Noah

by Allison LaFleur

  “You like swings?”

  “Oh… um… yes,” she said, looking down.

  “Well, come on then. Let’s swing.” I grabbed her hand again, finally relaxing. Memories of that horrible lunch were fading into the background. There’s nothing like memories of childhood to reduce your stress level.

  “Oh, I couldn’t.” She shook her head.

  “Sure you can. Come on.” It took a minute, but something shifted and suddenly we were laughing and giggling again with Lena on the swing and me pushing her higher and higher. Time flew that way, and before I knew it, we had to head back to the office. Reluctantly, the two of us stumbled through the front doors and up the steps, still giddy from playing hooky for even just a lunch hour.

  “God, that was fun. Thank you, Lena.” I stopped her just before we went back into my office.

  “Thank you, Mr. Hendrix. I haven’t had that much fun in an long time.” She looked embarrassed again, ducking her head and scurrying to her desk. The carefree girl of moments ago was gone. I’d just scratched the surface of the mystery that was my secretary, Lena. I wanted to know more.

  I definitely needed to finish signing the paperwork to make her position here permanent. I didn’t want to lose her. I knew as soon as the team here caught on to her value, they would try and snap her up in an instant. At least, I would. A lot of the men on that floor, slightly paunchy with receding hairlines, were there to punch a clock and collect a check for their middle management place in the company. Their secretaries were there for their physical appeal, not their brains. Lena was both smart and funny—a rare combination.

  Lena was not the looker many of the other secretaries were. Here clothes were neat and practical, not flashy. Her hair, while a nice color, was not styled to enhance her looks but pulled back from her face in a serviceable bun at the nape of her neck. She wore no jewelry, and her cosmetics were limited to a pale lip gloss. Her nails were neat and manageable. In other words, she was not there for a husband.

  I took a moment and admired the slope of her swan like neck, her narrow waist, and rounded hips. I wasn’t looking for a wife. I already had a fiancé I didn’t want.

  It was just as well Lena was here for the job, not the marriage prospects. I couldn’t get involved with her, anyway. She hadn’t been vetted and approved by my mother as a suitable senator’s wife.

  I needed to tell Mrs. Buckingham to make our arrangement permanent.

  Lena

  My cheeks felt cold after our lunch excursion. I reached up and laid my palms against them, wondering what had just happened.

  Who is this man?

  When Noah had come back from what I thought was a lunch meeting, he’d seemed antsy, disgruntled. Then he came barreling up to my desk with the crazy idea of taking a lunch and going for hot dogs?

  Who does that?

  I had never heard of anyone else taking their secretary to lunch unless something else was going on. But this didn’t feel like that.

  I glanced back at him. He sat at his desk, feet propped up, gesturing with his hands to whomever he spoke to on the phone.

  Swinging! We went swinging! I couldn’t believe he’d talked me into it.

  The empty lot behind our apartment building used to have an old rusted swing set until some builder decided to buy the land for a mini mart gas station. When things got bad, I used to take Doris and the boys there before the rest were born. We took turns swinging for hours until it got dark and Daddy passed out. Mama would turn on our bedroom light as a signal it was safe to come home.

  That feeling of freedom, of soaring high above the earth, free as a bird—I hadn’t felt that in a long time.

  Funny that it was my boss who made me feel that way.

  Chapter Nine

  Noah

  “Lena, where is the file with the potential candidates? We need to set up interviews.” Rifling through the folders in my desk drawer, I couldn’t put my finger on the one I needed.

  “Right here, sir.” Lena, always organized, knew right where it was. She came to my desk, pulled it out from under the half empty cup of cold coffee, and went back to her work.

  “And when is John arriving?” I asked, distractedly searching my desk, patting my hands through the papers in search of the notes to discuss with John. “Oh! I need to find him an office.” An office. I looked through my open doorway, running the layout through my head. Is there an empty office on this floor?

  “He said he could be here tomorrow.” She looked up from her computer, eyes wide and blinking behind the cute purple frames of her computer glasses.

  “Oh, God! Tomorrow?!” I wasn’t ready. I mean, I was ready, but I had no idea how much work was involved in starting this division. I couldn’t wait for his help, but getting him up to speed was going to take time I didn't have. “Okay. Oh, wait! There is that empty office down the hall. What if we put him in there.”

  “The one by the closet?” She pulled a notebook from a drawer, flipped to a new page and started taking notes. Thank God Mrs. Buckingham sent me Lena; the woman could single-handedly run this entire office. How did I get so lucky?

  “Yes! That’s the only empty one I can think of. I know it’s small, and it’s not perfect, but it’s here on this floor.” I looked around for my desk phone. It was buried somewhere under the piles of folders Lena and I had managed to accumulate over the past few weeks. I looked up at her. “You may have to run back and forth until we can find him something bigger and get him a secretary.”

  “Mr. Hendrix,” she came forward and put her hand on mine, stopping my frantic search. “let me take care of all that. I can also have Mrs. Buckingham send a secretary for him if the workload gets to be too much. I have a couple of friends down there who might be a good fit.” Her touch instantly stilled my racing brain. Suddenly the room grew small. My focus narrowed on the small patch of skin her hand covered.

  “That sounds great, Lena.” When she returned to straightening my desk, I felt lost for a moment, missing the feel of her touch. “He’s got a wife and a couple of small kids at home. He’s not going to be staying late much.”

  “I’ll take care of it, sir.” The total professional, she picked up the phone like nothing had passed between us.

  “Thank you, Lena. I can’t tell you how much your help here means to me.” Her efficiency left me with one less thing to take care of.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said, distracted by someone on the other line.

  “Yes, this is Lena Bishop, Mr. Hendrix’s secretary… Yes. I need to put in a request for office 309… Yes. Mr. Hendrix’s partner Mr. Alexander is arriving tomorrow… Thank you… Yes. I will let him know.”

  “Mr. Hendrix?” She tucked a stray hair back into her bun and pushed her glasses up on her head.

  “Hmmmm?” I couldn’t stop watching her as she flitted around the office, disposing of my cold coffee, tossing the remains of last night’s meal, and creating order from my chaos.

  “Someone will be up with the requisition forms, and housekeeping will clean it out this afternoon. I’ll get him the basics from central supply when they are done.”

  “Thank you, Lena. You are amazing.”

  Chapter Ten

  Lena

  “Hi, I’m looking for Noah Hendrix.” A tall sandy haired man with thick wire rimmed glasses stood in the office doorway.

  “This is Mr. Hendrix’s office. How may I help you?” I didn’t recognize him, but Noah might have had an appointment he forgot to tell me about. This guy had an absent-minded professor vibe about him. Maybe he’s a researcher here for an interview.

  “I’m John Alexander.”

  “Oh! Mr. Alexander, it’s so good to finally meet you. I’m Lena Bishop, Mr. Hendrix’s, and now your, secretary.”

  He grinned boyishly at me from behind the thick lenses as he reached up and ruffled his hair. He seemed to think for a moment and then smiled crookedly like he had forgotten something. Finally, he reached out to shake my hand. “Nice to meet you,
Miss Bishop. Noah has mentioned you a lot. You sure are prettier than he mentioned, though. I wonder why that skipped his mind.” He laughed at his own joke.

  “I’m sure he hasn’t noticed, Mr. Alexander.” I blushed furiously under his gaze, hoping in the back of my mind that Noah had noticed and also liked my looks.

  “It’s John, and I didn’t mean to embarrass you. My wife always tells me I speak without thinking.” He rocked back on his heels and scratched his stomach. “Is Noah here?” He looked around, in no particular hurry.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Alexander. Noah stepped out a moment, but I can take you to your office.” I stood and came around my desk.

  “I get an office?” That got John’s attention, and he focused back on me.

  “Yes, sir. We arranged it for you yesterday.” I held a hand out ahead of me and ushered him toward the door. “I’m sorry your office is so small, we are trying to find you something bigger, but Mr. Hendrix wanted you on the same floor as his office so it would be easier for you two to work together.”

  “I get an office,” he repeated to himself as if he couldn’t really believe what he was hearing. “An office?” He followed me down the hall. “Noah, what have you gotten me into?” His head swiveled constantly as he peered into the offices we passed, and he took in the building like he hadn’t paid much attention to it before.

  “Here we are,” I announced, gesturing for him to enter his office. “This is your space.” I walked in after him, flipping on the lights and giving the mini tour of his big desk, the two chairs that faced it, the bookshelves and file cabinets by his one window, and the stack of office supplies I’d requisitioned. After, I took him on a tour of the floor to show him the facilities.

  “Mr. Hendrix should be back in a few minutes,” I said as we ended our tour back at his office. “He had to run some paperwork downstairs. I think he said he was meeting with Mr. Tander at noon. They are submitting the final documents to start up the biotech division of your company.”

  “My company?” John looked confused, and I was beginning to think was his permanent look.

  “Um….” I paused. Mr. Hendrix hadn’t indicated anything was secret. I had heard all the discussions, and it was common knowledge around the office. “I hope I’m not speaking out of turn.”

  “John!” Noah appeared all smiles. Thank God. I didn't want to screw that job up.

  “Noah! Good to see you again!” John grabbed Mr. Hendrix in a hug, both men doing the back slapping of old friends before separating and shaking hands. “Your beautiful secretary here was just telling me you were finishing up the paperwork on our company?”

  “My beautiful secretary is correct. We just finished a few last minute details. H & A BioTech is a go.”

  “What?!” John looked stunned, his eyes wide. “You created H&A BioTech? I thought we were just presenting our project from school?”

  “We are. We’re developing it and marketing it…under our own names, with the support of Mr. Tander’s company. I just finalized the agreement. We get access to their scientists and their history in the marketplace, and we develop our own stuff.”

  “Wait, why?” John took a step back like it was all moving too fast. “What’s in it for them?”

  “Twenty-five percent of net profit. You and I split the rest fifty-fifty. You in?” Noah asked.

  “Are you kidding? Of course I’m in!”

  Chapter Eleven

  Noah

  I buried my head in the reams of paperwork that seemed to cover every square inch of my office. I had to start the construction and renovation of our 10,000-square-foot research facility and set up the physical locations. John was gone for the day. He’d had to pick his boys up from school, and I was snowed under.

  “Lena, have you seen the blueprints?” I hollered as I dug through the file cabinet.

  She popped her head in and wordlessly pulled them from under a pile of books and papers I’d stacked on a chair. “Will you please let me organize this stuff?” She shook her head. “You’re never going to be able to find anything in here.”

  “Yes. Fine. You’re right… but come here for a minute.” I pulled the blueprints from the tube, unrolled them, and spread them out on top of the mountain on my desk, which only added to the chaos.

  “Look here.” I pointed to a spot on the drawing. “We need an entrance for patients. If we get this new drug John and I are working on approved for clinical trials, I want to run some of them onsite. This wing here.” I pointed to the left. “This would be for a team of medical staff. Over here.” I pointed to the right. “I want to do initial development here. Set up the labs and flow right into manufacturing.”

  “Can you do all that in one place?” She looked at me with a question in her wide indigo eyes. There was intelligence hidden there I hadn’t paid attention to before.

  “On a small scale? Yes. If the drug ends up in production, we will work with labs and manufacturing offsite, but in the clinical trial phase, we only need dozens, not hundreds of thousands of samples.”

  “Hmmm…” She thought for a moment. “That makes sense.” She stood there, chewing on her lip, and started tracing with her finger across the paper. “Where are the offices?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you have to have an administrative team… and closets. Where are your closets?”

  “Closets?”

  “You know, to store stuff like mops and printer paper.” She was matter of fact in her question.

  I looked where she was pointing and gaped wordlessly. She was right. We had no storage for simple stuff, only storage for the manufacturing supplies and equipment.

  “God, Lena. I love you!” I grabbed her in a hug and swung her around. “You have no idea how much money you just saved me.”

  “Mr. Hendrix!”

  “Noah. Call me Noah.” I set her down and pushed up my sleeves as I turned back to the blueprints. That scent she wore was distracting, and I needed to keep my mind in the game. “Here, sit. We are going over every inch of these. I want to know what else we missed.”

  Lena

  “What if you moved your employee entrance over to this side, Mr. Hendrix?” I tapped one side of the building with a finger to draw his attention to that space.

  “Call me Noah.” He said almost as an afterthought. He had corrected me so many times already that evening. It was just hard to think of him as Noah. I mean, he was my boss. This new trust and familiarity seemed strange to me. Noah was not like any boss I had ever had before. He actually saw me as a person. He was the first person on the planet to take the time to see the real me.

  “Why move it there?” He had started asking me to explain what I was thinking every time I made a suggestion. It felt weird; no one else had ever cared what I thought before. The rule at home was “be seen and not heard” and always had been.

  “Well,” I paused, worried I’d sound stupid. “You said your development and manufacturing guys are working with chemicals and… what did you call them? Biologics, right?”

  “Yes.” He focused his gaze on me, listening to everything I had to say.

  “So gross stuff. If you put the bathrooms here, you can set up a locker room. You had talked about putting one in. This way, they can change into work clothes when they get here and then shower and change when they leave. You keep all the chemical contamination separate, right?”

  “Oh, Yes! And wait! I can put the gym over here on the opposite side of the locker rooms and then move the laundry back here, so all lab coats and scrubs go straight in. The plumbing will be easier. Shorter runs. You are brilliant, Lena. Brilliant!”

  I got butterflies in my belly every time Noah complimented me, and I felt my face warm as I blushed.

  Noah focused on the plans, drawing different symbols, redoing lines, and writing notes in the margins. “Lena?” He glanced over his shoulder at me as I sat next to him. “It’s getting late. Do you need to be getting home?”

  “No, I don�
�t have class tonight. I’ll just make a call and let them know I’ll be home late.” I wasn’t going to rush out of there just to go home to screams, fighting, and the expectation that I’d clean it all up. I wasn’t going to leave Noah just to wait on my father hand and foot. Let my sister step up. Doris was almost 18 and, despite her excessive absences that put her graduation at risk, a high school senior. I couldn’t do it all.

  “Great! Then can you order us some food in? I don’t want to stop now. We’re making such great progress on this.” He looked up at me expectantly, “I’m getting hungry. How about you?”

  “Sure. What are you in the mood for?” Hunger wasn’t foreign to me, but Noah seemed to think I was too skinny and kept feeding me. It had started with street dogs, then escalated to Chinese and Italian. This wasn’t the first time we had ordered in, and I had started a collection of takeout menus in my drawer to save time.

  “How about sushi from that place on the corner?” He paused. “Oh! And get some of that sake we tried last time, it was fabulous.”

  “I’ll order us a selection. They seem to have a bit of everything. Will John be back? Should I order enough for him too?”

  “Not tonight. His boys are sick, and his wife needs his help.” He dropped his eyes back to the plans, food already forgotten.

  “Ok, sushi for two and sake for you,” I mumbled with a smile, picking up the phone.

  Chapter Twelve

  Noah

  “Pass me some more of that sake please.” My eyes were starting to cross and I didn’t know if it was the drink or the late hour. The restaurant accidentally sent a double order and I’d talked Lena into a glass that had turned into three. I hummed, glancing down at my watch. “It’s almost midnight!” I leaned back, pushing my rolling chair away from my desk. “I guess that’s my sign we’ve got to get you home.”