“There’re a few benefits, yes.”
She lifted Hope carefully into her arms, deciding to leave the car seat behind. They rode the elevator up to the fifteenth floor where he held the door so she could precede him. Directly in front of them was a gleaming glass-and-chrome receptionist’s desk.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Alexander.” The receptionist seemed startled to see them.
“Afternoon, Marcy.” Eli nodded and then turned to the right.
Kay followed him, conscious of the older woman’s curious stare. They passed cubicles and small offices. Most of them were empty, but they passed quite a few people in the hallways who spoke to Eli or nodded.
“This is my office.”
He closed the door behind them and led her over to this desk. It was a massive piece of wood with two black leather chairs in front. Kay sat down and shucked off her coat.
“I need to go down to the HR department. They just hired someone new and for management-level employees, I like to introduce myself right away since they’ll be reporting directly to me.”
“Well, you can go do whatever you need to do. I don’t mind waiting. Actually, if there’s anything you need me to do, just let me know. I want to be useful. In case you didn’t know, I’m pretty good at keeping Alexander men on task. Just ask Nick.”
Eli chuckled, his deep baritone washing over her, rumbling through her and leaving a trail of goose bumps in its wake. “I believe you.” He gestured toward a stack of files on his desk. “If you’re determined to help, there is something you can do. I need these to be put in alphabetical order so they can be filed. Also, I need you to pull out the ones that have incident reports because I need to sign off on those.”
Kay looked down at Hope, who was regarding the new surroundings with interest. “I should have brought her car seat after all. I guess I’ll have to hold her on my lap.”
“She can come with me. What do you say, princess? You want to take a ride?” He held out his arms and Hope immediately leaned forward.
“How quickly she deserts me for a handsome face.” Kay winked at him.
Eli held Hope protectively against his shoulder. “She knows I’m a sucker for that smile and she can get away with anything.”
Kay’s heart flipped over when he looked down at Hope so affectionately. Hope had been up late again the prior night but amazingly, Eli didn’t look as though he’d stayed up rocking a cranky baby. He looked like he belonged in a fashion magazine. She’d never seen him in a suit before and the result was shockingly arousing. Eli looked up and caught her staring, so she covered it with a cough.
“So, you need me to look for incident reports and set those aside. Then I can file the rest. Anything else?”
“No, that’s it.”
Kay pushed up her sleeves. “I can do that. Don’t worry about me. Just go do… boss stuff.”
Eli watched her with amused eyes as she plopped down in his chair and opened the first file folder.
“Okay. I won’t be gone long.” He kissed her lightly on the cheek and then he was gone. She could hear him talking to Hope all the way down the hall.
She let out a breath before turning her attention to the mountain of folders. It shouldn’t be that difficult to scan through each file and see if there was anything Eli needed to sign. It was the type of work that wasn’t difficult, just tedious. She scanned through the first stack and then filed them. By the time she got to the next stack, she was actually enjoying herself. Some of these case files read almost like fiction.
“What is going on in here?”
Kay looked up from the file she was reading. Carly stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips.
“Eli asked me to help him get his desk in order.”
Carly marched over to the desk and snatched the pile of papers from her hand. “That’s my job. I’m his assistant. I keep his desk in perfect order, thank you.”
Kay snatched the file back. “I’m sure you do, but he’s the one who asked me to help him with this stuff. Maybe he thought you were too busy working on something else.”
“I’m never too busy for him. For anything he needs me to do.” Carly crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow.
Kay shook her head. “Really? You don’t think I already know that? I figured that out about ten seconds after we met.”
Carly’s eyes narrowed. Before she could respond, Kay held up a hand. “Whatever. I couldn’t care any less about your past with Eli. Based on your behavior, I’m going to take a wild guess that he was the one who broke it off? Which means he made his decision before I came along. So, like I said, if you have a problem take it up with him.”
Eli entered the room then and stopped short when he saw Carly. “Hey, what are you two doing?”