Page 12 of Hello Darling

“Yeah,” she goes round behind her reception desk to look something up on her computer. “How long would you need it for? Like, an hour or two?”

“More like blocks of four or five hours at least, for the first few days when I’m working with the trainer. If possible.”

“Well, you’re in luck. The guy who usually uses the back room for CrossFit clients is on vacation for a few weeks.”

“What do you know. Meant to be.”

She refuses to look up at me, types something. “So why don’t you work things out with your trainer guy and then let me know and I’ll figure out a price.”

“I’ll get back to you. See you tomorrow?”

“Mmhmm.”

And now is the part where I leave, return to my hotel and around a hundred emails and messages that I have to respond to.

“Hey, um. Richard?”

I pause, wondering who she’s speaking to in that hushed tone, and then I realize she’s addressing me by my alias. I turn to find her looking at me with her head tilted, playing with her fingertips and wrapping one leg around the other. Awkward but graceful.

“Yes?”

“I just wanted to apologize.”

“For?”

She smiles, looking down at her hands. I like her hands. Those hands keep busy. Those hands were trembling when she handed me the iPad. “I’m sorry for being an ass. Earlier. What I said about the starlet—I wasn’t thinking.”

“Youwerethinking,” I say. “I like how you think…I think.”

Her eyelids flutter, and I believe, for one marvelous second, that I’ve cast my spell upon her at last, with three short sentences.

And in the next second, she snorts and rolls her eyes and turns away from me. “Okay, well definitely let me know when you figure it out.”

I shake my head, laughing. “You going to apologize to me aboutthatthe next time I see you?”

She looks over her shoulder and says coyly: “Aboutwhat?”