Page 124 of His Good Girl

I blinked, but Dana’s expression did not change.

“And if you hurt him,” she added, “I’ll make you useful while you suffer, because we’re understaffed and I’m not sentimental.”

A laugh burst out of me before I could stop it.

“Fix your lipstick. Your mouth looks guilty.”

Then she walked out.

I stood alone in the break room for another few seconds, staring after her. When I finally returned to Callum’s office, he looked up immediately. His eyes searched my face, but I turned away and closed the door behind me.

“What did Dana want?” he asked.

I crossed to my desk and sat down carefully, feeling the ache he had left in me and spiraling internally from the conversation I’d just had.

“She gave me advice.”

His expression went wary. “That sounds ominous.”

“It was.”

“What did she say?”

I opened my laptop and let myself smile, just a little.

“She said to become useful so that I can be a woman she can defend.”

Callum went very still. Then, slowly, something in his face softened.

“That sounds like Dana,” he said.

“So I’m learning.”

“And are you going to take her advice?”

I looked at him across the office, at the man who had complicated my life beyond reason and somehow made me want to become better inside the complication.

“Yes,” I answered. “I am.”

His gaze held mine for one charged, quiet second. Then he nodded toward my screen.

“Good. Then get back to work, Miss Hale.”

My pulse warmed at his tone, but this time, beneath the heat, there was something else too.

Resolve.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

CHAPTER 15

Callum

Friday had the nerve to arrive like it did not know what I had done.

Seattle was bright after two days of rain, all glass and wet streets flashing under a pale spring sun, and Rowe Tower rose out of it as if it had never housed a single bad decision in its life. I arrived before seven with an overnight bag in the back of the car, two hours of sleep behind me, and a weekend trip ahead of me that I did not want to take.

Hartwell had become the kind of problem that fed itself while everyone else slept. Lang had managed to get two council members asking for an ‘independent pause,’ which was political language for someone said something loud enough to frighten the herd. Marcus had arranged meetings at the capital. Tom wanted me in a room with outside counsel. Elise wanted me in front of the third-party safety reviewer before Lang got there first. Dana wanted me to stop writing statements that sounded like I was defending myself.