Chapter 7
Callum
I watched Avery disappear into her building and kept the car at the curb until the lobby door closed behind her.
That was the sort of thing I could still justify to myself.
Waiting until she was safely inside and not driving off while she fumbled with the unreliable lock.
Making sure the hallway light came on. These were ordinary, decent considerations.
They were simple enough to be honorable if I did not look too closely at the rest of it.
The trouble was I had spent the whole evening looking too closely.
At dinner, I had done my best to be her godfather.
I had. That mattered to me, though I was not sure it would matter to anyone else if they could have been inside my head.
I had told stories about her parents because she needed them and because I had them to give to her.
I had asked about her old jobs, listened to her tell me about her life, let her turn pain into comedy and then gently let her know that I was there for her.
I bought her dinner. I had kept my hands to myself.
I had not touched her knee under the table, had not let my hand linger at the small of her back, had not said, “Lovely” in the tone my body wanted me to use.
I had been careful.
And somehow, every careful thing had made it worse.
The car pulled away from the curb. Her building slid out of view, replaced by wet pavement, passing headlights, and the dark rhythm of the city moving through itself after rain.
I sat in the back seat with one hand resting against my thigh and the other curled loosely around my phone, which I did not look at because I already knew Benjamin had probably sent three messages and at least one calendar invitation.
When I moved my hand to where she had been, the leather seat still held the faint warmth of where Avery had sat beside me.
The air still carried the soft trace of her perfume, which felt too intimate in the enclosed space.
I turned my head toward the window, which did not help.
I thought of her navy dress, her loose, luxurious dark brown hair, the quick, startled heat in her face when I said she was not a little girl to me, and her gorgeous hazel eyes lifting to mine across the table when she said, “That makes it harder.” Then I thought of her mouth closing around the first bite of chocolate tart, the soft, unguarded sound she made before she remembered herself, and her knees pressing together under the table when she thought I would not notice.
I had noticed.
God help me, I had noticed everything.
I noticed when she looked at my hands. When she watched my mouth on the rim of the espresso cup.
How her breathing changed when my voice dropped, how she responded to firmness as if it reached some secret, hopeful part of her before the rest of her mind could object.
I noticed because I was trained to see pressure, to read stress and to know when a structure was taking more weight than it had been designed to carry.
My phone buzzed.
I looked down despite myself.
Benjamin: I assume from your lack of communication that you are making decisions I will regret professionally.
I exhaled once through my nose.
Me: Go to bed.
Benjamin: That is what guilty men say to witnesses.
Me: Goodnight, Ben.
Benjamin: Was there dinner?
I ignored him.
Benjamin: Was there wine?
I turned the phone face down.
Benjamin: Was there judgment?
Another buzz, immediately after.
Benjamin: There will be.
I should have been irritated, but the familiar annoyance helped.
It put me back in the world of logistics and consequences, a world with edges I could trust. Benjamin was right to worry.
Robert, if he had been alive, would probably have punched me in the face, then asked what exactly my intentions were, then punched me again no matter how I answered.
The entire situation was a bad idea wearing a beautiful dress and looking at me like she could feel the line between us heating under her feet.
The driver glanced back. “Home, sir?”
“Yes.”
My house sat at the end of a quiet street behind iron gates and old trees, all limestone, black-framed windows, and restraint passing itself off as good taste.
I had purchased it after the divorce because I had wanted space and silence.
It was too large for one person. Most houses like it were.
I used the study, the kitchen, the primary bedroom, and occasionally the terrace when the weather and my mood cooperated.
The rest existed in a state of polished readiness, as if waiting for a family that had never arrived.
The driver left me at the front walk. I let myself in, turned off the alarm, and stood in the foyer without moving. The lights came up automatically.
With a sigh, I went to the kitchen first, poured a glass of water, drank half of it, and placed the glass in the sink.
Then I went to the study. If I could work for an hour, I could move through this.
Hartwell still needed attention. Our competitors, most specifically Lang, were still spreading vague poison about our bid for the civic center, still feeding reporters just enough smoke to imply fire, and were still trying to make the city question whether Rowe Structural had cut corners on previous builds.
It was serious in the way reputational attacks became existential threats when your business was built on trust. I should have been able to focus on that.
A rival firm trying to take a public project away from me was not a small concern.
I opened the file.
I read the same paragraph five times.
The words rearranged themselves into Avery leaning across the table to tell me about quietly sensual orchids.
Avery looking down when I mentioned her father worrying about her.
Avery saying she could do distance, though her face told me she hated the idea.
Avery in the car, the hem of her dress slipping up an inch when she crossed her legs and uncrossed them too quickly, as if she had realized I might see.
I had seen.
I shut the file.
“Enough,” I said aloud to myself.
I loosened my collar, then stopped with my fingers at the second button of my shirt because that was another mistake.
My skin still remembered the restaurant, the closeness beneath the awning and the brush of my hand against her back as she stepped into the car.
It was a simple, polite touch, but she had reacted.
She had gone still as if I had done far more than guide her into a car.
I closed my eyes.
I should have wanted that less because of who she was. I could not simplify her into temptation and excuse myself from care. I could not simplify her into obligation and pretend my cock had not hardened half a dozen times over dinner from the way she looked at me.
I walked out of the study before I could sit back down and lie to myself for another hour.
Upstairs, I stripped off my jacket and hung it carefully over the chair in my bedroom.
The room was dark except for the city glow at the windows, faint silver light catching the edges of furniture, the clean white sheets, the low dresser where my cufflinks sat in a shallow tray. I unbuttoned my shirt slowly.
I wanted to be good to her.
That was the truth.
I wanted her to trust me. I wanted her to walk into Rowe Tower tomorrow and find a workplace that welcomed her with no strings attached beyond the normal expectations of employer/employee.
I wanted Benjamin to be fair, Dana to be sharp but not cruel, the work to push her, and the company to teach her the difference between healthy pressure and abuse.
I wanted to honor Robert. I wanted to give Avery a chance without making it feel like charity.
And beneath all of that, I wanted to put my hands on her and find out whether she sounded the same when she was coming for me as she had over dessert.
The thought came so vividly that my cock throbbed before I could suppress it.
I stood very still beside the bed.
“No,” I reprimanded myself sharply. “I can’t do this.”
I went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. I made sure the water was ice cold.
For three minutes, I stood under the freezing spray and thought of structural reports, bid schedules, Benjamin’s disapproving face, and Dana’s voice saying sentimental hire like an accusation.
I thought of Robert, which worked for a while.
Robert at thirty. Robert laughing. Robert passing me a beer on a deck half-framed in Maine.
Robert saying, “You’ll look out for her if I’m not around, right?
” and me telling him to stop being dramatic because he was forty-two and sunburned and had no right to sound mortal.
Then my thoughts shifted to her.
The moment she looked up through her lashes when I told her to order whatever she liked. Her throat moving when she swallowed. The length and curve of her neck above the navy dress. The soft place under her jaw where my mouth had no business being.
The water ran colder.
It did not matter.
By the time I got out, my skin was chilled and my cock was hard enough to make the whole exercise completely useless.
I braced both hands on the marble vanity and looked at myself in the mirror. My expression looked controlled, which was almost funny.
The truth was that I wanted Avery Hale with an intensity that made me feel less like a man and more like a failure of engineering.
I went to bed anyway.
That was another lie to myself. I did not sleep.
I lay on my back in the dark with the sheet pulled to my waist and the house silent around me.
My phone was on the nightstand, face down.
I did not reach for it. I did not text her.
I did not ask if she got upstairs safely, because that would be too much after waiting at the curb.
I did not ask whether she was nervous about tomorrow, because I already knew she was.
I closed my eyes.
The fantasy found me immediately.