Page 81 of Fierce-Hyde

“Can I help you?”

“I was wondering if Tori was in?” he asked two days later.

“I think so,” the woman said. “Can I ask your name?”

“Hyde Person,” he said.

Maybe he should have told her he was stopping in, but he’d been out meeting with a client, and on his way back and he detoured to see Tori’s office. She’d seen his enough and she was very clear she wasn’t hiding their relationship, so why not?

The woman at the desk looked him over. He’d peg her in her forties. “Tori. Hyde Person is here asking for you.” The woman glanced at him again, smiled, and put the phone down. “She said she’ll be right up. She’s in with someone if you want to take a seat over there.”

“Sure,” he said, turning to sit in the waiting area.

After a minute, he pulled his phone out to check the email he might have missed while he was gone.

He’d replied to one and was reading another when he looked up and saw Tori standing there.

No skirt or dress this time. Bummer.

She had tan cotton pants on and a red sweater. “Hi,” she said. “If I knew you were coming, I would have told you I was meeting with someone. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

He stood up. “Not a big deal,” he whispered. He was matching her voice. No secrets didn’t mean they wanted to air out their lives for nosy coworkers who were watching them. “I was coming back from a meeting and thought I’d stop in.”

“Come back to my office,” she said. “I’ll show it to you, but then I’ve got another meeting in ten minutes.”

“I can leave,” he said. “It’s fine.”

It’s not as if they didn’t have plans later tonight. With any luck, she’d stay the night and he could cook her breakfast in the morning again before they figured out plans for the weekend.

“No,” she said. “I told my staff I’ll be in to get them. It’s fine.”

Since she was smiling, he wasn’t going to worry too much.

He moved down a few halls and then turned into her office.

“This is much different than mine,” he said.

She had motivational quotes and posters on the walls. There was a bookshelf full of books and binders. Things that looked like they belonged in a classroom.

“It would be,” she said.

“What are those?”

He moved over to a box on the floor and saw a bunch of stress balls and fidget toys. He picked one up and saw the name of their organization on it.

“Swag for the kids,” she said.

“Swag?” he asked. Didn’t look all that fancy to him.

“It’s what we call it. I’ve got all sorts of things in the storage room for my staff too. But these just came in. We work with a lot of younger kids who have problems paying attention in school. Or have poor home lives and are anxious. These things help.”

“They didn’t have stuff like this when I was a kid,” he said. “I don’t know that I would have been using it the way I needed to.”

He had one spinning in his hand and then it flew out and hit the wall.

“They aren’t meant for that but not saying it wouldn’t happen. Maybe I should have thought twice before I ordered them.”

She picked it up and put it on her desk.

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