Page 104 of His Good Girl

“Ah. Time, that famously elastic legal substance.”

“Benjamin.”

“I’ll move it.” Ben glanced at me once, then back at Callum. “Shall I also notify civilization to brace?”

“No.”

“Unwise but noted.”

Callum reached my desk and I stood up because every instinct I had told me to. Up close, he looked worse, more tired than yesterday with shadows beneath his eyes and tension at the corners of his mouth. But that only made him seem more dangerous somehow, like the day had worn away everything decorative and left the hard structure beneath. His gaze did not drop to the skirt this time. It stayed on my face.

“Miss Hale,” he said.

“Mr. Rowe, good morning.”

“Come with me.”

It was not a question. Then, after one beat, because he was still Callum, because even now some part of him insisted on giving me a choice, his voice lowered.

“If you want to.”

The whole office continued working around us, a thousand small sounds pretending this was an ordinary exchange between a CEO and his new employee.

I looked at Callum, swallowing hard before I lifted my chin.

“I want to,” I answered quietly.

His eyes darkened and only then did he reach out for me. He took my arm lightly, just above the elbow, a touch that could pass for guidance if anyone looked too quickly, his fingers warm through the sleeve of my blouse. It was professional enough to survive witnesses, yet it was firm enough that my body understood it as anything but.

He led me away from my desk. My tote remained beneath it. My computer stayed awake. The operations guide lay open to page twenty-eight as if document routing could continue being relevant in a universe where Callum Rowe had just come to my desk to fetch me for a private meeting in his office.

We moved through the operations floor. People noticed, but they didn’t make a thing of it. Rowe Structural seemed to employ people trained in advanced peripheral vision. Eyes flicked up and away while a conversation paused for perhaps a heartbeat too long. Dana, standing near the conference room, watched us with an expression that gave away nothing and probably recorded everything. Benjamin walked several paces behind us, already speaking into a phone.

“Yes,” he said crisply. “Move it to eleven-thirty. No, not cancel. Shift. Tell Marcus to breathe into a bag if necessary. No, not literally. Actually, perhaps literally.”

Callum’s hand remained on my arm until we reached the quieter hallway leading toward his office. Then his hand slid from my arm to the small of my back and I nearly stumbled.

His palm settled there, warm and broad and certain, right above the tight line of the pencil skirt. He did not press hard. He did not need to. The touch went through the blouse, straight down my spine and into the bare, aching awareness beneath the skirt.

“Steady,” he murmured.

My breath caught, his fingers flexed once at my back, and then we were at his office doors.

Benjamin reached his desk just ahead of us, still on the phone rattling something off. “No, his 11:00 is not a crisis; his 10:45 was. Adjust accordingly.”

Callum shot him a look.

Benjamin covered the receiver. “I am rescheduling with discretion.”

“You are narrating with malice.”

“I multitask.”

Callum opened one of the black doors. The office beyond was all glass and city and bright sunlight. Files lay open on his desk. A conference call blinked muted on his laptop. Three legal pads had been filled and pushed aside. The room looked like a man had been holding a company together by sheer force of will and a concerning amount of coffee.

I stepped inside and Callum followed. The door closed behind us and the disappearance of the office noise into a soft, sealed hush swept over me. My pulse beat everywhere.

He did not touch me, at least not yet.