Page 12 of His Good Girl

“You are?”

“Yes.” He stopped a few feet away from me. “May I?”

It took me half a second to understand he meant a hug.

The question itself undid me a little. The care of it. The fact that he did not assume, even with all the years behind us, even with the godfather label sitting invisibly between us. I nodded, and he stepped in and embraced me.

It was brief. Proper. One arm around my shoulders, his hand firm between my shoulder blades, his chest solid against me for exactly long enough to make me remember every inappropriate thought I had ever had and every appropriate grief that came before it. He smelled like clean soap and coffee, with cedar beneath it. My throat tightened so suddenly I immediately hated myself. When he released me, he studied my face.

“You look like you didn’t sleep,” he observed.

“I slept a little.”

“That means no.”

“It means I closed my eyes near a pillow,” I smiled.

His mouth curved again. “Sit down, Avery.”

He gestured to one of the chairs opposite his desk, and I sat, grateful for the instruction. He returned to his own chair but did not put the desk entirely between us in the way Marlena would have. He angled himself slightly, one forearm resting on the arm of his chair, posture open but not casual. Somehow that was worse. A closed-off man was easier to resist. A warm, attentive one was a kind of ambush.

“I read your email.” He lobbed the opening volley.

“Yes. I gathered.”

“Benjamin sometimes lacks subtlety.”

“He has other qualities.”

“That’s generous.” He leaned back. “He’s protective.”

“I noticed.”

“Of my time, mostly. My blood pressure. Occasionally my mortal soul.”

“He seems very committed.” I couldn’t help the grin that overtook my face.

“He’s been with me a long time. He started as an intern and somehow became the only person alive who can tell me I’m being an idiot and make me grateful for the privilege ofhis opinion.” Callum glanced toward the door with obvious fondness. “He means well.”

“He called me a nepotist.”

“He probably called you worse in his head.”

“That’s comforting.”

“I didn’t say he was gentle.”

Something about the ease of it, the dry humor, the familiar warmth tucked beneath the formality, loosened a knot under my ribs. I had expected pity or disappointment, or a brisk favor performed out of obligation. I had expected to be handled. Instead, Callum was looking at me like a person who had received a complicated set of drawings and intended to understand all of them before deciding what could be built.

He tapped one finger against his legal pad. “How are you, really?”

The question was simple enough that I could have lied. I was trained in lying politely. I could say I was fine, hanging in there, or taking things one day at a time, all the little phrases people handed one another so that nobody had to touch the mess beneath, but last night I had sent him the embarrassing version. The human version. It seemed cowardly to replace that now with a brochure.

“I’m embarrassed,” I answered.

His face did not change, but his gaze narrowed just a hair. “Because you were fired?”

“Because I was fired again. Because I’m twenty-five and I still don’t know how to explain what I do. Because my friends fromcollege have titles with the word senior in them and apartments with actual dining tables, and I spent yesterday being told I wasn’t hungry enough by a woman named Marlena Cross who thinks fear is a leadership philosophy.”