Page 15 of Wrong Number

“Thanks. Talk to you later.”

I went to sleep wishing that I had Tyler’s arms around me. He made everything feel so safe. More real, somehow. As I drifted off, my last thoughts were hoping that he’d stay with me, no matter what. I’d never had someone in my life who stayed for good.

CHAPTER SEVEN

* Tyler *

Even though I had been working extremely hard the last few days, I couldn’t stop grinning to myself. Having Tana as my girl was like having an anchor to happiness, somehow. No. Less heavy. More like a happiness reminder at all times.

No matter how many things went wrong, I could just grab my phone and send a message to the sweetest, prettiest girl in the world. And she was mine.

Yesterday morning when she had asked me how my day was going, I sent a photo of a piece of wood filler panel that had arrived chipped, with my finger pointing at the nasty spot.

She sent back a photo of just her eyes wearing gigantic bright blue old lady glasses.

When I had complained about being knee-deep in paperwork, sitting in a corner with my laptop on my knees trying to make sense of my uncle’s mangled job quotes, she sent a ten-second video of her pink nails clacking away at her keyboard.

Although it was completely adorable, it made me realize something else. She must have had a coworker hold her phone to shoot the video. Which meant that she probably had to explain what she was doing, which meant that she was already telling people about me.

Yeah, it was sort of tiny and ridiculous, but it still made me smile.

Knowing that she was right there kept me calm as I dug through Uncle John’s files. To call him unorganized would be a monumental understatement. A lot of people were great with a hammer, but lousy with filing. But I wish he would have let me onto his server years ago so that I could have set up a system for him.

I certainly wasn’t a computer expert by any stretch, but titling folders by the name of the job and client, and filing things by date was relatively easy.

Overall, the work we did was fairly straight forward. Construction management companies would have fancy condos designed, and hire us to do the cabinetry. If the property was brand new, the new owners would have picked what finishes they wanted. If the condo was being flipped, either the next owner, or the management team would pick new finishes.

There were many small pieces, from the finishes to the hardware to the styles. Fairly straightforward. But in small spaces, with larger appliances and people trying to maximize every single inch, these simple jobs had to be done perfectly.

Which is why I didn’t understand why John was so ramped up about getting new business.

We already had as much as we could handle. We had seven teams, sometimes all of us working in one building. There was plenty of overtime to go around. Everyone was fairly paid, and got along well, for the most part.

Realizing that I hadn’t taken a look at the company income in a while, I went to the financials folder to take a peek. It was password-protected now. That didn’t make sense, since John and I were the only ones with access to this server.

Two years ago when John had really started grooming me to take charge someday, he had gone through all of the financial information with me, to make sure I knew where everything was, and how everything worked.

I studied carefully, needing him to be proud of me.

Although I didn’t want to even think about it, if anything ever happened to John, I would step in and run the place, and ensure that everyone kept their jobs.

Uncle John must have been in his late sixties, and was starting to slow down just a bit. He was still working, but would leave some of the heavi

er lifting to the younger guys. He always made an excuse, like having to take a call, but I noticed what he was up to.

I would have thought that he’d pass the accounting on to me soon, or at least hire a bookkeeper. But he was fussy about doing all of that himself. He’d shown me some of it, then seemed to think better of it and taken it all back.

I thought about asking him for the password, wondering if perhaps he had done it by accident, and just hadn’t told me the code yet.

That would have to wait though, as I proofread a couple of emails, sending quotes out to potential new clients.

I set the laptop back to the desktop background of a sunset, then took a photo of my left hand giving a thumbs up in front of the computer. I sent it to Tana, who responded immediately.

Tana: Paperwork done? Good for you! Now that we’re going to be selling glasses as well as doing eye exams, I have to test absolutely all of the merchandise. For quality control.

She sent a photo of herself wearing bizarrely trendy asymmetrical glasses with thick plastic frames.

Me: Those are gorgeous.

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