Page 50 of His Good Girl

I would not say it.

I sat across from Robert Hale’s daughter, my goddaughter, and I chose the version of myself who could get through dessert without making my promise into something selfish.

The evening was going well.

And that was exactly the problem…

CHAPTER 6

Avery

By the time the dessert menus arrived, I had become fluent in pretending I was not affected by Callum Rowe.

I smiled at the waiter and studied the menu as though the difference between chocolate tart and crème brûlée required legal counsel. I kept my hands folded in my lap because they had started doing embarrassing things whenever I let them exist freely on the table, like tapping the stem of my wineglass, smoothing the napkin, or touching my throat.

Across from me, Callum leaned back with the easy control of a man who had never once been personally threatened by dessert. His jacket had fallen open, one arm resting on the table, the other hand loose near his glass. Everything about him looked unhurried, intentional, and infuriatingly composed. The old brass light of the restaurant caught the silver at his temples and the clean line of his shirt collar, and I hated, with a sudden and useless fury, that he could sit there looking like that while I was trying not to imagine what his hands would feel like on my waist.

Not that I was imagining it.

I was absolutely not imagining his hands there, broad and warm, fingers pressing into the soft give of me through the navy dress Jules had loaned me. I was definitely not imagining him pulling me closer with that same measured firmness he used when he told me to say more than yes. I was a serious future employee. Serious future employees did not sit across from their new CEO, who also happened to be their godfather, and wonder what his palm would feel like wrapped around their throat as he pinned them to the wall and kissed them breathless.

My core fluttered again more intensely this time, and I took a quick sip of water because wine was clearly no longer my friend.

Callum noticed because why wouldn’t he.

“Too warm?” he asked.

“No.” My voice came out normal enough to be miraculous. “Just realizing Jules was right about the moral geometry.”

His brow lifted. “Should I be concerned that I understand less of this evening every time Jules is mentioned?”

“She has that effect. She’s less a person than a weather system with lipstick.”

He smiled, and the pressure in my chest eased slightly. Banter helped. Banter was safe, mostly. It let me stand close to dangerous things and pretend I had only come over to admire the architecture.

“Is she the one who made you write the email?” he asked.

“Bullied me into it, more like, but yes.”

“Then I owe her dinner.”

“You absolutely do not. She would become unbearable.”

“She already sounds unbearable.”

“She is. But in a load-bearing way.”

His smile deepened at that, and I felt absurdly pleased to see it.

“Good friend, then.”

“The best.” I looked down at my water glass, rolling the stem between my fingertips. “She’s the reason I came today. I probably would’ve talked myself out of it otherwise.”

“I suspected as much.” His deep voice was mesmerizing me and I was having to apply more focus to continuing to breathe than should be required.

A fork dropped somewhere behind us. A waiter murmured near the bar. Someone at another table laughed too loudly and was politely ignored. Callum was looking at me with a restraint so visible it began to feel like its own form of confession.

He didn’t look away.