Page 24 of His Good Girl

Avery stood when I did, smoothing the front of her blazer with one quick, nervous motion. She looked relieved and overwhelmed, trying to hold onto both without showing either.

Benjamin, of course, could not resist getting one last dig at her. She turned on him with wounded dignity, and I laughed.

Which was my mistake.

It wasn’t the laugh itself. The laugh was harmless. The problem was that she looked back at me when she heard it, and for one unguarded second, pleasure lit up her face. Warm and startled and young in the best sense, as if she had not expected to make me laugh and had no idea what to do with the success.

I felt it in my chest.

Then lower.

I ended the meeting before I could make another mistake.

When Benjamin escorted her out, the office seemed to change with her absence. The rain still traced the glass. The legal pad still sat on my desk. The Hartwell files still waited with their careful allegations and cowardly phrasing. But the room felt subtly disturbed, as if she had brought weather in with her and some of it had stayed behind.

I went to the window rather than sit down.

From forty-seven floors up, the city looked manageable. It always did from this height. Streets became lines. Cars becamerolling beads. People became dots of movement without faces, problems without names. It was one of the lies that height told powerful men, and I had learned not to trust it. Everything looked simple from above until you were standing in the lobby with a frightened twenty-five-year-old woman holding a folder in front of her for protection.

Behind me, Benjamin returned without knocking.

“She made it out of the building,” he said. “A promising sign.”

I did not turn. “Be kind to her.”

“I was.”

“Benjamin.”

“I did not make her cry.”

“That is not the definition of kindness.”

“It is a baseline many executives fail to meet.”

I looked over my shoulder at him.

He lifted one hand to me, palm out. “Fine. I will be less openly hostile.”

“Try for civil.”

“Let’s not sprint toward fantasy.”

Despite myself, I almost smiled. “She reports to you. I expect fairness.”

“You always expect fairness. It’s one of your more expensive habits.”

“She deserves a chance.”

“Because she’s qualified?”

“Yes.”

“And because she is Robert Hale’s daughter.”

“Yes.”

“And because she looked at you like you personally invented structural integrity?”