Flicker of Hope // NH + HS

7 - Dates or Mates?

Monday morning hits me like a brick wall. I have back to back meetings all morning, followed by a meeting with Harry and Jefferey, which is guaranteed to drain the life out of me. I arrive at work and am greeted by my assistant Alana, who is holding a mug of tea.

"Thanks, Alana, I'm actually gagging for this tea," I say gratefully, and she laughs.

"I thought you would be, Mikaela came in looking very seedy this morning, and I figured you'd be in the same boat," She explains, and I roll my eyes. This means that Mikaela went out last night too. I head into my office and start preparing for the gruelling day, and a week in fact that I have in front of me.

***

By the time I look at my phone, it's almost 3 pm, and I see a message from Niall. I smile, but before I have the chance to open it and respond, Alana is knocking on my door to tell me Harry and Jeff are here. The men walk into my office, Harry looking dashing as usually and Jefferey looking like he wants to be run over with a bus. I giggle at his expression.

After we've exchanged pleasantries, Harry and Jeffery take seats in their usual spots, and Jefferey starts his usual tirade of instructions.

"I just want to know how you plan on keeping this out of the press? We all know how popular Harry is and people will jump right on this story. When one of my dad's clients sued a newspaper, they managed to get a suppression order. Can you get one of those? I don't-" Jeffery rambles before I decide I've had enough and interpret.

"Mr Azoff, can I just ask who is the lawyer here? Me or you? Because from where I am sitting I'm the only who went through six years of university to do this job, so about you let me do it?" I seethe, furious and fed up with his constant attempts to undermine me.

Harry, ever the peacemaker, jumps in. "Jeff mate, I think I've got it for today, how about you go work on some of the tour stuff we need to be finished?"

"You sure mate?" Jeffery clarifies with Harry while giving me a filthy look.

"Yeah, I've got it from here."

Jeffery leaves my office with a huff, apparently not happy to have been booted from the meeting or scolded by me.

I sigh. "I'm sorry about that Harry, but I can't have people in here undermining me while I'm trying to do my job," I explain, and he nods.

"I know. I'm sorry, Jeff can get like that sometimes. He just worries about me, but doesn't know when to stop," Harry explains

"You've got that right," I mumble under my breath, so Harry doesn't hear.

"Okay, so I'm a litter bit further along in the search for the woman, I've got it narrowed down to 10 ladies. I'm going to need you to identify them at some point. Depending on your schedule, I can get pictures here for you to look at or the next time you're in LA, you can do the identification process," I launch into my explanation, and Harry looks pleased that we are finally getting somewhere. I got the ticketing agency to agree to let me have the names of the people who brought tickets for that section specifically and have narrowed it down from there.

Harry and I spend the next twenty minutes going over the plan, and how he needs to act in the identification process, and what happens after we've gotten the attacker as it were.

As the meeting is wrapping up, I can tell Harry has something else on his mind, so I ask him if he has any other questions.

"Yeah, I do actually. Were you going to tell me about the date with Niall?" He asks with no preamble, and I panic. I wasn't going to mention the date because first, I didn't think it was a date and second, I wasn't sure if Harry would be okay with it.