Page 11 of His Good Girl

He looked up.

“For the interview,” I added. “Since you’re apparently the ferryman.”

Another almost-half-smile. “Do not perform humility. Mr. Rowe hates that. Do not perform competence either. He hates that more. Tell the truth, but do not confuse the truth with an emotional hostage situation.”

“That is horrifyingly useful.”

“I am horrifyingly useful.” He checked one of his phones. “Also, do not call him Callum unless he asks you to.”

“He’s my godfather.”

“And this is his office.”

The words landed hard, and I hated how much I needed them. I had spent the entire morning swinging wildly between histories, between the man who had sent flowers after my mother died and the man whose name was etched in bronze downstairs. Ben, with all his theatrical unpleasantness, had found the seam and pressed on it. This was his office. This was not my parents’ kitchen or a birthday card and this definitely wasn’t a fantasy from a dark bedroom that I was absolutely not thinking about while sitting twelve feet from his door.

“Understood,” I replied.

Ben watched me for a beat, and his expression eased by a fraction, perhaps the beginning of a ceasefire.

Then the black doors opened.

“Send her in,” Callum said from inside.

My body knew his voice before my brain had time to prepare for it. It was low, calm, slightly rough from use or morning or both. It moved through me with the same private authority it always did, the same impossible steadiness. I stood too quickly. Ben noticed because Ben apparently noticed everything.

“Breathe,” he said quietly, so quietly I almost missed it. Then, louder, with all the ceremony of a man presenting a tribute to a suspicious king, “Ms. Avery Hale.”

I walked into Callum Rowe’s office already off balance.

His office was ridiculous. There were two walls of glass that looked out over the city, the rain-soft skyline spread below likesomething he had considered, approved, and reinforced. The third and fourth walls held bookshelves, a long credenza, and several framed plans I recognized as structural drawings, though I could not have read them if my life depended on it. A model of a tower stood on a side table under a glass cover, all white ribs and delicate cross-bracing. His desk was broad, dark, almost bare, with a laptop, a legal pad, a pen aligned too precisely, and a mug of black coffee that was only half full.

Callum stood when I entered, which should not have mattered to me. Men stood all the time. My father used to stand when older women came into restaurants because his mother would have risen from the grave to smack him if he hadn’t. But Callum standing almost seemed to create pressure within the room, like a storm was building inside it. He was tall, broad through the shoulders, dressed in a charcoal suit and a white shirt open at the throat, tie absent, sleeves buttoned at the wrist. His hair was dark with silver at the temples, a little more than I remembered, and the lines around his eyes were deeper in the morning light. He looked like exactly what he was: a man who had built things meant to outlast weather, money, and lesser men.

Then he smiled.

“Avery,” he said.

All the air I had been rationing left me at once.

“Mr. Rowe,” I managed.

His smile shifted. “Oh, that’s how bad Benjamin scared you?”

From behind me, Ben said, “I did no such thing.”

Callum’s eyes flicked past me. “You absolutely did.”

“She came, didn’t she?”

“Benjamin…”

Ben sighed in a way that suggested martyrdom. “I will be outside, protecting the civilized world from scheduling chaos.”

He closed the door behind him. For a moment, neither of us moved. Then Callum came around the desk, not quickly, not slowly, just with that unhurried certainty I remembered and had apparently developed a very dangerous sensitivity to. Up close, the impression he made on me became more complicated. There was warmth in his face, yes, but also assessment.

“I’m glad you wrote me,” he said, with what sounded like sincerity.

I did not know what I had expected, but it was not that.