Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 92782 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92782 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
“How good are you with computers?” he asked me as he walked behind his desk.
I glanced at the large flat screen desktop computer that sat on the left side of his desk. “Meaning what exactly?”
He lifted his gaze to meet mine. “Meaning how good are you with computers?” he repeated, sounding put out by my question.
“Well, I’m the end of the millennials. I grew up with computers. I can work one just fine, but if you need me to fix one, I can’t do that.”
He gave me a scowl. “Why would I ask you to fix one?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know! Why would you ask a thirty-one-year-old how good they were with computers when that’s all my generation has known?”
He rolled his eyes and pulled out the chair. “There are receipts that need to be scanned and put in the digital file.”
I walked over to look at the pile of paper receipts and picked one up. “Why are you doing it this way? Just go paperless and have the receipt emailed to you. Then, you can save it from the email to your file. Less paper, less time.”
He stared at me for a moment, and I waited to see what tongue-lashing I was about to get next.
His eyes dropped back to the stack of papers on his desk. “How do I set up going paperless?”
Was he serious? The man was mid to late forties, not eighty. Why was he still keeping his records like it was the ’90s?
I scanned the receipt and found the website for the business listed on it. “Do you have the logins for these companies?”
His brows drew together. “Uh, yeah. I go online to make most of the orders. I have to call in a few, but I have a login for all the accounts to check order statuses.”
“Perfect. I’ll log in to each one, change your billing to paperless, and go ahead and start pulling the receipts on your account that match these, then just download them to the file on your computer.”
He rubbed his jaw and almost grinned. “You’re making my head hurt. But, yeah, if you know how to do that and I can get rid of all these piles of paper, then do it.”
I smiled at him, and he just looked at me. It wasn’t the normal seething glare I had grown accustomed to; it was almost … as if he didn’t hate me.
His eyes darted away, and he moved back from the desk, then waved a hand in that direction. “Go ahead and sit down. Do your thing. Whatever. I need to get back to things downstairs.” He grabbed a piece of paper. “I guess you need logins and passwords.”
I shook my head. “Not if you have used this computer to get into the accounts before.”
He looked at the computer, then back at me. “Yeah, it’s where I do most of my ordering.”
“Then, your passwords should be saved in your system settings. I just need the password for this computer, seeing as how my fingerprint and yours are not the same.”
He let out a small laugh. “You mean to tell me that this thing saves my passwords?”
I nodded, trying not to gawk at how little he knew about his very expensive Mac. “Yep.”
“Damn. All the times I had to change passwords because I couldn’t remember them …” He shook his head and actually grinned. “It’s Ozzy1998,” he said, motioning to the computer. “The password,” he added.
I sat down. “Ozzy with two z’s?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I typed it in, and the screen unlocked. “Got it,” I replied, then looked up as he headed for the door. “Who’s Ozzy?” I asked.
He glanced back at me briefly. “My dog.”
Frowning, I thought about the year. It couldn’t have anything to do with his dog. No dog was twenty-six years old.
“And the year?” I asked. “He can’t be that old.”
This time, Liam didn’t look back. He paused and when he didn’t reply, I realized I’d hit a sore spot. I hadn’t meant to, but normally, passwords were important things so you didn’t forget it.
“The year I met Madeline’s mother,” he replied, then closed the door behind him.
I stared at it, letting that sink in, and then my eyes dropped to my stomach. He had loved his daughter’s mother. Enough that he was using the year he’d met her as a password. I placed a hand over where my baby was growing inside me. He didn’t love this baby’s mommy. He barely tolerated me.
It was getting harder and harder to remember the man I’d met that night at the bar. The handsome biker who flirted with me. Asked me questions about myself. Gave me a ride after I got off work. Then … showed me what sex could be like. I’d been clueless until that night.
Before Wallace, I’d only had sex one other time when I was fifteen years old, and it wasn’t because I wanted to. The guy who took my virginity raped me. He was one of the boys Sissy had brought home from college. She blamed me when she walked in on it. Abilene had kicked me out of the house that night.