Page 70 of His Good Girl

“I think she just mugged my soul.”

“She likes you.”

“She said I wasn’t useful.”

“She said yet.”

After that, I sat through cybersecurity training in a glass-walled conference room with six other new hires and a video that appeared to have been filmed in 2009 by people who feared both hackers and joy. I learned not to click suspicious links, not to leave confidential documents on trains, not to plug unidentified USB drives into company devices, and not to use password123. Benjamin checked in twice, each time appearing at the door like a very judgmental ghost. Once he silently held up a bottle of water. I nodded, and he set it beside my laptop before disappearing.

The training was aggressively boring. It was so boring that at one point I began reading the emergency exit diagram with the emotional investment of a detective. But I could handleboring. Boring did not scare me. Boring was, in fact, a welcome vacation from Marlena Cross’s preferred management strategy of psychological dodgeball.

The problem was Callum.

Specifically, the problem was that Callum was not there.

I didn’t see him anywhere. I told myself that was a good thing. Distance was good. Distance was what he had said we needed. Distance was mature, ethical, professional, necessary, and all the other words women used when trying to convince themselves disappointment was actually character development.

Still, every time footsteps passed the conference room door, I looked up and every time it was not him, something inside me dipped.

By lunch, I had become ridiculous enough that even I was annoyed with me.

Benjamin collected me at noon from the HR module calledCreating a Culture of Respect, which was narrated by a woman who had the same tone of voice throughout the whole thing.

“Pause your educational cinema,” he said from the doorway.

The other new hires looked up.

I clicked pause. “Is something wrong?”

“Yes, but not with you. Unsettling novelty.” He glanced down at his tablet. “Mr. Rowe has requested your presence for lunch.”

My heart tripped over itself.

“For lunch,” I repeated.

Benjamin’s eyes flicked to my face. “That is what I said.”

One of the new hires, a guy named Mark or Matt, looked between us with interest.

Benjamin’s gaze shifted to him. “Do not form a thought.”

The guy looked back at his laptop immediately.

I stood, smoothing my trousers. “I thought Mr. Rowe was unavailable.”

“He is. He has made himself briefly less unavailable. Do not become poetic about it.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were approaching poetic. I saw it coming.”

As we walked out, I leaned closer and lowered my voice. “Are you always this mean to people on their first day?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“I’m usually worse.”