Just a Girl - Becky Monson Page 0,36

dinner with last week.

I swallow. “I was hoping I could talk to you?”

He looks down at the black leather-banded watch on his wrist. “I have a few minutes,” he says, and then he stands to the side as if to usher me in.

I take a seat in the chair placed in front of his desk. The chair feels warm, and I wonder if Moriarty’s butt was recently in it. I briefly wonder if I should move to the other chair, because I don’t want her cooties. Then I realize how childish that sounds, but I move to the other chair anyway.

“If it’s about the video, I’ve seen it,” Henry says as he takes a seat behind his desk. His tone seems dull. Like he’s speaking with one of the camera operators about something technical and not to the woman he recently told he liked “very much.”

“Oh,” I say.

“I suppose I get why you didn’t tell me.” The corner of his mouth lifts upward, almost imperceptibly. “I just wish . . . well, I don’t know what I wish,” he says quietly, almost to himself.

“Henry,” I say, pulling my eyebrows inward. “I realize—I know . . . I just . . .” I stop myself. It would be one thing if he were smiling and happy to see me, but this Henry sitting across the desk from me is clearly still upset about finding out that I work here, that I lied to him. And he has every right to be.

“Listen,” he says, stopping me with a hand. “I had a lovely time going out with you. You—you’re—” He motions toward me with his hand, stumbling over his words. He takes a big breath and looks to the side.

My heart sinks. These are not the words my overly ridiculous imagination came up with over the weekend when I was pumping myself up to talk to Henry today. His words sound an awful lot like a breakup. But it’s not like we were actually together. I mean, I had thought . . . or really, had hoped . . . I’d definitely felt like this was different, that Henry and I had something . . . different.

“There’s something you should know about me,” he says.

“Yes, there’s a lot of that going on for both of us,” I say through a shaky laugh.

He shakes his head. “I don’t date people I work with.”

“Oh?” I say, and it comes out in the form of a question. Breathy, with a hint of pathetic.

“I’m sorry . . . There was just,” he stops himself, running a hand through his thick dark locks. His mussed hair only adds to his appeal. “There was an incident back in London, at my job before I moved here. It’s not one I want to repeat.”

“Oh,” I repeat. It seems to be the only thing I can say. “What happened?”

He shakes his head. “Just a woman I was dating that I worked with. It . . . it didn’t end well.”

“And you think it would be the same here,” I say, pointing to him and then me.

“It’s not just that; it’s the reason I moved here. The reason I left home.” His eyes are wide and trained on me, as if he’s trying to get me to understand all the words he wants to say but won’t.

I’m a smart woman, and I do understand what he’s saying. But I also know that whoever that woman was, whatever she did, I’m not that person. I’ve had work relationships before. I might even still be in one, according to Brady. I need to have a conversation with him. The point is that nothing untoward has ever happened. No ill will or feelings. We all just went back to business as usual.

I take a deep breath. “Henry, I’m sorry about whatever happened to you back in London. I . . . I don’t know the details or anything, but I think—well, I hope things would be different here.”

He shakes his head, slowly. “I’m your boss now, you . . . you work for me. Even if I had strong feelings, I can’t.”

Had. So just like that, he can turn his feelings off. A feeling of insecurity crawls its way down my throat and lands in my stomach. It’s a familiar feeling when it comes to the opposite sex—especially one I’d had hopes for, real feelings for. And the words enter my mind even as I try to shatter them: If I were some little