One Week (HaleStorm) Read Online Free

pen in front of her on the table.
    He raised his eyebrows. “Which would be when?” He waved a hand at the papers spread across the small conference room table. “Looked to me like you’d settled in for the evening.” He kicked the door shut behind him then took a seat in the swivel chair immediately next to her. “Besides. I’m here to help. And I’m starving.”
    She breathed a quiet laugh. “You’re....” When she’d asked for someone to help her out with the documentation she’d figured they’d give her some low on the ladder code-monkey. Maybe one of those fresh-faced guys from desktop support who were still busy practicing their goatee growing skills and learning how to crack the software in their smart phones. She’d felt bad enough about the idea of getting assigned a guy from senior management, but Michael? No.
    He stopped in the middle of pulling Chinese containers from the bag. “Don’t sound so shocked. Tom’s right. I’d prefer word of this issue not spread through the employees until we have it well in hand. I appreciate your confidence about being able to get it resolved, I simply don’t want to call the game until the clock has run out.”
    “But I thought you said Tom...?” She lost her voice when he handed her a rectangular container. Singapore-style rice noodles. Her favorite. How on earth could he have remembered?
    “Tom had a family emergency this afternoon. As the last of my family was recently cremated, I am short of those at the moment.”
    Elise swallowed hard, and focused with unnecessary care on venting the steam from her noodles. His face betrayed no emotions, his focus appeared to be one-hundred percent invested in emptying their dinner from the bag. Her heart ached for him anyway.
    “What about...?” She didn’t remember any names, but she’d met a brother once upon a time, during her internship. No. Two brothers? They’d come to the annual employee barbecue. Not that it was any of her business. “I thought I remembered you had other family.”
    “Well,” he said softly. “I lost touch with my mother long before she passed. And my brothers both walked away when the bastard Hale received control of the company in our father’s will.” He delivered the news casually, calmly, while fishing in the bag for a packet of dipping sauce.
    The giant lump in her throat made swallowing even more difficult. “I’m sorry.” For a moment his hand lay near hers. In spite of her lingering hurt and anger toward him, a touch of her fingers on the backs of his knuckles struck her as the thing to do. “I liked your father. He was a good guy.”
    He looked at her with sharp, dark eyes like she’d startled him, but didn’t move away.  “He certainly tried to be. He made mistakes I suppose, but then again we all do.” With that a crease formed in the center of his forehead. He stared at her as if he was trying to figure something out while he licked his lips so....
    Slowly.
    “I suppose we do, yes.” Dammit. That had come out sounding all soft and breathy, and not at all the way Elise intended. She stopped herself from thunking her head on the table.
    “Well. My father always said mistakes are necessary. They’re how we grow and learn.” With a breath, Michael straightened and handed her a pair of chopsticks. The shadows on his face disappeared. As he scanned the documents she’d spread across the table, he said, “So, we’ve got a mistake in front of us. Tell me what we have here.”
    Okay. Family discussion closed.
    She scooted closer to avoid craning her sore neck and pointed with the yet unused chopsticks. “That first stack of papers is basically a template for what your security officer should have sent to your client. That second one is a list of everything you got spanked for missing on the validation. I spent the day going through and color coding them. Red for procedures you were supposedly never following.” She gave him a look of mock sympathy. “No