Tangled: Contemporary Romance Trilogy Read online

“I’m sorry, Lena,” Tansy whispered. She awkwardly patted my hand where it sat on the countertop. “I don’t know why Bob would deliberately string you along and make you think that he would be willing to sponsor you, but I think you’re just so efficient at doing his job for him that he’s afraid if he turns you loose with a license, he’s going to have to do his own legwork.”

  “Stop. Tansy, just stop.”

  I pursed my lips. I think my head was getting ready to explode right then. The amount of anger that I felt was enormous. I don’t think I’ve felt anything like it before or since. It was like waking up and realizing that you’ve wasted years pursuing the wrong path toward your goal only to wind up on a cliffside that lets you see your goal but puts a million-miles-deep chasm between you and the thing you want most of all in the world.

  The bell over the front door jingled right at that moment. I could not look up. I could not greet whomever walked into the office. Tansy did that for me. I saw her smile grow enormous as she waved to the visitor. “Hello, Mrs. Abernathy! How are you this morning?”

  “Oh, I’m just fine, Tansy.” Gail Abernathy always sounded so happy and put together. Did she have any inkling of what her husband was really like? Did she? Or was she happily oblivious? “Oh my! Look at those fall flowers! Who is the lucky woman to get such a beautiful arrangement? It’s finally cooled down and I bet that will be the perfect addition to someone’s fall table.”

  I didn’t want to listen to Gail Abernathy anymore. I didn’t want to hear her gushing about her fall plans with dear Bob. I didn’t want to hear about the menu she intended to serve that year, which would be catered in, of course. I just didn’t want to hear it. I wanted her and Bob and everyone to feel exactly like I did right now.

  And that is why I plucked the card out of the basket of flowers and handed it to Gail. “I’m not sure who these are for. Why don’t you read the card?”

  Tansy sucked in a huge breath, but I was already halfway down the hall to Bob’s big corner office. I heard Tansy’s voice. Then I heard Gail’s. I heard them getting louder. But I was already slamming my way into Bob’s office so hard that his door bounced off the wall and left a mark.

  “Hey!” Bob snapped. He looked up from his desk and I could see the surprise on his face when he realized that he was looking at me instead of some other minion. “Lena, what’s your problem?”

  “My problem?” I annunciated each syllable and glared at him with such heat that I’m pretty sure I scorched his orange skin and oily hair. “My problem is that you’re sponsoring your niece for licensure. If—according to you—a broker can only sponsor one potential agent at once, then that means you can’t sponsor me.”

  “Lena, let’s be real here.” Bob’s voice turned soft and mushy and soothing and just pervy and gross. Oh, how I hated him! “You’re not agent material. You’re an incredible assistant. The best I’ve ever had. But you’re not ready to make the deals on your own.”

  “Oh, because I’m too busy doing your job and making deals for you so that you can pretend to all of your clients that you’re competent?” I spit the words at him. I was so done. So pissed. Just so—done! “You know what? Go. To. Hell. Yeah. I quit. If you won’t sponsor me, then there’s no reason for me to keep working here and doing your job for you.”

  “Lena, don’t be silly.” There was officially an edge to his tone. “You’re making a huge mistake. I’m not the kind of man you want to walk out on.”

  “Really?” I heard the stomping footsteps heading down the hallway and I figured this was perfect timing. “Because I think I’m going to be one of many women walking out on you in the near future.”

  “Bob!” Gail shouted his name at such a volume that I swear the windows in his office rattled. “Bob, what is the meaning of this?”

  The poor woman burst into his office waving a little card in her hand. It was the one I’d given her that had come with the flowers. I hadn’t even read the thing, but it was apparently enough to send her into a near apoplectic fit. I stood back and inched toward the door as Gail Abernathy approached her husband’s desk and picked up a paperweight.

  Oh my word!

  Gail hauled her arm back and flung it at his head. The paperweight went sailing over Bob’s head and hit the wall behind him. Not only did it leave a good sized dent. It shattered the glass on three different photographs and sent them tumbling to the floor in a hailstorm of glass shards, broken wood, and probably shattered dreams too.

  Gail got right in Bob’s face and reached for another weapon. This time the letter opener. The woman meant business. “You want to kiss all of her pink parts? Her pink parts?”

  My eyebrows shot to the ceiling. I looked at Bob and wondered if he had lost his damned mind. “Good Lord, that’s what it said?”

  Gail swung around to stare at me. “Like you didn’t know?”

  “Absolutely not. You think I read those cards? Never!” I glared right back at Gail. “He’s been coming onto me for years. I just redirect, tell him I’m not interested, and then send the flowers on to you where they belong.”

  Gail opened her mouth, screamed, and then threw the letter opener like a dagger. Bob shouted. Gail shouted more. I turned around and left his office feeling as though I had just destroyed a relationship and not caring one whit about it. Maybe I had done them a favor. Maybe not. But I was tired of everyone walking all over me.

  “Lena?” Tansy whispered as I walked through the reception room toward the door. “Are you all right?”

  “Never better,” I told her. “Never. Better.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Damion

  Work. Work. Work. That is the only thing that ever makes sense. Although, at the moment it was probably not exactly work that I was doing. Not in the strictest sense of the word anyhow. I was mining for information. It was like dancing. No. Not dancing. You rarely tried to skewer your partner in a dance. So, let’s call it fencing. That sounds manlier anyhow.

  “What sort of salaries are you offering to your new hires, Mr. Alvarez?”

  There was no doubting that Ryan Phillipson of Gateway Business Weekly had brass balls. What I found so irritating was his insistence on using those brass balls to poke around in things that had nothing to do with this story he was supposedly writing.

  “Mr. Phillipson.” I leaned back in my big leather chair and gave him a cold smile. “If you’re here to ask questions like that, I think this interview is done.”

  Phillipson shoved his glasses up his nose. He had a rat face. That was my personal opinion and it was probably affected deeply by the fact that the kid had a rat personality too. But I couldn’t look at his prominent nose and weak chin and not think about a rat with its nose twitching as it searched out the best trash. Phillipson’s skin was pale. His lanky hair was too long and thinning on top making it look as though the brown strands were sort of melting off his head entirely. His beady eyes were a nondescript shade of blue that was so pale they looked almost greyish white.

  Now his nose twitched again and his face took on a distinctive kind of pout. “This is information pertinent to my article,” Phillipson insisted.

  “Or it’s information that will help you help your brother in undercutting us in the marketplace with local hires. Don’t think I’m oblivious to the fact that your brother Owen is a recruiter over at St. Louis Software Staffing Solutions. I know exactly what you and Owen want to do.” Damion did not let Ryan try and squirm to a different topic. He drove his point home because it was the point he wanted to make. “I know what your brother’s plan is. He’s spreading rumors about my company here in the local marketplace because he’s tired of the local IT professionals turning their noses up at his crappy offers.”

  “That’s a lie!” Ryan burst out. He bounced back in his seat and nearly shot forward onto the edge of my desk. It was a bizarre kind of move that made it look as though he were about to have a seizure. “You’re the one undercutting my brother! He and his company are offering comp
etitive hourly rates to new hires and they just come over here, tell you what they were offered, and then get a ten percent bump!”

  “Wrong.” Damion snorted and picked up his coffee mug. His mocha was getting cold. He didn’t like it cold. He liked the air conditioner cold. Now that the temperature outside was finally down to a reasonable level, he could actually drink coffee. “I don’t take all of his potential hires. And believe me, people generally bounce from one company to the next with no small amount of regularity. But if I think someone is worth a little more money to hire, I’ll offer it up. That’s called good business. I’m still making more on them when I put them in a job.”

  “And you still claim that your company isn’t selling out?”

  “We’re not selling this office.” Damion was so tired of this conversation. It was irritating. “Where did you hear that?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Really? Because if I find out that one of my employees has been feeding information to you and your smarmy little magazine, I’m going to fire them. If you want to reveal your source I will happily give them a warning and a stern talking to.”

  Phillipson snorted and rolled his eyes. He had a tablet in his lap and he was scribbling notes on it every other second. “Like I’m going to fall for that. I tell you who my source is and suddenly you’re wire tapping their phones.”

  “Are you kidding me right now?” I couldn’t decide if I was amused or disgusted. “Wire tapping? Really? This isn’t the seventies. You can run down to the local big box electronics outlet and buy yourself something to listen into any cell phone conversation that you want to.”

  “Right. But that doesn’t make it right.”

  “So selling information—especially inaccurate information—to you and your business rag is so much more right than using someone’s big mouth for a higher purpose?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like running St. Louis Software Staffing Solutions out of business.” I hadn’t actually decided to do that until right now. But since I’d said it, I kind of liked the idea. “Until right now, this very moment in fact, I had been tolerating the presence of that company in my local market. I think competition is healthy. Besides, it gives me someplace to send the people that just aren’t up to our standards. But now that you’re here and your brother is there and the both of you are making nuisances out of yourselves, I think I’m going to turn my attention to getting rid of that little thorn in my side.”

  If Ryan Phillipson had been pale before, he was now positively milky white and terrified looking. “You can’t do that,” he whispered.

  “Can’t I?” I pressed my lips into a tight line. “Who is your source?”

  “It’s not anyone here.” Phillipson said tightly. “Nobody in your company is going to talk to me. They’re afraid of you.”

  “Afraid of me?” I didn’t buy that for a second. It wasn’t fear. It was the knowledge that I had a zero tolerance policy for idiot behavior. Phillipson was trying to activate some kind of guilt button. Fortunately for me, I lacked such a thing. “So basically you approached my recruiters and my support staff and they told you to take a hike. Fine. So who is telling you that my company is about to sell off this office?”

  “My brother. He says that he got it from his boss.”

  “What?” I was floored. Why would Lawrence Moss of that piddling company spread that kind of rumor? Then I had a thought. “Hold on just a moment. What exactly did Lawrence Moss tell your brother Owen?”

  A shrug. As if this was totally immaterial. Phillipson swiped his finger over his tablet a few times until he finally seemed to find the notes he was searching for. “Let’s see. To the best of Owen’s recollection, he says Lawrence told him that Midwest IT Consulting Services is coming to St. Louis.”

  “That’s it?” Surely this idiot and his equally idiotic brother could not be that oblivious to what was going on right in front of them? “Is your brother close to Lawrence Moss? Does he consider himself one of Lawrence’s close friends?”

  “Not particularly. Owen is a good recruiter. His boss is Eleanor Schulte. You have no freaking idea just how bitchy that woman is!” Phillipson moaned. “She’s married to her job and is so overbearing that all of her employees call her the dragon lady.”

  Damion just barely managed to hold back his smile. Eleanor Schulte. Yes. Damion had met Eleanor and he had no doubts that she was indeed hell on wheels around the office. She’d been pushy with him after introducing herself and then trying to pry information out of him with no apology and not one word of politeness. The word driven certainly applied.

  Thoughts of Eleanor immediately made my thoughts drift toward Lena. Lena Schulte was about the opposite of her sister in almost every way. Except the part where Lena seemed to think that I was essentially just another guy with a desire to get her into my bed to fulfill a bunch of raunchy fantasies. But that wasn’t what I had in mind. At all. And it still burned me that I hadn’t been able to tell her that or make her understand.

  “Hey!” Phillipson was actually snapping his fingers at me. The ass. “Okay. So I gave up my source. Are you going to reciprocate?”

  “Sure.” I picked up my coffee again and inhaled the rich chocolately flavor. “But of course this is just speculation.”

  “Sure.” Phillipson was scribbling on his screen with a stylus at about a million miles an hour. “What’s the scoop? What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that your brother’s boss was trying to give him a heads up that their company is going under.”

  The stylus abruptly stopped moving. Phillipson looked up with a very strange expression on his face. I would call it confusion. “You’re out of your mind.”

  “Am I?” I let that sink in for a minute.

  I sipped my coffee once again and realized that I was going to have to keep an eye on this situation. St. Louis Software Staffing Solutions was no threat. However, Midwest IT Consulting Services was. They were highly successful, very competitive with salary and benefits, and had six offices in some of the same cities that I worked out of. The idea that they were about to come storming into my home market was less than appealing. Maybe I needed to look at starting a Kansas City office just to rattle their cage a bit.

  “That can’t be what’s happening.” But Ryan Phillipson was muttering to himself at this point. He wasn’t even talking to me. He was too busy punching his tablet with his fingertips and sending emails and texts. “There’s no way that Lawrence Moss would sell this office. He’s been in the St. Louis recruiting market for decades.”

  “Yes. He has,” I murmured. I went ahead and let Ryan Phillipson keep muttering to himself. He was desperately trying to talk himself into believing that he was right. “And after decades of running this business, it would seem perfectly logical for the old man to want to sell to the highest bidder. Don’t you think?”

  Phillipson’s head jerked up. He stared at me as though I had just suggested that the world was ending in a few days. Why was this such a big deal for him? I didn’t understand that at all. He was a journalist. His brother was a recruiter. Was Owen so afraid of not being able to get a job someplace else?

  “How do you know that?”

  “Excuse me?” I finished my coffee and set my empty mug on the corner of my desk. “I don’t know anything for certain. It’s all speculation.” I pegged him with a hard look. “But that’s what you were doing, wasn’t it? Speculating and then trying to get me to confirm or deny?”

  “Well, no! I mean, I had a source. I was reporting information that I got from a reputable person who had insider knowledge.” Phillipson was backpedaling so fast that I was surprised I didn’t see skid marks appear on his face. “It wasn’t speculation.”

  “Right.” I shook my head. “Please excuse yourself, Mr. Phillipson. And don’t call me for another interview. When your brother’s company gets sucked up by the Midwest IT vacuum, you can tell Owen that he’s welcome to apply here. We’ll have a
look at his resume and give him an interview, but there are no guarantees. It sounds like there will be people jumping ship at his company with no small amount of regularity if this is really the way things are going to go.”

  “W-What?”

  “You heard me.” I waved my hand.

  I absolutely knew that I resembled some maharajah dismissing some low-ranking official he cared nothing about. Maybe a farmer or a laborer. But I needed to make a point to Ryan Phillipson. Nonchalance went a long way toward getting someone to believe that you really weren’t worried. And I wasn’t.

  Ryan stumbled out of the chair and nearly dropped his tablet on his way out of my office. I didn’t even watch him go. I kept my gaze on my laptop screen and sent a few emails while I was waiting to make sure that Phillipson had left the building entirely.

  The knock on my door was a bit of a surprise. The door was open. Most people didn’t knock. They just walked in and started talking at me because that was the way we typically did business around here.

  Which was why I thought that Ryan Phillipson had come back to pester me some more. “Mr. Phillipson, I asked you to leave.”

  “And he has, my lord.”

  Zelda’s tone had rarely been that sarcastic. I wondered what sort of bee had crawled into her bonnet. Clearing my throat, I tried to judge her expression. She was still wearing her librarian clothing. She looked normal enough. But she seemed disgruntled. I wondered what I’d done to piss her off. Usually she was even tempered, a real help to someone like me who often feels as though he’s pulled in far too many directions at once.

  I finally decided that the direct approach was my best bet. “Did I do something to make you angry?”

  “Not particularly.” Zelda narrowed her gaze and pressed her lips into a firm line. She looked pissed regardless of what she said. “I just thought you might like to know that when I called down to the real estate office to confirm your closing date and time, I asked to speak to Lena Schulte.”

  “Yes?” That was kind of a given. Lena was the brains in the office regardless of her horrible judgment when it came to men. Mostly the way she seemed determined to lump us all into the same category.