What is the deal with Lena being your administrative assistant? You and I can both be frank here. I feel like the deal is basically done. We’ve got an offer on the table.”

  “True. We do.” Bob acknowledged that with a nod. He gestured to Lena. “She’s the best assistant I’ve ever had, but I don’t think she’ll be a good real estate agent. She’s too nice.”

  “Too nice.” I didn’t have words to go with that. There was nothing to be said. It was like the guy was oblivious to the obvious. “Why? Because she did the research for you to find my house? Or because she never tattles on you to your wife that you’re sleeping around? What makes her too nice?”

  “All of it.” Bob grunted. Then he looked mildly uncomfortable for a moment. “And I don’t think she’s got anything to tell my wife.”

  “Seriously?”

  I shook my head. I was so done with this for now. Besides. I needed to save my brother. He was starting to look a bit grouchy. Grouchy Valentino could be an ass when he wanted to be. I didn’t care to let him say something irrevocably rude to Lena. That would just be unfair.

  Damn, it was hot outside. I almost couldn’t breathe by the time I walked the short distance from the front door to the tow truck. My skin was sticky and gross beneath the soft fabric of my dress slacks. It actually felt like my polo shirt was clinging to my chest because it was wet. Had my clothing actually absorbed the maximum capacity of moisture from the atmosphere itself? Somehow I believed this could be possible here in the Midwest.