Chapter 14 #3
Dana looked back at me. Her expression had softened, but only slightly. Dana softening was like marble agreeing to be furniture.
“Listen to me,” she said. “I see him every day too, sweetheart.” She continued mercilessly.
“I know what he looks like. Everyone knows what he looks like. The man walks around this floor with his sleeves rolled up and expects civilization to continue functioning. You are not the first woman in this building to notice Callum Rowe is attractive.”
“I know that.”
“No, you don’t. You think your wanting him makes you uniquely doomed. It doesn’t. It makes you alive and inconvenient.”
I looked down.
“But,” she continued.
I lifted my eyes, swallowing heavily.
“But most women can notice him and go home. You apparently decided to build a bonfire inside a fireworks factory.”
“That is not fair.”
“It is accurate.”
“That’s something he would say.”
“Yes, and I hate that for both of us.” Dana set the coffee down. “I am not here to shame you.”
“You could have fooled me.”
“Listen, Callum is a good man,” she said. “He’s not soft or easy or a man without blind spots. But he’s a good one. He will try very hard to make this honorable, which means he will occasionally become unbearable and possibly overcorrect in a not so good way.”
That sounded so much like him that my chest tightened.
“And you,” Dana barreled on, “are smart. You’re also new, broke, grateful, attracted, and probably still carrying around five years of grief and bad bosses like a tote bag full of wet cement.”
I stared at her.
She shrugged. “I read people.”
“Apparently.”
“If you do this, Avery, do it with your eyes open. Not because he rescued you or because he gave you a job or even because he says things in a voice that makes your spine forget its purpose.”
My face flamed again.
“He gave me outs.”
“That’s good.”
“I want the job.”
“Then be excellent at it.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder.” She said it without cruelty, which somehow made it land deeper. “Because if people find out, and eventually people always find out, you do not want the first thing they know about Avery Hale to be that Callum Rowe wants her. You want them to know you’re useful.”
My throat tightened.
Dana watched me absorb that, then added, “Become the woman I can defend.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke. The coffee machine hissed softly behind her. Through the break room wall, I could hear the muffled pulse of the office continuing without us, phones ringing, voices, movement, and the rest of the building carrying on with their day.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I admitted.
Dana snorted. “No one does. Some of us are just better at pretending.” She picked up her coffee, looked at it with disgust, and poured it down the sink.
“Here is my advice: Don’t be stupid in writing.
Don’t let him make decisions for you just because he’s good at giving orders.
Don’t confuse secrecy with shame. And do not, under any circumstances, let Benjamin think he’s the only person capable of managing a crisis. It just encourages him.”
Despite everything, I smiled. “Does Benjamin know?”
“Benjamin knew before you did.”
“That is horrifying.”
“Benjamin is horrifying. It’s why he’s effective.”
I nodded, then hesitated. “Are you going to tell anyone?”
Dana looked genuinely offended. “Do I seem like a woman who gossips?”
“You seem like a woman who knows where bodies are buried.”
“Exactly. Different skill set.” She opened the break room door, then paused. “One more thing.”
“What?”
“If he hurts you, I’ll make him regret it.”
I blinked, but Dana’s expression did not change.
“And if you hurt him,” she added, “I’ll make you useful while you suffer, because we’re understaffed and I’m not sentimental.”
A laugh burst out of me before I could stop it.
“Fix your lipstick. Your mouth looks guilty.”
Then she walked out.
I stood alone in the break room for another few seconds, staring after her. When I finally returned to Callum’s office, he looked up immediately. His eyes searched my face, but I turned away and closed the door behind me.
“What did Dana want?” he asked.
I crossed to my desk and sat down carefully, feeling the ache he had left in me and spiraling internally from the conversation I’d just had.
“She gave me advice.”
His expression went wary. “That sounds ominous.”
“It was.”
“What did she say?”
I opened my laptop and let myself smile, just a little.
“She said to become useful so that I can be a woman she can defend.”
Callum went very still. Then, slowly, something in his face softened.
“That sounds like Dana,” he said.
“So I’m learning.”
“And are you going to take her advice?”
I looked at him across the office, at the man who had complicated my life beyond reason and somehow made me want to become better inside the complication.
“Yes,” I answered. “I am.”
His gaze held mine for one charged, quiet second. Then he nodded toward my screen.
“Good. Then get back to work, Miss Hale.”
My pulse warmed at his tone, but this time, beneath the heat, there was something else too.
Resolve.
“Yes, sir,” I said.