Page 55 of His Good Girl

“Yes.”

“And because of the godfather-goddaughter thing.”

His jaw tightened slightly. “Because of many things.”

I looked down at the wet sidewalk. “I can do distance.”

“I believe you.”

The car pulled up.

Silence passed between us for a moment before he started, almost like he was remembering himself. Then he opened the door for me, and this time, as I stepped forward, his hand did touch my back.

Just above my waist.

It was nothing. It was manners. It was guidance into the car, the kind of touch any man might offer any woman on any sidewalk after any dinner.

My body did not care.

Heat sparked from the place where his palm rested, spreading under the fabric of my coat, down my spine, low through my belly. My core fluttered again so intensely that I almost missed the step into the car. His hand withdrew as soon as I caught my balance, but the absence stayed behind, hot and cold and clear and maddening. I sat down, smoothing my dress under my thighs, and stared straight ahead while he rounded the car because I needed the four seconds alone to remember how breathing worked.

The ride back to my apartment was quieter than the ride to dinner.

Callum asked me about Jules, and I told him stories safer than the ones Jules would have told about herself. How we met in a campus laundry room when I had accidentally dyed half my clothes pink. How she once convinced me to crash a graduate engineering party because the food was better and the men wore interesting glasses.

“She sounds formidable,” he said.

“She is.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“You need formidable people.”

“I have Benjamin now, apparently.”

“Benjamin is not a people. He’s an institution.”

“I would have to agree.”

His laugh was husky and warm in the dark car, and I felt it like fingers against my skin.

I crossed one leg over the other, then uncrossed it when the movement made the dress shift higher on my thigh. Callum’s gaze flicked downward once, so fast I might have missed it if I had not been watching him in the window reflection like a criminal. He looked away immediately.

My pulse leapt.

The rest of the drive, I became painfully aware of every inch of myself and him too. My knee angled toward him. The hem of the dress. The borrowed heel slipping slightly at the back of my foot. My hands folded over my purse. His hand resting on his own thigh, fingers relaxed, thumb brushing once against the seam of his trousers. I wondered what those fingers would feel like slipping beneath the hem of my dress.

I shut the thought down so hard I nearly gave myself a headache.

He wasforbidden.

When the car stopped outside my building, I should have reached for the handle immediately. Instead, I looked at him.

“Thank you for dinner,” I said.

“You’re welcome.”