Page 10 of His Good Girl

“You would be surprised how many people with last names attached to buildings believe punctuality is for others.” He glanced at my visitor badge, then at the folder under my arm. “You brought paper. Excellent. I prefer a tangible record of disasters.”

“My resume isn’t a disaster.”

“No?”

“It’s more of a series of tragic weather events.”

For the first time, his mouth twitched. It was not a smile exactly, but more like his face had considered the possibility and filed it away for later.

“This way,” he said.

He moved fast, and I had to lengthen my stride to keep up. We crossed the lobby toward a private bank of elevators guarded by a second security checkpoint. Ben shifted the things in his hands and flashed a badge without breaking pace. I followed him through, aware of the faint click of my heels and the fact that my pulse had begun to climb again. He pressed the button for forty-seven. The elevator doors closed with a soft, luxurious sigh.

For three seconds, we stood in silence.

Then Ben said, “Mr. Rowe values candor.”

I looked at him.

“He values preparation more, but candor is the one people tend to pretend they have.”

“Is this the part where you warn me not to waste his time?”

“That was implied by the text.”

“It was implied with a machete.”

His gaze slid toward me, assessing. “Mr. Rowe received your email at 11:48 p.m. He read it, then forwarded it to me at 5:19 a.m. with the words, ‘Make room.’ That does not happen often.His calendar is not an open meadow. It is a fortified city. So yes, Ms. Hale, I am warning you not to waste his time.”

I tightened my grip on my folder. “I don’t intend to.”

“Good. Intentions are adorable. We will see about execution.”

I should have been offended. Iwasoffended, actually. Somewhere underneath the panic, a small, offended version of me had stood up and begun gathering stones, but the larger part of me understood, with a reluctant and immediate clarity, that Benjamin was not being cruel for sport. He was a guard dog in cufflinks. He had put himself between Callum Rowe and the world, and for reasons that were probably both practical and personal, he had decided the world included me until proven otherwise.

The elevator climbed without feeling like it moved. The numbers changed in a silent rush. My stomach dropped somewhere around nineteen.

“Does he know you texted me?” I asked.

Ben did not ask which part. “Mr. Rowe trusts me to protect his time.”

“That sounds like a no.”

“It sounds like a man who understands delegation.”

“Does delegation usually include calling women handout girls before breakfast?”

“Only when breakfast has been threatened.”

The elevator doors opened. The forty-seventh floor was quieter than the lobby. The reception area was all pale oak, glass, and black steel, with one wall opening into a view of the city so wideand high that the rain looked decorative from up there. Beyond a set of double glass doors, I could see an office floor already in motion. There were people at standing desks, someone carrying rolled plans, and a woman in safety boots and a blazer laughing into a phone.

Ben led me past reception with a nod to the woman at the desk, who looked at him with the sort of weary fondness of someone who had seen him wage war over printer toner.

“Mr. Rowe is finishing a call,” Ben said. “You’ll wait here.”

‘Here’ was a small seating area outside a set of matte black double doors. There were two leather chairs, a low table with architectural journals arranged too perfectly to have ever been read, and a framed black-and-white photograph of a bridge mid-construction, all cables and fog. I sat because my knees had made a private request. Ben remained standing, tapping something into his tablet.

“Do I get any advice?” I asked before I could stop myself.