The Guy Next Door (Forbidden Love Book 1)

by Kelly Myers

  Hunter, walking backward again, a plastic-wrapped mattress, and Charline came in.

  “Don’t stop, keep going on into the back,” Charline directed him.

  Without stopping to say hi they walked through my living room with my new bed. They crossed the living room in and out several times with the mattresses and the frame.

  “You want me to put this together now?” Hunter asked.

  “Yes idiot, she wants you to put it together now,” Charline quipped at him.

  Hunter shrugged back toward the single bedroom, and Adam began fussing.

  “Oh, my boyfriend is waking up,” she cooed at the baby. “I’ve got him.”

  She lifted him and made happy burbling noises at him. He responded with a large toothless baby grin.

  “Oh boy, someone is wet. He’s soaked through. Crystal, where’s his changing stuff?”

  I pointed back to the bedroom and then started to pull the gloves off.

  Charline held him closer. “I’ve got him. Don’t I Adam, yes I do, yes I do,” she was no longer talking to me.

  I don’t know who would miss living with her the most, me or Adam? Or maybe Charline would miss him the most.

  I dumped the bucket of now dirty water down the sink and refilled it with cleaning fluid and water. I returned to scrubbing the couch. I unzipped the covers from the cushions, I would toss those into the laundry. This apartment was small, but it had laundry hookups in the kitchen, and I decided that paying the extra for a washer and dryer was worth it. Especially with an infant who needed clean clothes constantly.

  Charline bounced around with a now awake Adam.

  Hunter appeared from the back. “I’ve got the bed all set. You have a crib you need us to pick up too?”

  I shook my head.

  He grunted. “Oh okay. Where are the sheets? I’ll make your bed.”

  I pointed to a red suitcase that held my sheets and towels. For all the complaining he did, he was a good guy.

  “He’s going to expect extra pizza for doing that,” Charline said.

  “It’s worth it. I’m going to be too tired to make my bed tonight. I was probably just going to sleep directly on the mattress, so it can’t be any worse than that.”

  “He’ll probably get it all wrong. You know he’s just trying to show off,” she said. “He wants to butter you up to use as a reference on some job applications.”

  “Me? I’m a receptionist, how is that helpful?” I asked.

  “You aren’t related,” she answered. “And you won’t be a receptionist forever. Unlike that other place we worked, Rollins Tech actually hires from within its ranks. You know I have my ear to the ground for a position for you. And Rolly likes you. He keeps employees he likes.”

  I sat back on my butt. “Thanks, I mean it. You’ve been a total lifesaver. You gave me a place to stay, you found me a job, and the help with the move”— I nodded at her as she kept my baby boy occupied while I worked— “and the help with Adam. How can I ever repay you.”

  “You can start with pizza and a beer,” Hunter said, coming back into the living room.

  “Pizza, you’re too young for beer,” Charline corrected him.

  “How about pizza and a side of cash?” I asked.

  “Cash always works,” Hunter said.

  21

  Zack

  Another Year Later

  I faced down the President of the Board across the polished conference table. Shingle Click needed to expand its product base by offering more products, hiring more workforce.

  “Expansion not acquisition,” I said through my teeth.

  Paris focused her attention on her perfectly manicured nails. “It’s faster to just buy what we need. Why reinvent the wheel?”

  “It’s not reinventing, it’s building systems perfectly integrated from the ground up. Integrating another company’s product involves retrofit programming. Those solutions always have problems.”

  “Why can’t you just wipe their programs and install new operating software that runs both systems?”

  I controlled my breathing through my nose. No amount of ranting and all attempts at educating her on how Shingle Click’s smart-home technology worked were lost on her. In a way, she was worse than George Fredrickson had been toward the end of his life. He literally did not have the mental capacity to understand the limitations he wanted to disregard. Paris just disregarded them, thinking that money changed how things worked.

  “Look we have been holding steady financially. No growth. That’s not good. Financial growth will happen by raising the base price of our product, and by offering more products.” She tapped her fingers on a tablet.

  I knew she had notes on that tablet. She was repeating what a consultant had told her. She didn’t have the business background to do what she was doing. What she had was the money, and she decided that her money talked.

  I don’t know what possessed Uncle George to leave her the bulk of his financial estate, but he had. I had a hefty share of Shingle Click, almost the same as she did. Almost. She still had the majority, and as long as she stayed out of my business, figuratively and literally, everything went smoothly.

  For some reason, Paris decided it was time to play business. Fine, if she had done some studying beforehand, then I would welcome her insights. A few internet videos were not the same as an MBA, or years of boots-on-ground work. She had been a flighty artist, a party planner.

  I ground my thumb into my eyebrow. I inhaled deeply.

  “Paris, when I was brought in for damage control, Shingle Click had several products in development. It would be a smarter move and in the long run more financially responsible to unearth those projects and get them back into development than it would be to start to hunt for similar businesses, and begin negotiations regarding partnerships and buy-outs.”

  She lifted her brows at my words. “You used to be more cutthroat, Zack. Did you get complacent after one successful product launch? You’re only as good as your last success. And it’s been years. It’s time. You’ve had the opportunity to stabilize Shingle Click’s market position. And you did. But ‘did’ is done, and that’s in the past. What are you going to do now?”

  “We need market research. Projections, what is the next smart appliance everyone will need? What is it that clients would like to have the product do next? How is the smart-home market evolving? That’s the next logical step here.”

  Paris, already relaxed in her chair, seemed to settle even further in. She shook her head.

  “The Board has already discussed this. We feel that you are no longer the proper person to continue determining the growth vector of Shingle Click.”

  I didn’t let her announcement change my expression. I wasn’t surprised. I fixed what they needed me to fix. And without Uncle George’s bizarre directives keeping everyone just doing their best to keep the status quo functioning, the board now wanted revenue growth. So did I. Only I disagreed with how to achieve it.

  “We want to restructure your position. You’ve been effectively CEO and COO for the past two and half years. We are going to bring in a full-time operations officer.”

  Fuck me, it had better not be Paris giving herself the job. It was bad enough she adopted Uncle George’s position on the board after six months. She should have stayed playing at rich trust-fund brat with no real direction in life. It suited her better.

  “What does that mean for me?” I asked.

  “I know you are aware that you’re reasonably attractive. Now, I want you to be equally charming, and go out there as the face of Shingle Click.”

  I closed my eyes. My thumb ground harder into my eyebrow. “I’m not going to be some kind of spokesmodel for smart-home technologies, Paris.”

  She laughed. I used to like it when my sister laughed, it meant she was happy. I did not like the sound that emanated from her. “Spokesmodel, you’re funny Zacky. No, we need you to be the point person for growth and acquisitions. I want your smiling face to be the
one our competition sees walking in the door to discuss purchasing options. We want them to think of us as being personable and reasonable.”

  “And when they aren’t open to selling or partnering?” I asked.

  “Be tenacious. Be charming and convincing, especially with the privately held companies. Publicly traded companies can be bent to seeing the benefit of being absorbed into the HomeWorks Technology Group.”

  “The what?” I asked.

  “Shingle Click is a cute name, great play on words for marketing. With a Shingle Click monitor your home from any mobile device. Cute, shingle sounds enough like single, the wordplay is subtle. But it’s too limiting. The Board feels we need a broader name to encompass the expanded product base. HomeWorks Technology Group is now the governing entity. Shingle Click is our first technical acquisition, and will serve as our home base to expand from.”

  “Any questions?” She blinked at me over steepled fingers.

  When the hell had Paris turned into a shark? “I liked you better when you were some bohemian wandering artist,” I said. I gave her half a smile, let her decide if I was teasing or not. “Are we done? I believe I need to clarify the new parameters of my position.”

  “I emailed those to you as soon as we started this meeting. You’ll need to start building the list of other companies that we can begin assimilating.”

  I stood to leave. I was done with the Board. I didn’t care if they were done with me or not. “I’m done.”

  I couldn’t believe what they were letting my sister get away with. Was it sound? I had no idea. It wasn’t the path I would have taken for this company. But hey, it wasn’t my company, and I probably wasn’t going to even be CEO in name by the time I got back to my office.

  “Zacky,” Paris had followed me from the conference room.

  I stopped, keeping my back to her. Now what?

  “Why are you upset?” she asked.

  I slowly turned to face her. Was she seriously asking why I was upset? I tilted my head and considered her for a long moment. I gestured holding my hand out, the words still didn’t come yet. I closed that hand into a fist.

  “You completely disregarded my years of experience in this industry, with this company, in business. You ignore all of my recommendations. Why did I bother to get an MBA, when all it took for you was to inherit a lonely old man’s money to make you so knowledgeable about business? Are you living out some office porn fantasy, Paris?”

  I took a step in her direction and paused.

  “Why am I upset? You told me in that conference room, that all I am good for is my good looks. So now the entire board thinks I’m a face without the brains and skills to competently run this company anymore. You took away my job, Paris. Why do you think I’m upset?”

  “You’ve been working constantly since Uncle George died. At first, I thought you were trying to prove something to yourself, to his memory. You never give yourself a break. When was the last time you took a vacation, Zack? I think these changes will be good, you’ll get a chance to do some travel, get out of the office. Have time to start dating again. When was the last time you got laid?”

  I glared at my sister.

  “My god, you need to get over that woman and get over yourself. I’m doing you a favor, Zacky. You are attractive, but the whole tortured brooding thing is not a good look on you. Take the trips, screw the secretaries. Find your sense of humor again.”

  I took another step closer to her.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I growled.

  “Stop mourning her, she left you, she didn’t die.”

  The knife Paris had stabbed in my proverbial business back now twisted in my heart. Even after all this time, I still had no idea where Crystal was out there. There were nights the pain wouldn’t let me sleep.

  I took another step closer, close enough that my breath ruffled her hair.

  “Don’t ever call me Zacky again. It stopped being cute when you stopped being nice. You can only be the boss of me in one, business or our private lives, and you have clearly chosen business over being my sister.” I turned and walked away. I needed to get on my bike and ride all of this frustration out.

  22

  Crystal

  Another Two Years Later

  The schematic on my monitor looked fine, but there was a problem in the details somewhere. If it wasn’t here, then it was in the programming, and I was the one who had to find it. The QA team found that a problem existed, got the issue to repeat with consistency, and handed it back to me.

  I had narrowed down the error to either physical relays that were not functioning properly or to a piece of code that would trip the sequences those relays were needed for. I was running out of time to solve this problem, and I needed to solve it to prove that I deserved this job. I ran the simulation sequence again. Everything worked as it should.

  I picked up my phone and pressed to be connected to the QA department.

  “Huan,” the voice on the other end of the line said.

  “Hi, it’s me again,” I said. I heard Huan groan, I had been calling him every fifteen minutes.

  “I just cannot duplicate the error, and Ellen is getting antsy. Will you please go over it again?”

  “I’ll call you back.” He hung up on me.

  I ran the simulation again. It should be fine, it should pass QA without incident.

  My phone rang, I hit the speaker. “Crystal,” I said.

  “It’s still a no-go,” Huan’s voice on the other end said.

  “Okay, that’s it. I have to see this for myself. I just ran the simulation again, and it should work.” I ended the call and got up. QA was on the other side of the factory floor, tucked away like mad scientists testing all the products that Rollins Tech built.

  I looked down at my shoes and cursed. I had sandals on. That meant I was going to have to walk the long way around. Factory floor rules were closed-toed shoes, safety glasses, and in some areas hard hats. I would not be going into any of the actual manufacturing zones but safety rules were in place for a reason. I think that’s why the QA department set up shop where they had, to prevent designers and engineers from dropping in on them at random.

  “Look Crystal,” Huan started when I showed up in their workroom. “None of these work. The signal goes in at the start of the command sequence, and nothing comes out the other end.” He pointed to six units that matched the schematic back on my computer.

  “Show me,” I said with a sigh.

  Everything ran perfectly and then the command sequence stopped doing anything as if it never existed.

  “It does that every time?”

  Huan sounded so aggravated with me. “Yes, every time.”

  I picked up one of the units and stared at it. I willed it to cough up its secrets, why wouldn’t it work? “Can I take this?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t break it.”

  “It’s already broken, Huan. I need to find out why, and how to fix it.”

  Walking back to my desk I flipped the unit back and forth in the sunlight as if that would provide some illumination.

  “Where were you?” Ellen, my team lead, asked.

  “I headed to QA to see if I could watch the testing. I can’t figure out why Huan keeps breaking the sequence while I can’t.”

  “You really should have told me you were leaving. What if I needed something? Crystal, I shouldn’t need to remind you that you have responsibilities to the team. It’s not just you working here. You can’t take off on a whim every time you feel like it.”

  I held up the offending unit. I hated how she was on the attack every time she spoke to me recently. She had micromanagement down to an art form. I hadn’t taken off on a whim. I was doing my job.

  “Your job is to input the data from QA and locate the where’s and the why’s they are having problems with. Your job isn’t to play in their department.”

  Her eyes bore into me, making me feel like I was a small child who did some
thing wrong.

  “I thought I was doing…” I trailed off. It didn’t matter, she didn’t want me to think.

  “I don’t think you were, thinking that is. I don’t have to remind you, we have a deadline, and the longer this troubleshooting takes, the more likely we are to be off schedule. Your work impacts the entire job flow.”

  I bit the inside of my lip. I fully comprehended the concept of workflow and the importance of sticking to schedules. I wasn’t dumb, and I hated being spoken down to this way.

  “I’m going to let you get back to work. Once this is off your plate, I think we need to have a chat regarding your future in this department.” She smiled at me as if that was helpful. I was game for getting out of her department, especially if she thought threatening my job was the best way to get me to perform better.

  I placed the faulty unit on my desk in front of my monitor, so I could visually compare the schematic to the manufactured piece. I clicked the button to rerun the simulation every so often so that if Ellen came back she couldn’t say I wasn’t doing anything as I studied the unit. Something was off.

  I picked up the phone again. I didn’t give Huan a chance to say anything on the other end.

  “Something’s off,” I started.

  “Crystal.” I could practically hear him rolling his eyes.

  “No, not a proverbial something, a physical something. Pull up the schematics.” I waited until he grunted that he had.

  “Look at the spacing of the relays. They don’t match what the guys fabricated.”

  “Yeah so?”

  “So? The sequence timing of the program is very specific, this throws the whole thing off.”

  He grunted again.