He takes her quite off-guard, taking the flowers automatically, momentarily bemused - busy in the midst of a very quiet and very polite coup, she has been hard at work and hardly expecting such a pleasant interruption as she walks between meeting and meeting and office and all of this paper.

(It is rather a bold move, to try and persuade one's superiors that one ought to be in a position someone else already holds. The point remains that she would be better at it, and so.)

"Nate," she says, pleased as well as surprised, "these are lovely--"