Page 89 of Angel Eyes

I shook my head. “After all this time, you still surprise me, Lucien.”

“And you’re still a stubborn jackass,” he said, his usual mask of indifference slipping. “I had no idea she reached out to you until after the fact. What would I have to gain from it anyway?”

“You tell me. I know it’s not a coincidence you both showed up in Paris right around the time my father started calling. No doubt you two are up to some scheme.” A trickle of satisfaction settled in my chest when his face paled. “Well, whatever game you’re playing, you might as well give it up. I meant what I said before. My father made his choice, as did the both of you.”

“None of this is a game, Gabriel. If you would just listen—”

“I don’t want explanations. I only want one thing from you, and that’s for you to tell Elise to leave me alone. For good.”

His eyes fell wide, genuine surprise coloring his tone. “That’s why you asked me here?”

I gave him a curt nod. “It is.”

After a long pause, he said, “I’m not sure what sort of influence you think I hold over Elise, but I can assure you, nothing I say will sway her. The woman is primordial chaos in human form.”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something.” I stood to leave. “If nothing else, you can always resort to your powers of seduction. After all, they seemed to work so well the first time.”

“You know what your issue is?” He rose from his chair, blocking my path. “All you ever do is run away from your problems instead of facing them. You act like they don’t exist under some misguided notion that if you keep ignoring them, they’ll disappear. But they won’t, Gabriel. They’ll be right there where you left them until you deal with them.”

“Get out of my way.”

“No.” His voice echoed around the seating area, and several people looked in our direction.

“Lower your voice before you cause a scene,” I gritted out.

“Then listen to me for once in your life. I’m not discounting what happened three years ago, but I am telling you that you will have to face it at some point. You keep pretending like you’re fine when you’re not. And I know you won’t believe me, but I regret the role I played in it. If I could go back and do things differently—”

“Well, you can’t, can you?”

“Talk to someone, Gabriel. Don’t keep your feelings bottled up inside. Over time, they will fester and you might end up hurting someone you love. Someone who is innocent in all this.”

I narrowed my eyes.

What the hell was he getting at?

He leveled me with a pointed look, and, for a second, I could have sworn his expression was sincere. But this was Lucien. He didn’t do or say anything unless it was of personal benefit to him. And despite him flinging the word family around, I knew the truth of what I was to him, what I had always been to him.

Competition.

“Get Elise off my back.” I shoved past him, clipping his shoulder.

“And if I don’t?”

I turned to face him again. “If you don’t, I might pick up the next time my father calls and tell him the truth. About everything this time.”

“How about a picnic in Luxembourg Gardens? Or one of those candlelit dinner cruises?”

I shot a look of annoyance at Nora hovering over my shoulder as I scoured the internet for date ideas. It was an hour past closing time, and despite spending the better part of the afternoon sequestered behind the front desk of the bike shop, I was no closer to coming up with a plan for how to make things up to Juliet.

“No way,” James said from where he sat on the couch, his long arms draped over the back of it, his legs spread wide. “He’ll need to go bigger than that if he wants to seal the deal.”

“Can you not say seal the deal?” I kneaded my eyebrows, reigning in my agitation. “I’m not some teenager trying to deflower my date in the back seat of a car.”

“You know what you should do?” James snapped his fingers, ignoring my comment. “You should do something to get the adrenaline pumping. You know, like, skydiving or heli-skiing.”

“Heli-skiing?” Nora propped a hip on the desk. “How is that better than a dinner cruise?”

“Come off it.” James snorted. “The only thing that’s guaranteed after hours of being trapped on a riverboat is a good night’s sleep. But after the rush of heli-skiing?” He blew out a low whistle, a sly grin sliding over his features. “I bet the sex would be phenomenal.”

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