His Naughty Lessons-Chapter 250: A Special Name

** Harper **

The thought of setting her brother up for a date kept tickling Harper’s mind. Especially when the intern hiring decisions went through quickly on Monday, which officially put Emory onto the possible name list.

Of course, Harper wasn’t serious at all when she suggested hooking up these two together. Emory looked too young, probably barely over twenty, and Harper wasn’t stupid enough to want to challenge the limits of Eli’s temper by putting a hotheaded brother on the same side with an awkwardly half-related sister. But still ... Wouldn’t it be cool for them to at least meet? Wouldn’t it be exciting to at least dream about everyone becoming a big happy family together?

Those were all joking thoughts that she could only keep to herself and her boyfriend though. By the time all the hiring paperwork went through and Emory showed up to her first day of work on Wednesday, Harper hid every last one of those slightly inappropriate schemes behind a friendly smile as she greeted her very first personal hire on the team.

"Welcome! The freshest new member to join the fun at Miracles!" It was a pleasant surprise to see that Emory had changed her doll-like ponytail to a bun today, paired with a semi-casual dress that made her look unexpectedly professional. A smart girl who knew how to leave the right impression at her workplace. "Let’s get you started with a tour of the office first," Harper led the way after giving the intern an approving nod, "your new coworkers are all waiting to meet you."

Emory beamed, and the two started weaving their way through the various teams’ spaces as Harper introduced her new minion.

It didn’t take long for them to notice, however, that almost everyone of their coworkers started the greeting by saying, "Emory Sterling, right?", with enough emphasis on the last name that Emory eventually started wincing a little at the unnecessary reminder.

"My bad, I probably should’ve mentioned this to you earlier," Harper offered when they were briefly out of everyone else’s earshot in the hallway, "you might find it a bit ... different, that everyone pays so much extra attention to your name on the first few days. But don’t worry, that kind of curiosity comes and goes fast. People like to gossip for fun a lot in this office, and they don’t mean anything serious. It’s just a very laid back and ’anything goes’ type of place here, which is part of the reason why I like the company culture."

Emory nodded. "That’s fair. I guess I simply wasn’t expecting my dad to be so popular," she chuckled.

Well, it’s actually your sort-of brother that’s popular, not your dad ... Though Harper kept that comment to herself.

"This is the architecture development area, aka. the department where you’ll be working." They soon entered the office section where Harper’s cubicle was located. "My desk is one aisle away from yours, and Lindsey—"

She paused when she noticed that Emory’s attention was caught by something in the corner of the room.

"O-Oh, I’m sorry." The girl apologized hastily, stepping away from whatever she was staring at. "I’m listening! I just ... wow, can I just say I’m loving your company culture more and more? This board is so interesting!"

Ugh ... Someone was a little too quick to discover the Golden Couple scoreboard. Or maybe Lindsey had done too good of a job pitching it up in such a conspicuous place.

Harper considered it. Now that Emory was officially part of the team, she technically had the right to learn about these "extracurricular entertainment" as part of her tour as well. "Ah, that’s Lindsey’s famous weekend project," Harper explained. "Some voting shenanigans about various couples in the office," — she added a joking wink to sound casual — "fair warning: young girls like you should enter the game at your own risk."

Emory giggled, eyes widening as she examined the board once more. "Oh wow, that’s you on top, isn’t it?" She pointed at the lavender field picture pinned to the first row. "And the person with you ... Wait, is that the one I ran into last weekend at the arcade?"

"... Yep." Oh well. She was going to find out one way or another.

Emory’s eyes moved down the board, landing slowly on the ranking’s name list, and Harper could see her gaze fixed on the handwritten label: Eli Sterling.

"... Wow, no wonder!" The girl took a second to gasp, but to Harper’s surprise, she sounded ... actually kind of excited? "No wonder I thought he looked familiar somehow! He looks a lot like my dad." ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com

"..."

"I mean, our dad ... I assume you know about the story more or less, right?"

"... Right."

Harper darted a look around them. Fortunately, most of her coworkers were wearing headphones, and it didn’t seem like anyone was listening. But still, this wasn’t the best place for a conversation to start going in an awkward direction, and she hoped that Emory wouldn’t be so tactless as to get into family dramas right on her first day at work.

Fortunately, she wasn’t. "I guess I’ll probably meet him here someday then," she said, contemplative. "Either when he comes in for a board meeting or when he picks you up from work?" Turning back to Harper, the girl grinned. "I hope he’s the kind of person that does that. And considering how high you guys are ranked on this board, I’m about ninety-five percent sure that he is."

Then, thankfully, Emory finally removed her curious attention from the scoreboard and came back to Harper’s side, ready to continue the last portion of their tour.

Harper darted one last glance at the picture of Eli, then at the girl who looked only about ten percent like him, and she suddenly wondered why it was getting so difficult to read a young college girl these days.

Was Emory genuinely curious and interested to meet Eli ... or was she just too good at hiding a much more complicated attitude toward the mysterious half-brother?