It’s what I need. What Iwant.
I turn back to my computer screen and get back to work. Three hours later, my stomach growls.
I glance at my watch. “Fuck.”
No wonder I’m starving—it’s seven p.m. I’ve been working through contracts, permits, tax forms—things we need to keep the business running. I’ve gotten through maybe a third of the pile.
I rise, stretch, and gather the completed work, carrying it over to the small table in the corner of my office. I grimace when I look at it. I hadn’t realized how much had stacked up.
I set the new bunch to the right of the last one. That’s my system—piles by month. Easy to find anything if I need it before it’s filed.
There are seven piles. Meaning seven months of filing not yet done.
Jesus.
I need a couple of days to catch up. Maybe then Henry won’t be so irritated with me.
As I turn back toward my desk, I hear the faint sound of a folder slipping.
I spin, arms outstretched, but I’m not fast enough. I catch two files—barely—and the rest of a large stack crashes to the floor, scattering in every direction.
“Fuck,” I mutter. “Just what I need.”
Now I have to sort them all again.
I know. Iknowthis is exactly the work an assistant could do. But I hate the idea of someone else in my space, touching my stuff. What if they mess something up? What if an important contract gets lost, or they don’t file a permit on time? They’d have access to sensitive information. I could screw everything up—foreveryone.
I can’t trust someone enough to give up that control. This company supports our family. It’s how we take care of Mom. Thecompany supports Henry’s growing family. It’s the livelihood for the twins.
It’s not just Henry and me anymore.
Holden’s our structural engineer. He might be a dick sometimes, but helovesthis job. He’s worked nowhere else.
Hayden—Jesus, his wife just left him. Side note—another reason not to get involved with anyone. He’s the architect. We need him, and his designs are unreal.
I have to be on guard to make sure this company stays afloat.
A voice in the back of my head pipes up—low, sarcastic.“I call bullshit.”
I don’t know whose voice it is. It sure as hell isn’t mine. It feels like a little devil sits on my shoulder, telling me to screw it all. Telling me I’m fine, that it doesn’t matter.
But then there’s an angel on the other shoulder. The one that reminds me, our familyisokay. We’ll continue to be all right, financially anyway. It says that the hinge my brothers and I invented and patented made us all multi-millionaires, which is kind of hilarious when I think about it.
A four-and-a-half-inch hinge set us up for life.
Unless, of course, I fuck up and put it all at risk again.
Chapter Ten
Delaney
The numbers on the page blur together. I’ve been staring at them for an hour, trying to find some mistake that, when corrected, miraculously makes more money appear in the income column. I don’t discover one.
I scan the categories on my budget again and circle the number under “rent.” I’ll see if I can find something for a hundred, maybe two hundred less. It’s a long shot, but worth a try. I eye the grocery line items. It’s already tight, but maybe I can cut some from there. At least twenty-five dollars, maybe forty or fifty a month, if I’m really careful.
“I’ve been wanting to lose five pounds anyway,” I say to myself. My attempt to make a joke of it falls flat, even though I’m the intended audience.
Mom moves into her new facility in six days. At ninety-five hundred dollars a month, even after Mom’s disability check and her long-term care insurance, I have to make up the four thousand five-hundred-dollar difference.
