“Josh, I didn’t get to where I am in life by over-reacting. Of course, I’ll take some precautions, but my gut is saying this guy is just interested in scaring me.”
“He scared me, does that count?”
“Yeah, I think it does. So, what the hell am I going to do with myself now? I’ve got to stay off the investing for a while. I don’t have my date with Del until tomorrow,
and I’m worried about using my credit cards. Is this what life is really like for you?” I said as I tried to figure out how to use my time.
“What are you talking about? None of those things are my life, I’m busy all the time,” he laughed.
“Oh, I just thought you’d understand since you’re unemployed and all.”
“Shut it!” Josh joked.
Chapter Thirteen
Delilah
“See, it’s as simple as this,” the consultant explained as he typed a few commands into the code.
“If that fixes this, I’m totally quitting my job and giving it to you,” I laughed.
The consultant had been at the office since eight o’clock, and we were fixing all the errors the two of us had been able to find while working from home. He was actually really helpful, and I found myself feeling guilty for judging him so harshly when he first arrived. It wasn’t the consultant’s fault that my boss was a major jerk.
“It was a team effort. Should we check through some profiles and see if everything looks good?”
He moved out of my seat and let me click through the accounts to look for errors. A huge weight felt like it had been lifted off my shoulders. We hadn’t been hacked at all – it was just the errors in the coding. Of course, that meant it was the errors I had put into the code, but at this point, I didn’t even care: I was just happy everything was working.
“It’s been a long week. For a minute there, I thought we had been hacked. Could you imagine the chaos if someone got a hold of the clients’ records we work with?”
“You have some high-profile people?”
“I shouldn’t tell you this, but yeah, almost all the men are pretty important. If they aren’t a millionaire, they are famous. It would have been a disaster, and I certainly would have lost my job.”
“What a horrible thing. I’m glad we got it straightened out.”
“What was your name again?” I asked as I pulled out a pen and piece of paper. I wanted to be able to write to his supervisor and tell them how great he had been. He really had gone above and beyond while working with me.
“Antonio Pryor,” the man said. “It was my pleasure working with you. I better get back to my other clients now.”
“It really was my pleasure. I appreciate all your help. Two sets of eyes are indeed better than one.”
As he left the cubicle and made his way down the hallway, I felt Mattie’s eyes glaring into me. She had sat quietly working on her side of the cubicle all morning long, looking like she was about to explode on at least two occasions. She wasn’t used to actually doing her job for hours at a time without breaks to chit-chat.
“What is it?” I said before I even sat down.
“Okay, I’m not trying to be judgmental or anything,” she said right before she said something judgmental. “But does he really look like the kind of guy who likes to work with computers?”
“Mattie! People say that about me, too, and you know how much I hate it,” I said.
“I know, I’m not judging. He obviously was good at his job. I’m just saying he looked more like a hired hit man than an IT professional.”
“You know, I’m not going to have this conversation with you. Let’s get back to talking about what I should wear tonight on my date with Brandon.”
I had literally been thinking about Brandon since the last time I saw him. On a couple of occasions, I thought about texting him and then deleted my message and decided not to send it. My emotions were on edge about everything going on with him.
Love hadn’t been something I’d thought I was capable of after losing my husband. I could love my son, of course, that was a different sort of love than having a man around.
Even the few hours I’d spent with Brandon had started the process of opening my eyes to the possibilities that were out there. I didn’t have to make him my forever love, but just being with him was building up my confidence that someday I’d find love again. Maybe it would be him, or maybe it would be someone entirely different; I wasn’t going to worry about it. All I cared about was that I had happiness rushing through me again, and I wasn’t going to let it go just yet.