13. Lissa
Lissa
Iarrive at the office the next morning to total chaos.
When the elevator doors open, the usually quiet hallway is buzzing with activity and noise.
Renee and Paul walk by carrying stacks of archive boxes, and several other men follow behind them, carrying more. They’re heading in the direction of Oliver’s office, and I’m suddenly glad I came in early.
I make my way toward Adelaide, who I can see directing everybody with a tight expression.
She’s wearing a dark purple cardigan and shirt today with purple pants, and she even has purple earrings on. I can’t help smiling, wondering whether she ever wears a different color. She still looks far more elegant than me though, in my shitty suit.
When she sees me, I detect the relief in her eyes and it makes me so happy.
“Thank God,” she says, stepping over a box and coming to greet me. “You’re here so early!”
“I wanted to get the final folders completed,” I say. “I know you mentioned they need to be sent today. I wasn’t sure what time.”
She raises an eyebrow and then nods. “Well, that’s true, but you’re already ahead of that. We don’t need to send them until the end of the day, and I could use your help with all this instead.”
“Of course. What’s going on?” I ask.
“Carmen Reynolds. New client,” Adelaide says, sounding decidedly irritated. “I can’t believe they’ve sent all this so soon. Usually, there would be a grace period before Mr. Heath can meet with her, but instead, they’ve just transferred it all to this floor.”
“What is it, though?” I ask, staring as a huge man walks by carrying three archive boxes at once.
“It’s the Reynolds information. She’s in her seventies, and everything looks like hard copies. This is all her tax information,” she says, waving to some files that are stacked four feet high. “Then property deeds, valuation reports, investments, and offshore accounts. You name it, they’ve got it.”
“Wow, this is nuts. I think if I had to list all my assets, it wouldn’t even fill a single page, let alone fifty boxes.”
Adelaide lets out a bark of laughter at that.
“Me neither. Well, we had better get going. The man in there is Noah Finnigan, by the way. He’s one of the junior associates they’ve assigned to the case.
If you’re not sure where to find something, ask him.
He’ll tell you what’s a priority, and I’m going to manage the deliveries so they don’t all end up in the hallway. ”
“Can I get you a coffee before I start?” I say, taking off my coat and hanging my bag on the rack.
Adelaide gives me a small smile. “Oh. Well, if you’re going to the kitchen, I’d love a green tea.”
“You got it,” I say, then move to the door and knock. Noah looks up at me. He has a thick head of brown hair that flops over his eyes endearingly, and large green eyes above lips curved into a perpetual smile.
“Do you want a coffee?” I ask.
“Oh my god, yes. That would be awesome,” he says, shoving a pen behind his ear. “Are you Melissa?”
“Lissa. Yep. I’ll be back to help you in five minutes.”
“Thank you.” He gives me a grin, his eyes sliding down over my body very briefly before he turns back to what he was doing. I can’t help noticing that he’s the opposite of Oliver, small, lithe, and cheerful. I’ve only seen Oliver truly smile once, and that was when he’d just come all over my body.
Clearing my throat, I turn back to Adelaide and head toward the kitchen.
When I return and hand her the tea, Adelaide is looking somewhat less put-together. The boxes are piling up, and it’s becoming obvious that we won’t have enough space for them.
“Mr. Heath is not going to like this,” Adelaide says, wringing her hands together in front of her as she looks over the mess the delivery guys have left. “He likely wasn’t expecting all of this so soon.”
“Let me go and help Noah and see if we can reconcile some of it,” I say. “The conference table isn’t full yet. We can always put the ones in here at the end of it, and on some of the chairs. I’ll make sure the room’s available for the week.”
Adelaide huffs irritably, but at least she stops twisting her fingers in front of her in a panic.
“Wow,” I say as I walk inside and hand Noah his coffee.
There’s barely enough space to walk to the other end of the room. It’s not just archive boxes either, but old-fashioned expanding files I haven’t seen since college, with thousands of handwritten notes and Post-its sticking out all over the place.
Noah steps back, sipping the coffee and groaning loudly, but, unlike Adelaide, he doesn’t look panicked; his eyes are shining with excitement.
“I’ve always wanted to do a divorce like this.”
I can’t help laughing at how thrilled he sounds. “Thank god people’s marriages fall apart, right?” I say jokingly.
“Totally. Thanks for the coffee, by the way. Are you new? I’ve worked here for a few months and don’t remember seeing you before.”
“I only started a couple of days ago. Lissa Davenport.”
“Noah Finnigan. Nice to meet you. What would you like to tackle first?” he says. He gives me a big smile. There’s something about him that helps me to relax, as if he’s on top of things despite the chaos.
“What would you like me to do?”
His cheeks pink slightly as he places his coffee on the table.
“Well, if you want to sort through the property deeds, that would be great. I think we can consolidate some of those into fewer boxes and stack them in the corner. I’m gonna start on the tax stuff, because we’ll need that summarized, and it’s pretty complicated to get it in the right order. ”
“Sounds good.”
“Have you done this kind of thing before?” he asks suddenly, his brow furrowing.
“Well, I’ve worked as a PA in the past, so I know how to file everything logically if that’s what you mean.”
“Thank fuck,” he says with feeling. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
He’s undone the top button of his shirt, and his tie is loose, jacket off, sleeves rolled up. He’s really very good-looking, and I certainly don’t object to having some eye candy as I work.
Glancing at Oliver’s office, I wonder what he’s going to think when he gets here.
When Oliver arrives, we all hold our breath, anticipating an explosion. Even Adelaide, who knows him far better than me, looks nervous.
But instead, Oliver just stands in the conference room door, looking around at everything, his jaw clenching and unclenching as his chest rises and falls on heavy breaths.
Pulling out his phone, he stalks into his office without a word and doesn’t emerge again for the next two hours.
Adelaide hovers outside it, looking agitated, but doesn’t knock, and I keep my head down, not wanting to rock the boat.
Noah works like a demon and has barely taken a break since he began. We’ve talked a bit, but he’s mostly interested in the legal intricacies of the case, and I don't understand much of what he says.
A small part of me wonders whether he’s using legalese on purpose to confuse me. He’s a lawyer, of course, and must be used to speaking to other lawyers, but it does feel pointed sometimes, like he’s trying to sound impressive.
By the time I’ve sorted through hundreds of documents and emails pertaining to property deeds, we’ve managed to drag a lot of the boxes into the conference room, and there are only five left behind Adelaide’s chair.
Noah has been talking non-stop about an account the Reynolds have in the Cayman Islands, and sifting through sheets of paper at breakneck speed. I don’t understand how he can even comprehend what he’s looking at so fast, but somehow he manages it.
“Lissa?” I look up. “Mr. Heath has asked for you.”
My heart picks up, stomach flipping as I place the file I’ve been reviewing down and walk out of the room.
“Is everything okay?” I ask Adelaide. “You look worried.”
“I don’t know why he’s asked to see you,” she says, tugging at her collar. “He seems angry about all this. But I don’t know how I could manage the situation any better.”
Her forehead is puckered, a deep wrinkle worn by years of the same expression etched into her skin.
“You’ve done a great job dealing with it all,” I say sincerely. “Don’t worry. He might need me to do something mundane that he doesn’t want to bother you with.” Or go down on him. “I’ll go and see what he wants, okay?”
“Hm.”
Her lips thin as she nods, sitting back down at her desk, staring at the boxes as if they might start multiplying before her eyes.
I go to Oliver’s office door and knock, hearing a loud “Enter” from inside.
I step through the door, closing it behind me. Oliver is sitting at his computer, glasses perched on his nose. They’re thick, black, and send a little jolt of desire through me.
Fuck, the guy looks hot in glasses.
“What’s all the noise out there?” he growls, and I hesitate, coming to stand in front of his desk.
“Noise?” I ask.
“Someone has been talking nonstop for twenty minutes.”
I raise my eyebrows, glancing behind me at the door. “Oh, I think that’s the junior associate they sent for the Reynolds case.”
Oliver grunts loudly. “I need you to deal with a few things this morning,” he mutters as he starts to type at breakneck speed.
“Adelaide is stressed, and I don’t like seeing her that way.
Burton has thrown me into a vat of shit with this case, and he knows it.
” He blinks, his fingers pausing on the keys as he glances at me. “Don’t repeat that.”
“I won’t. It does look like a vat of shit, to be honest.”
Oliver’s lips twitch as he resumes typing. “Anyway, I would usually ask her to get my lunch, but I know she has a meeting this afternoon that she’s been prepping for, and all this Reynolds stuff has thrown her off. I’d like to ask if you could get my lunch for me instead.”
He almost sounds embarrassed to be asking. “Of course.”
“Here,” he hands me a Post-it. “Don’t let them put any dressing on it. They drench this yogurt stuff all over it, and I can’t stand the taste.”
I take the Post-it, amused to see an incredibly detailed request for a salad scrawled on it. There’s a Greek restaurant around the corner that I’ve been to before, and it’s from their menu. I look up to find Oliver watching me.
“Something funny?”
“No!” I say quickly, folding up the note. “It’s just very… informative.”
He snorts. “They should know what I want by now, but sometimes they still manage to screw it up. Get yourself something at the same time and ask Adelaide and the blabbermouth what they want, too.”
“Noah?” I clarify.
“Is he the one who won’t shut up?”
“I’m assuming so, yes,” I mutter, and Oliver glances at me again, his eyes narrowing. “Is there anything else you need?”
“Keep him away from me. He knows his shit, which is why they’ve sent him here, but I don’t need him talking my ear off all day.”
“Yes, sir,” I say automatically, in a dramatic voice I use with Henry when he’s being petulant. It’s a silly little routine we have, and it always diffuses any tension between us, but as soon as the words leave my mouth, I know I’ve made a mistake.
Oliver’s fingers still, and I think for a second he’s going to explode, then he looks me in the eye, and there’s so much heat in it my breath hitches. He stares, those impossibly dark eyes boring into me so deeply that I feel a throb of heat between my legs.
Just from a look.
“That’ll be all, then, Lissa,” he says, his voice an octave lower now, and I hightail it out of the office as quickly as I can.
Jesus. What the hell was that? Was he annoyed or turned on? I can’t even tell.
Adelaide looks up as I emerge, swallowing and glancing nervously behind me.
“He just asked if I could get his lunch because you have a meeting this afternoon,” I say. Adelaide’s shoulders drop away from her ears.
“Ah. Yes, that makes sense,” she says, sounding relieved.
“What would you like from Nikos? I’m getting something for all of us.”
She rattles off her chicken kabab with falafel order, and Noah requests a lamb kebab with a voice that I realize now is much too loud for the size of the room he’s in.
I head downstairs, a ripple of something tugging at me as I step into the elevator. It feels a little like disappointment, which makes no sense.
Did I expect Oliver to do something in the middle of the day with Adelaide and Noah just outside?
He had made it very clear that we were only ever together between 5 and 6 pm. I don’t know what’s come over me, but I would have dropped to my knees if he’d asked me to.