Page 74 of Love In Hiding

His head went down, leaning closer. “I thought you’d want that more?”

“Yeah, sure,” she said, the edge in her voice sharp enough to slice through metal.

He had no clue what the hell her problem was. Good thing he was born with steel patience.

Noelle walked in, her back straight, a big grin on her face with her laptop clutched in front of her chest.

“Sorry, I’m late. I don’t think we’ve formally met. I’m Noelle.”

“London,” she said, reaching her hand out.

“I’m so excited to be working on this. I’m glad that Spencer went to bat for me. He’s such a wonderful boss. You’ll love working with him. But of course, you’ve been spending time with him already.”

Her head snapped up. He was less obvious. “Our trip last week,” he added.

“Yeah. Got to see a lot of each other there,” she said. “Not a place I want to go back to.”

“So you’re not going back to present the changes?” Noelle asked. “I’d hoped that you were and maybe I could go too.”

“We will go back,” he said. “At some point. Not sure if it’s just London or myself. Might be West.”

“I’d love to go if West did,” Noelle said. “Do you thinkLondon will only go with him if you don’t?”

Noelle was looking at him. “That’s not up to me.”

“That’s one of Spencer’s favorite replies, I’m learning.”

There she was again, with the snarky responses.

“Why don’t we get down to business? Noelle, did you look everything over that I forwarded to you?”

“I did. I’ve got all these changes. Some of the wording isn’t that great. It just reads too tight. You need wiggle room to get out of things.”

Noelle turned her laptop around and showed some changes she’d made to the wording. Changes he’d had no idea she was going to do when he’d only told her to read it.

“I saw it all,” she said, her tone clipped hard enough to strangle someone.

“When?”

“I sent it to her an hour ago,” Noelle said. “Before I got on my call. I wanted her to be prepared for everything I was going to do.”

He felt the heat in his cheeks where London was ready to shoot laser beams at him.

And that was it right there. She thought he was handing her work over.

“I asked you to read it over, not to make changes, or to send anything back to London.”

“Oh,” Noelle said. “I just thought I’d get a head start. You know, showing you what I could do.”

The last thing he was going to do was give a verbal talk down to an employee in front of a client, but she had to be told it wasn’t acceptable.

“I appreciate the initiative, but there are procedures we’ll be following to save more work for not only yourself but the rest of us as well.”

“I know. But I’m not positive who wrote these before.They aren’t that great. They should be more open to interruption to not bind anyone in case something changes.”

“Actually,” London said. “That could be true with finalized policies and procedures, but as a consultant, I’m coming in explaining what is working and what isn’t. We are nowhere near anything finalized. Half of my suggestions could be rejected.”

“London is right,” Spencer said. “We aren’t anywhere near drafting policies. This is a summary of what was found, what to work on, and where to go for the next step, if all parties have a full understanding and want to move forward.”