Her Dirty Builders (Men at Work #10) - Mika Lane Page 0,47

interior designer, had seen a write-up somewhere about my award-winning chair design. That had sparked a call from my mom, something that rarely happened.

I’d grabbed the phone on the first ring. My mother called so seldom I figured it had to be some sort of emergency. And as much as I was on the outs with my father, my stomach dropped when I thought something might have happened to him.

“Tyler? It’s your mother.”

“I know it’s you, Mom. What happened? Is everything all right?” I blurted.

She clucked her tongue. “Honey, calm down. Of course, everything is all right. Why wouldn’t it be?”

I thought of going down the road of reminding her that I was pretty much estranged from Dad and her for several reasons, not limited to the death of her daughter and my chosen career, and that it was out of the ordinary for her to just pick up the phone and call.

But I decided to save that for another day.

“Sounds good, Mom. So what’s up with you?”

She laughed lightly. “Well, maybe I should be asking, what’s up with you?”

What the hell was she talking about?

“Um, not sure, Mom. Nothing much. Just working on a house with Case and Alden.”

I could picture her sitting in the solarium, her favorite room in the house, her blonde hair perfectly coiffed thanks to her weekly hairdresser appointments, her skin perfectly smoothed, thanks to the best plastic surgeon money could buy. She was a trophy wife, no two ways about it.

And while I loved my mother, she sure as hell wasn’t the type of woman I pictured myself with in the long term.

“Silly. I heard about your chair. And the award.”

Oh. That.

“Right! Isn’t it cool? Such an honor. How’d you find out?”

“Oh, one of the girls at the club read it in an interior design magazine. I’m very proud of you, honey.”

I slipped outside to get away from Case’s swearing and slamming things around. Jesus, he had a real bug up his ass.

“You know, I think your father is finally seeing why you do the work you do,” she said.

No way. The stubborn old man never changed his position on things. With him, reflection was a weakness.

“Well, Mom, that’s nice of you to say, but I don’t think Dad’s changing his position on his feelings about me—”

But she didn’t want to hear it. Had she been planning some way to bring me back into the family fold all along, waiting for the right excuse?

“Ty, honey, can you come over for dinner next week?”

Okay, now I was officially confused.

“Um, yeah. Sure,” I stumbled.

“If it’s not too much trouble, can you bring the chair? I want your father to see it. And I think my interior designer friend wants to use it for one of her hotel projects.”

Holy shit. No fucking way.

Someone wanted to buy my chair? Or rather, multiples of it?

I was far from ready to produce the chair on a mass scale, but it was awesome to be considered.

“I can do that. See you next week.”

Well, I’d be damned. That was about the last thing I thought my day would include when I’d gotten up that morning.

I got back to work by positioning my ladder against the house to reach the wood trim along the roofline. Years of sun and weather had rotted it in spots, and replacing it would be a relatively simple fix.

But when I was about three-fourths of the way up the ladder, the concrete sidewalk I’d set it up on cracked and gave way a few inches. Just enough to topple the ladder and send me flying to the ground.

32

ESME

I’m not going to lie.

I cried all the way across town to the hospital when I got the call about Ty.

Matt and I had just returned from lunch, having said our goodbyes to Charli, when the call came in.

Alden was frantic and told me to come as soon as I could.

Not knowing the extent of Ty’s injuries was as torturous as knowing that whatever had happened to him, had happened while he was working on my house. My shithole of a house, for which he was getting paid a pittance for his time.

How fucked was that?

What if… what if he didn’t make it? His parents would have lost two children. How could they survive that?

How would I survive losing him?

Of course, it was supremely selfish to think of myself. I’d known Ty for such a short period of time. But I couldn’t help it.

In fact, I didn’t know what I would