21. Never Predictable
NEVER PREDICTABLE
On Monday, London came rushing into the conference room out of breath. “I’m not late,” she said.
Spencer looked at his watch. “You’re not.”
“It’s just the two of us?” she asked, looking around.
“Noelle will be in in a few minutes. She’s on a call. Braylon will stop in when he’s out of a meeting. I’m early.”
“Figures,” she said.
He lifted an eyebrow at her. “Wrong side of the bed again?”
He hadn’t spoken to her since he had walked her back to her place after dinner on Saturday night.
After he’d physically let his guard down the same as her.
“No,” she said, then looked at the door as if she were waiting for the US troops to come marching in.
“Then what?”
“Nothing.”
“Doesn’t sound it to me.” Nor look it with the way her lips were pressed together and her eyes were slanted.
“I’m busy. I spent most of yesterday working on the proposal with Paris. Then this morning Molly started.”
“Your new assistant?”
“Yes. It’s why I rushed up here thinking I was late.”
He looked at his watch. “On time now, just waiting for Noelle.”
If it were just the two of them he’d be holding this in his office where he could shut the door and give them privacy.
His eyes moved over her attire. Red pants just screaming for attention, fitted to the flare of her hips, snug to her legs and stopping just above her ankles. Her shirt was white with black and red on the cuffs and collar.
He shifted in his chair and looked toward the floor at her black heeled sandals. He had a feeling this was her revenge outfit, only for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what he’d done wrong.
“Is she normally late? You don’t want to be caught checking me out.”
“As I said, she’s on a call. And you wore that hoping I’d do exactly what I had. So if anything, I’m throwing you off being predictable.”
“You’re never predictable,” she mumbled.
He snorted. “I could say the same about you. But most would say I’m a boring, predictable guy.”
“I suppose.”
Definitely something going on. She wasn’t even arguing now. “Did you dress to get me to look? Stand up, let me see.”
“No,” she said, smiling.
The pursed lips were gone, the annoyance in her eyes with it, but she was still radiating someone who could flip back in an instant.
“No, you didn’t or no, you won’t stand up?”
“Both.” She shifted in her chair, almost teasing him that she might do it. “Did you have a chance to go over everything I sent this morning?”
“Briefly. I’ve been busy. Noelle should have looked it over. She wants a part of this, as I told you.”
“So I’ll be working with her more than you?” There the tenseness was back with the tight shoulders and the clip of her voice.
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 think London 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.”
Noelle’s face flushed. He knew she was eager, but this was just wasted work and time on her part and London’s.
“I know you’re new,” she said, “but I don’t appreciate a staff attorney tearing my work down. Especially when it’s all draft form.”
“Drafts are meant for changes though,” Noelle argued.
She opened her mouth and he needed to stop this before it got out of hand. “Noelle, you and I will meet about this after. I sent you the file to read over so you could get an understanding of what we did and what we observed while we were there.”
“I would have thought after seeing that information,” she said. “That you would have gone back through the old procedures, policies, workflows, and distribution cycles to see where things had been knocked out of line. That is what I’ve been doing for the past few days.”
“I didn’t know I needed to do that,” Noelle said. “Spencer, you should have told me.”
He swallowed his sigh. “It’s all part of the learning process. Now you know how your time might have been better spent and it will make you more prepared in the future.”
Noelle kept her lips sealed for the next thirty minutes, an immature pout on her face while he and London went over everything.
Braylon came in and they repeated a few things to keep him up to date.
“I’m going to review everything and start making suggestions and changes,” Noelle said. “In the next few days for everyone to look over and see if they agree or not.”
It was exactly what he’d told her not to do.
“I hadn’t been aware you took that active of a part in this. That’s great,” Braylon said.
He could almost hear London’s teeth grinding. Maybe his were right there with it.
“We are all set with you for now, Noelle,” he said, dismissing her back to her desk. “Shut the door on the way out.”
Noelle got up and smirked at him as if she’d got the final say, then pulled the door shut, yelling, “Bye, good working with you. Talk soon.”
“I’m not dealing with her,” London snapped. “Nope. Not happening.”
His breath escaped so hard he might have seen his laptop shift. “I’ll talk to her.”
“You talked to her here in that calm, patient tone of yours and the minute Braylon came in, she all but shoved it down your throat for her to get her way.”
“What am I missing?” Braylon asked. “London, I’m used to you, but I haven’t seen Spencer wound up before. I hope you’re not rubbing off on him.”
He fought damn hard not to have a flush fill his face. He explained what had happened, how he had handled it, and why London was so annoyed.
Though it seemed like it took little for her to get that way. At least today.
“I’ll talk to her again. I’ll be firmer for you, London. She’s being given this shot, but she only has one more or she’ll go back to what she’s been doing. I’m not going to tolerate those games. Bryan is more than willing to take on more, but he’s green yet.” The other attorney under him.
Braylon grinned. The guy normally had a smile on his face. A lot different from what he’d been used to dealing with at his last job.
“She’s under you because she likes to rile people up. I didn’t have too much of a problem with her until Kenzie came on board.”
“She obviously gets jealous easily,” she said.
“She does. She was threatened once she found out Kenzie had her law degree. She thought Kenzie was just a clerk. And when it came out Kenzie was seeing Nelson, even worse.”
“Married to Nelson,” she said, laughing.
“As we know, that came out later. Still. There isn’t a reason to terminate her, yet,” Braylon said. “But I won’t tolerate much more of this. I would have thought she’d gotten the hint separating her and Kenzie without putting too much pressure on Kenzie’s back as the reason.”
“Seems to me she can handle herself,” she said.
He’d talked to Nelson’s wife a few times. He’d rather have her on his team but knew that wasn’t going to happen as long as Noelle was around.
Kenzie would fly back to Utah with Nelson next week to take the bar there, and once she was done, she’d work full time for a bit while she continued to study for it in New York to take in February.
“She can. And she will continue. Let me know if there is an ongoing issue with Noelle,” Braylon said. He stood up. “I’ve got to meet with West unless you need me for anything else.”
“We’re good. There won’t be a problem with Noelle.”
Because he wouldn’t allow it. And he’d be damned if his boss thought he couldn’t handle it.
The minute they were alone, he turned to London. “So that is why you’re pissed?”
“I don’t need some newbie wannabe trying to tell me how to do my job.”
He put his hand up. “Stop. As you know, I wasn’t aware and I’ll take care of it. It doesn’t mean you have to come in here and bite my head off, nor talk down to her.”
“I didn’t talk down to her.”
“You did. I’m not saying it shouldn’t have been said, but it didn’t need to be delivered like that.”
“You talk your way, I’ll talk mine.”
Guess this was how it was going to be when they were working.
He was trying not to take offense to it.
It wasn’t as if London yelled at Noelle. Wasn’t even as sarcastic as he’d seen her before.
She stated a fact that she didn’t appreciate what was done, lacing it with Noelle’s title proving she wasn’t qualified enough.
“Are you done?”
She pushed back from the table. “Yep. I’ve got work to do.”
She strode out, leaving him with a perfect glance of her stellar ass.
He wanted to call her back in and kiss her senseless, but that wouldn’t solve a damn thing.
Not that he knew the right thing to do right now either.
Yeah, he did.
He got up and moved toward Noelle’s desk. “Can you come into my office?”
She looked up from where she had been typing. “Coming,” she said cheerfully, as if everything that had happened in the conference room didn’t exist.
He could understand why London got bent.
“Have a seat,” he said, shutting the door, then sitting behind his desk.
“In the future, when I give you something to do, do what is given to you. Follow those directions. If you have questions, you can ask. If you want to take the initiative to look into something more, do it if your other work is done, but that is on you and your time. You’re not to step on the toes of a client, a partner, or any business associate. ”
“I didn’t step on anyone’s toes. I’m doing my job. You heard Braylon. He thought it was good that I did that.”
“He replied that way on what little information he had. When he heard the rest, he agreed with me. You wanted to be on the ground floor of a project and I think it’s a great stepping stone for you.
But there are rules I expect to be followed and a chain of command to be adhered to.
We contract with Westerly Consulting. They are our clients and we are theirs.
We don’t rip their work apart, nor insult them on their work. ”
Noelle’s face flushed deeper than an apple. “Sorry. I should apologize to her, right?”
“I’d advise it. It’d go a long way because the next time it happens, I have to pull you.”
“Did she say she didn’t want to work with me?” Noelle asked, her eyes filling with tears.
He hated that even more.
He wouldn’t answer either. It served no purpose. “I told you what I expect going forward. Are we understood?”
“Yes.”
“We’re done,” he said.
Noelle stood up to leave and he crossed his ankles in front of him, stretching his legs.
Too bad he didn’t know what was going forward with London.