Chapter 5 #2
She looks around as if she’s only just realizing where she is, before looking at me with a sassy grin on her pretty pink lips. “Oh,” she says innocently. “Is that where I am?”
Before I can come up with an appropriate response, she says, “I was under the impression that this is where the work is.”
I growl in response, only vaguely aware that I’m behaving like a neanderthal. “You should have asked my permission.”
“You hired me,” she reminds me again. “I assumed that was all the permission I needed.”
"You should have asked first,” I say roughly.
“You weren’t awake,” she says easily as if she’s not the slightest bit disturbed by my annoyance. “Would you have preferred I come into your room and?—”
“No.” My answer is sharp and quick, shutting her down before my body can process exactly what having Lilly in my bedroom would mean. The last thing I need right now is another fucking hard on. “I need coffee,” I say, a little bit softer this time.
Without waiting for a response, I turn to head for the kitchen and the caffeine that should clear my head.
“Great,” she says behind me. “I take mine with one sugar. No cream.”
I freeze. “Excuse me?” I turn slowly.
“One sugar,” she says again. “Please.”
“You didn’t make coffee?”
She blinks slowly. “Why would I do that?”
“It’s your job,” I bark.
“No.” She sits back in my chair and crosses her arms. “My job is to be your assistant and get you organized. There was no mention of coffee.”
I open my mouth and close it again before swallowing hard. “An assistant makes coffee.”
“How would you know?” she fires back. “Have you had a lot of assistants?”
I have not. And I’m pretty sure she knows it.
“For the record,” she adds as I once more turn to leave. “I don’t make breakfast or lunch either.”
I stiffen, tension knotting my shoulders.
It’s going to be a long month.
By midmorning, I’ve had two cups of coffee, but the caffeine isn’t helping me feel any better about my new working arrangement.
I’m starting to understand that Lilly Burton is going to be a problem in ways I haven’t fully prepared myself for.
She doesn’t make coffee, she doesn’t apologize for doing the job she was hired to do, and she sure as hell doesn’t wait for permission before trying to make sense of the disaster I call an office.
“You went through my messages?” I ask from behind my desk.
Lilly’s standing beside the file cabinet with one of my legal pads in her hand and a pen tucked between her fingers. She doesn’t look guilty. If anything, she looks far too comfortable surrounded by my chaos, like she’s already decided it belongs to her now.
“I went through your schedule,” she says. “Your messages were part of figuring out what was urgent.”
“My messages are private.”
“So are your client files, and yet you hired me to organize those.” Her blue eyes lift to mine. “I only listened to the ones marked urgent.”
I cross my arms. “That was not permission.”
“No,” she says evenly. “But it did tell me that Eric Wolf from Rock Creek has been trying to reach you for over a week.”
That gets my attention, and she knows it.
“He’s a client.”
“I gathered that.”
“A very important client.”
“I gathered that too, especially after the third message, when he stopped sounding patient.”
I drag a hand down my face and remind myself again that this is temporary. A month. A trial. Nothing more than a solution to a problem I didn’t ask anyone to solve.
The issue, of course, is that she’s already solving it.
Eric Wolf isn’t the kind of man I like to keep waiting. He owns enough businesses in Rock Creek that most people take his calls the first time, but he’s never been one to throw his weight around.
When Eric calls, it’s because there’s a reason. Usually, a profitable one.
“What does he want?” I ask.
“He wants your opinion on whether he should hold off until the winter numbers come in before moving forward with another purchase.” She glances down at the notes in front of her. “Something outside of Rock Creek. Commercial, I think. The notes are hard to read.”
I look at the folder she’s already set on the corner of my desk.
Of course, she found the right one.
“I’ll deal with it later.”
“You’ll deal with it in eight minutes.”
My gaze snaps back to hers. “Excuse me?”
“I scheduled the call.”
“You scheduled a call with Eric Wolf without asking me?”
“You were busy being mad that I wouldn’t make coffee.” She taps the folder before I can answer. “I pulled what I think you’ll need. Current holdings, last quarter notes, and the projections you scribbled on the back of what I’m pretty sure used to be a grocery list.”
For a moment, I have absolutely nothing to say.
That doesn’t happen often.
“You don’t schedule client calls without checking with me first.”
“Then check your messages when clients leave them.”
Her tone is calm, not smug, which somehow makes it worse.
I should be pissed. Hell, I am pissed. But only because she’s right, and because the folder she set on my desk is exactly the one I would have wasted twenty minutes trying to find.
“Fine,” I say. “But you sit in quietly. You don’t speak unless I ask you to.”
“Of course.”
I don’t believe her for a second.
Eight minutes later, Eric Wolf appears on my screen, seated behind a desk that probably costs more than my first truck.
“Luke.”
“Wolf.”
“How’re things in Iron Peak these days?”
“Can’t complain.” It’s my usual answer. “You ever miss it now that you’re on the other side of the valley?
” Eric Wolf and his brothers grew up in Iron Peak, before I ever moved out here.
They’d spent their summers with their cousins in Rock Creek, though, and from the little I know about the situation, those summers were their escape from a tough life on this mountain.
All five of them had ended up settling in Rock Creek, preferring it to their childhood home.
“You know I don’t.” He shakes his head with a laugh before his gaze flicks past me and lands briefly on Lilly. “Looks like the rumors are true.”
“What rumors?”
“That someone finally talked you into hiring help.”
I flick my gaze to my new assistant and clench my teeth. “Good news travels fast, apparently.”
Eric laughs. “Small towns, right?”
I don’t bother answering, especially when, next to me, Lilly makes a small sound that could almost be mistaken for a laugh. I don’t look up again because I know if I do, I’ll see that little spark in her eyes and start thinking things I have no business thinking about during a client call.
Or at all.
“You called about a purchase,” I say.
“I did.” Eric’s expression shifts. “Commercial property outside Rock Creek.”
“Numbers look good.”
“They do.”
“But?”
“But everything down here is moving fast.” Eric leans back in his chair. “Rock Creek Ranch is drawing even more attention to the valley; tourism had a strong summer, and now everyone with money thinks they need to buy before prices jump again.”
I glance down at the page Lilly flagged.
“Everyone with money isn’t always smart.”
Eric’s mouth twitches. “That’s why I called.”
“Then wait.”
His eyebrows lift slightly. “That easy?”
“No. But it’s that simple.” I tap the page in front of me, even though he can’t see it. “You’re heading into winter. Let the season prove whether summer was real growth or just a spike. If the numbers hold, you move. If they don’t, you saved yourself an expensive headache.”
Eric is quiet for a moment.
Then he nods once. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”
“Then next time, leave one message.”
“Next time, answer the first one.” His gaze shifts past me again, landing briefly on Lilly. “Or let her answer it.”
“No.”
Lilly makes that small, almost-laugh again, and Eric’s mouth curves.
“Careful, Luke,” he says. “That’s how it starts.”
“What is?”
“Thinking you’re better off doing everything alone.”
I narrow my eyes at the screen. “I don’t recall asking you for life advice.”
“No. I called you for financial advice. You gave it. Consider this a bonus.” His expression softens just enough that I know exactly who he’s thinking about. “My wife had a few opinions about how I ran my life, too.”
“Yeah? How’d that work out for you?”
He smiles then. Not the business one. A real one.
“Best thing that ever happened to me.”
My grip tightens on the pen.
Lilly goes quiet next to me. I don’t look at her.
“Good for you,” I say, because it’s the only safe thing to say.
“It is.” Eric’s smile fades back into something easier, more familiar. “Anyway, thanks for the advice. I’ll wait on the property.”
“Smart man.”
“Occasionally.” His gaze flicks to Lilly one last time. “Nice meeting you, Lilly.”
“You too, Mr. Wolf.”
“Eric,” he corrects. “And don’t let him be a big ol’ grump to you,” he adds. “Keep organizing him. He needed it.”
The call disconnects before I can tell him exactly where he can shove that opinion.
For a moment, the office is too quiet.
Then Lilly says, “He seems nice.”
“He’s not.”
“He seems happily married.”
“That doesn’t make him nice.”
Her mouth twitches, and I look down at the file because I don’t need to see that smile.
Not when Eric’s damn words are still sitting in the room between us.
Best thing that ever happened to me.
I close the folder and push it back toward her. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
“What?”
“That he thinks you’re useful.”
Her smile comes slowly, and I force my attention away before I do something stupid like smile back.
“I don’t need to let his words go to my head,” she says with just enough sass to grab my attention. “I know I’m useful.”
Of course she does.
And dammit, I’m starting to know it too.