Page 129 of His Good Girl

I went very still.

Benjamin watched me carefully. Dana did too.

“It has to be Lang,” I said.

“Likely,” Benjamin replied.

“Find out.”

“Already on it.”

“Who else has seen this?”

“PR. Me. Dana. Elise because risk needed to assess. Tom because legal needed to hyperventilate in Latin.”

Dana crossed her arms. “No one else.”

“Not Avery?” I asked.

“No,” Benjamin said. “Not yet.”

“Good.”

Dana’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t get to protect her by keeping her ignorant.”

“I’m not keeping her ignorant. I’m keeping her from spending the weekend alone wondering if she has destroyed my company because Lang hired a man with a telephoto lens.”

Benjamin tilted his head. “That was almost emotionally articulate.”

I ignored him.

Dana did not. “He’s right to wait until there’s something actionable. But she needs to know soon.”

“She will,” I assured her.

“When?”

“When I decide she should know.”

“It should be before she walks in here and gets blindsided by a rumor,” Dana returned. “I meant what I told her. Be the woman I can defend without lying. That includes giving her the facts before she has to hear them from someone other than you.”

I looked at the photo again, seeing Avery’s face in the evening light. Anger rose in me, clean and violent. It wasn’t directedat her, but at Lang. At the anonymous little coward across the street that had taken her picture.

Benjamin must have read it in my face because he said, “Do not murder the photographer before your trip. It will disrupt the mood.”

I handed the tablet back. “I’m not ending it.”

The sentence surprised even me with its clarity.

Dana stared at me for a moment.

“I wasn’t aware anyone had asked you to,” Benjamin said.

I turned toward him.

He lifted his shoulders in a small, irritated motion. “I am not pleased. Let the minutes reflect deep displeasure. I am professionally horrified, morally exhausted, and personally preparing for a variety of stress rashes. But I am not asking you to end it.”

Dana’s mouth twitched. “I might.”