While that was truly excellent news, one thing didn’t make sense to me still, and instead of guessing I decided to just ask. “Then how did she know about me? And when you’d be back from your trips?”

“She’s been texting me lately.”

That wasn’t an explanation. “So?”

“So, wouldn’t it be mean for me not to answer? I told her about you because she texted me the day you moved in and asked what I was up to. And when she asked about my future plans, I told her about my trips.”

“You know you don’t have to reply to a text if you don’t want to, don’t you?”

“It just seems a little rude.”

“It’s not rude!” I protested. “I do it all the time with . . . people that I don’t want to talk to. You can be rude to people who aren’t respecting your boundaries.” Was he seriously the one hot guy in America who didn’t understand the concept of ghosting someone? “You can even block her number if she’s annoying you, Grandpa. It’s called technology.”

“To be fair, I hadn’t really set up any boundaries with her. But I’ll call her and thank her for the soup and tell her that I’m not interested in rekindling anything. And I’ll call downstairs and tell them not to let her up anymore without letting us know first.”

“Good plan. Especially since I was going to resort to leaving a wooden stake in one of your nightstand drawers. Just in case.”

That got him laughing again. “Now that we have that straightened out and no one’s going to be in danger of getting puncture holes in their neck, you should start the next episode.”

“You still want to watch it?”

He settled back onto the couch. “Yeah. Like you said, now I have to know what happens next.”

I couldn’t stop the grin that spread across my face. I got the remote and hit play. There was nothing going on with Oksana and I wasn’t going to randomly find her in my apartment, smoking and saying mean things. No more James Bond villain for me to contend with.

And Tyler was watching The Bachelor with me.

This shouldn’t have felt like a win.

So, then, why did it?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Tyler left another Post-it note on my door the following morning. He’d gone to bed early due to his exhaustion and had already left the apartment when I got up to get ready for work. Pigeon had spent the night in his room and I’d found myself missing her.

It was funny how quickly your life could change, how something that seemed so foreign at first quickly became your new normal.

Anyway, his note read:

Remember, it’s okay not to let people you don’t know into the apartment.

I will admit that I tucked that note into my pocket and carried it around with me the rest of the day, smiling at it each time I saw it. Every time that Denny acted out in class, I would take out Tyler’s note for the little pick-me-up it provided.

When I got home that afternoon, I decided to do two things before I started on my pom making; I wanted to research ways to help Denny, and I needed to sit down and figure out what was happening to all my money because I never seemed to have any. I set up at the dining room table with my laptop, a notebook, and a pen.

When it came to my expenses, there was the obvious: food, gas, insurance, replacing the things of Tyler’s that I’d ruined. But given that I wasn’t paying rent, I should have had lots of extra money.

Pigeon ran past me and headed for the foyer, where she sat, her tail wagging. I wondered what she was doing and then there was Tyler. Home early again.

When the calendar said he had a flight for New York in about an hour.

“Aren’t you going out of town?” I asked.

“Hello to you, too,” he said. “I was supposed to go, but my boss canceled my next two trips and is sending someone else in my stead.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

He ruffled Pigeon’s fur and she stared at him adoringly. I hoped I wasn’t looking at him the same way. His tie was loosened, the top button undone. I was chewing on my pen and thinking how I’d like to undo the rest of the buttons, especially now that I knew what he was hiding under that shirt when I realized that he’d said something and I hadn’t heard him.

“What?”

“I said, it actually is good and you’re the reason why.”

“Me?” What had I done?

He shrugged off his suit coat, laying it and his briefcase on the kitchen island. “It’s because of all the people who want to meet with me from the charity event. The appointments were set up to start a couple of weeks from now but today my assistant made phone calls to reschedule and I’m going to start talking to people tomorrow. Apparently not being able to get in with me made me seem even more valuable.”

That was definitely how rich people worked. He’d accidentally turned himself into an unobtainable, precious commodity and it had made everyone want him more.

It had certainly worked on me. “That’s fantastic! Your boss must be thrilled.”

“He is.” Tyler sat down in the chair across from me. “And I don’t have any other trips scheduled until the new year, so I’m going to be around.”

This was also fantastic. I could only smile.

“Although I will confess to being a little worried about what I’m going to say to these people when it comes to my love life.”

He was really putting too much thought into this. Even if these potential clients were meeting with him in hopes of setting him up, that wasn’t why they would sign with him. “Tell them you’re living with someone. Because technically, you are.”

“I don’t want to lie.”

Just like my mother’s gift-wrapping room was weird to other people, it was weird to me that regular humans hadn’t been raised in a world where white lies and half truths were necessary for your survival. “I don’t think it is. I live here, you live here. I am someone. Hence, you are living with someone.”

“Right. But the implication is that you are my girlfriend.”

And would that be so bad? I swallowed the words back, trying to calm down my racing heart. Because all it had heard was you and my girlfriend. “Your personal life is nobody’s business and if they’re intrusive enough to demand answers about it, then they deserve to be shut down. But I’m not too worried about the whole thing because I know you’ll win them over.”

“How do you know that?” I loved that smile, the one that said he was amused and enjoyed what I was saying.

How did I know? Besides the fact that he was charming enough to convince a rattler not to bite? “I saw you schmoozing people at Bitsie Fernley’s event. You’re good at it. And you’ll be good at it at work, too.”

He thumped his hand against the table and then leaned forward, as if declaring the matter over. He gestured toward my laptop. “What are you up to?”

“Before I begin my nightly indentured servitude of molding tissue paper into a somewhat recognizable decoration, I’ve been working on a couple of things. The first is trying to figure out some good ways of working with that little boy in my class, the one who’s been misbehaving. His dad emailed me and said that his wife left and that’s why his son’s been acting out. Second, I’m trying to figure out how to budget because no matter what I do, I never seem to have any money.”