Page 73 of His Good Girl

“You are doing something.”

“I thought I’d be doing something useful.”

“You’ve been here four hours,” he said.

“I know.”

“On your first day.”

“I know.”

“At a company with several thousand employees, confidential projects, public contracts, and an active external threat attempting to undermine our credibility.”

My stomach tightened. “I know.”

His voice did not rise. It did not need to. That was what made it worse.

“And you’re pouting because no one has handed you responsibility before lunch?” One eyebrow rose and I shrank in my seat.

Heat rushed into my face. “I am not pouting.”

Callum looked at me and I looked back. The silence that followed was not professional.

It was not even close.

His eyes held mine, steady and far too knowing. I felt the whole morning on my skin suddenly: my disappointment every time he had not appeared, how I had perked up when Benjamin said he had requested me for lunch, the childish little sting of being sent through training modules while he was somewhere else doing important things with important people. I had wanted to matter too quickly. Worse, I had wanted to matter to him.

“I’m not pouting,” I said again, but with less conviction.

Callum set his fork down.

“Avery.”

My name in that tone was already dangerous.

“Yes?”

“Don’t lie to me, young lady.”

Everything inside me stopped.

The words were not loud. They were not harsh. They were not even especially scandalous, not objectively. Men had said young lady to women before, to daughters, nieces, interns, strangers blocking grocery aisles with shopping carts. But in Callum’s mouth, in that low, firm voice, across a private office table after one dinner and one nearly sleepless night, the words slipped under my professional armor and found bare skin.

My core fluttered with need so sudden I nearly dropped my fork.

His gaze moved over my face, catching the blush, the small inhale, my hand tightening around the napkin in my lap. A quiet flare of awareness flickered across his expression that he controlled almost immediately, but not before I saw it and not before the knowledge passed between us like a match being struck.

He knew what that had done to me.

And worse, it had done something to him too. I saw it in the way his hand closed on the edge of the table. The subtle tightening of his jaw. The breath he took through his nose before leaning back slightly, putting one more inch of space between us as if inches could solve anything.

“You shouldn’t call me that,” I breathed, my voice coming out softer than I intended.

His eyes did not leave mine. “No?”

I swallowed. “It makes me sound like I’m in trouble.”

“You are,” he growled, and I thought I may have seen spots before my eyes.