She huffed out a laugh, glanced up and met his gaze. “If I’m dressed okay…”
Even as she trailed off, he knew she wasn’t inviting him to look for any reason other than surface value. But he looked anyway, because there was a whole lot of chemistry going on in holding her gaze and he needed to break eye contact or he might do something stupid. So he tore his attention from those stormy eyes and checked out her clothes as asked. And damn, he liked what he saw. Petite but athletic build. She wasn’t frail or tiny by any definition, which was good because the men and the dogs of Hope’s Crossing tended to knock those types over. Her clothes were clean, sensible. Her jeans hugged her legs enough to make his mouth water but weren’t painted on the way some girls wore theirs. She could move in those.
He forced himself to look back down the drive before his assessment took too long and spooked her. She’d already tensed despite her own implicit invitation.
“Fine for today.” And they were, but if she was going to work with them for more than a day, he should think about the business. “But maybe if we do decide together to extend this arrangement, you might want to wear a collared or button-up shirt. It’s what the rest of us try to wear when there’s people on site for classes.”
Her smile was back, still hesitant. “I think I can manage that.”
“Come inside, then.” He waved his hand toward the interior since he was already holding the door open for her. “I’ll introduce you to Forte, and between the two of us we’ll try to brief you on what you need to do for the day. If we’re all happy by the end of the day, we’ll do the whole resumé, questions-and-answers thing.”
She hesitated a moment longer, then stepped inside. “Let’s give the day a try.”
Chapter Three
Hope’s Crossing Kennels was in need of a serious administrative overhaul.
Elisa shook her head as she assessed the piles of forms from previous lessons. Oh, the piles were neat enough. Brandon Forte and Alex Rojas, and the currently absent David Cruz, kept the front desk clear of clutter. But the truth was hiding in the deep drawer where they kept release forms from previous classes. All the forms had been dumped in there and forgotten.
Technically, if an incident ever occurred during a class, they did have access to the emergency contacts and liability releases because they weren’t scattered or trashed. It’d just take forever to find a specific form if a person had to sift through all of these. Plus, from what some of the friendlier dog owners had told her, they’d had to fill out the same form every time they came to a class. Weekly, in many cases. And who knew where forms went after they didn’t fit in the drawer anymore?
“Inefficient,” Elisa muttered.
Then she glanced around the empty waiting area to be sure there were no witnesses because she’d probably twitched.
They had a good laptop set up at the front with basic software for the usual business office needs. More than sufficient to set up a client database, scan the forms, and have them on file and searchable with the appropriate metadata. The correct information at a moment’s notice meant loyal clients wouldn’t have to keep filling out the forms every time they came.
She didn’t want to snoop around on a computer when her duties so far had been limited to greeting and asking people to fill out a form. A paper form. With random pens.
Damn it, the pens didn’t even match. They’d been grabbed from anywhere, apparently. Others had been chewed a bit on the ends, and she was pretty sure the chewing hadn’t been done by any dog. And some of them disappeared as people absentmindedly took them with them.
Shuddering, she’d tossed the chewed pens in the garbage. No way should any clients have to use those.
The first class would last about an hour, according to Alex. He’d also said there was an hour break between classes, too. So she had a whole bunch of time to sit and wipe imaginary dust off a clean desk area.
She studied the laptop again. It didn’t even have a screen saver set to turn on after a specified amount of time. No password protection. If she hadn’t been sitting there, anyone who walked in could sit down at the laptop and have access to…
Nothing.
Elisa blinked. She hadn’t even realized she’d started to poke around on the desktop of the computer. It had access to Wi-Fi for Internet browsing plus connection to a printer and a scanner, but that was it. She couldn’t see any other computers on the network but there had to be. Both Brandon and Alex had mentioned offices farther down the hallway. At least the network security had this laptop separated from the rest of its computers.