Chapter 6: Upstairs at Bea's

"You were wrong," I said, and signed the contract with his pen.

He read my signature upside down, and for a moment he looked pleased and tried not to show it.

"Welcome to Calloway Partners," he said. "The coffee improves after lunch."

By Thursday I had a desk, a door with my name on it, and a team of nine who stopped talking whenever I walked past.

They were not being rude.

They were all trying to decide whether I was the woman from the video or the woman from the résumé.

For twelve years I had made the strategy for someone else to present.

Now I walked into the room as the person in charge of it.

I liked it more than I wanted to.

On Thursday afternoon I dropped a glass in the kitchenette.

It was an ordinary glass, and it broke in an ordinary way, and I reached for the biggest piece without thinking.

"Don't," Jonah said from the door.

Too late.

A line of blood ran across my palm and dripped on the tile.

He was across the room before I could say it was nothing.

"Sit."

"It's a scratch."

"Sit, Nell, I'll tell you when it's a scratch."

He pulled a first-aid kit from under the sink, and he knew exactly where it was.

I sat on the counter, and he stood between my knees and the cabinet and turned my hand over in his.

His hands were big and careful.

He pressed a clean towel against the cut, and his thumb rested on the inside of my wrist, where my pulse was running much too fast for a scratch.

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