“Miss Spencer! You’re here.” Beverly said with a slightly stunned look on her face. Who was she expecting, Santa Clause?

“Well yes Beverly, you did call me about five minutes ago practically ordering me to come back to the office. On my afternoon off.” Spencer couldn’t help herself from bringing that up – it really annoyed her.

The young woman was a bit distracted by Spencer’s comment and started fiddling with a pencil. “Uh, Miss I can’t order you to do anything. You’re my boss Miss Sp-“

“Beverly!” Spencer sighed and felt a headache coming up. This wasn’t how she imagined today. Suddenly sitting in a small café alone wasn’t such a bad concept. At least if she was alone no one could aggravate her with mindless trivia. Reaching over her assistant’s desk, she grabbed the pencil and carefully put it down. “Now do tell, who scared you so much that you got the guts to ask me to come back in?”

“Well Miss Spencer, she’s uh in your office already. She said she was tired of wasting her time in the, and I quote, ‘room you use to drive your clients crazy with absurd colour combinations and boring paintings so they would just pay up and leave before ever stepping foot in your office.’ ” Beverly briefly held up a post-it that contained what the client said and gave a small smile. “She really is persuasive. I think it’s her mean look that does it.”

“Right.” Spencer took the file Beverly was holding out for her and put on her glasses. She slowly took a few steps back and did a 180 when she thought she put enough space between herself and Beverly’s desk. Throwing Beverly a last look, she quickly made a beeline for her office. Sometimes Spencer really thought her assistant was dropped on her head when she was a child.

She opened the door while looking at the first page in her folder containing the main information about this client. “Good afternoon…” She paused and scanned the sheet for a name. When her eyes fell upon the field ‘Name’ she gasped and doubled checked what was written down. Surely it couldn’t be… She peered above her glasses at the woman who sat in her own chair at her desk. “Shit…” She might have grown a bit and gotten more mature over the years but the glint she had in her eyes erased every doubt in Spencer’s mind about who this mystery client was. “Ashley.”