Page 78 of Love In Hiding

“I gave her a piece of my mind on top of it. Put her right in her place. She didn’t like that.”

“London. They are paying clients.”

“Weare their vendors.”

“No,” her sister said. “They can use another firm.”

“And we could turn down their work if I don’t want to work with them.”

“What iswrongwith you?” Paris asked. “It’s like you're arguing just for the sake of it. You know you’re making no sense at all, right? They could use another firm and it closes us down. We can’t tell them no. It’s part of the contract. We have a partnership with West, or did you forget that?”

Not to mention it was family.

She scrunched her nose. “I didn’t forget it. I’m just practicing for when the time comes that we can do that to someone.”

Paris rolled her eyes. “You’re joking, right?”

“No. It made me feel better at least.”

“Are you blaming Spencer for what this person did?”

“Noelle. Her name is Noelle, and you’ll have to deal with her too. But after Spencer tried to defuse the situation professionally, Braylon came in and she interrupted to make it sound like she was doing exactly what I told her to do instead of tearing my work apart!”

“What? You just spit when you spoke. Slow down.”

“I told her the better thing to have done is what I did. Read the existing standards and policies and see where they differed from what Spencer and I discovered during our audit.”

“You’d think,” Paris said.

“So when Braylon came in, she said she did that. Shemade it sound as if she had thought of it all on her own. He praised her.”

“Ugh. I want to hate her for that.”

“I told Spencer I won’t work with her going forward.”

“It’s not really your call,” Paris said.

“Yep. It is. I don’t want to go over his head to Braylon.”

“Are you really going to do that? Really let this woman get to you?”

“I don’t want to,” she said, her shoulders dropping. “I’m just so out of sorts. Not the best impression to make to start.”

“What, you biting her head off? Or the pants that would call Spencer’s eyes to your ass. You’re wearing a thong on top of it. You hate them.”

She laughed. “It’s the only thing you can wear with these pants. Unless I was naked underneath. Not much difference. Probably more comfortable than string in my ass.”

Paris laughed with her. “Better you than me. I love those pants, but don’t wear them for that reason.”

The two of them shared a lot of their clothes. Not daily, but they both would snag something of the other’s if they wanted to match something different.

“Yeah, well, he was looking at my ass, but because my mouth got ahead of me and I was in full-on handful mode, I’m sure he’s pissed off too.”

“I thought you said nothing ticks him off.”

“Not that I can see,” she said. “Or not that anything makes him yell or show his annoyance.”

“Then what is really going on? Did you two want to hang out yesterday but you were helping me? I told you to go.”