Page 41 of His Good Girl

“You are ready.”

“I need perfume.”

“You’re wearing perfume.”

“I need a different perfume.”

“You need oxygen.” She took my shoulders and turned me toward her. “Listen to me. You are going downstairs. You are getting into the car. You are having dinner with a man who already knows about your dead parents, the employment chaos, the bad bosses, the emotional damage by category, and the lint. There is very little left to hide.”

“That is not comforting.”

“It should be. He texted anyway.”

I looked at her, and the knot in my chest loosened just a little.

Jules smiled a little. “Exactly.”

I grabbed my coat, my purse, and then stood there like I had forgotten the function of doors. Jules guided me gently to the hallway. At the top of the stairs, she caught my wrist.

“One more thing,” she said.

“What?”

“No deciding the whole story tonight.”

I frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means dinner is dinner. Attraction is attraction. A job is a job. They may overlap in troubling little Venn diagram circles, but you do not have to solve the entire moral geometry before appetizers.”

“Again with the metaphors.”

“I’m on fire today.”

“You’re something alright.”

She grinned, then pulled me into a quick hug. “Text me from the bathroom if he’s weird.”

“He won’t be weird.”

“Text me if you’re weird.”

“That is more likely.”

“Text me if the open throat situation escalates.”

“Goodbye, Jules.”

“Remember,” she called as I started down the stairs, “fantasy is not a felony.”

I glanced back at her. “Do not put that on a mug.”

“I’m putting it on two mugs.”

I laughed all the way down the stairs, which was good, because otherwise I might have cried, turned around, or done something equally inconvenient. By the time I reached the lobby, my pulse had steadied into a normal rhythm. The glass front door reflected me faintly as I approached and I tried not to focus on the nervous expression written all over my face.

Outside, the evening had turned clear and cool, the last of the rain shining on the sidewalk in dark mirrored patches. A black car with tinted windows waited at the curb beneath the street lamp. There was a driver standing near the rear door.

And beside it stood Callum Rowe.