Page 5 of Taming Achilles

“Pippa! Pippa!” The voices chanted as one, as the bulbs flashed. Is that what it’s like to see the flash when looking down the barrel of a gun? “Lady Pippa!”

This was the real problem with America. I wasn’t Lady Philippa Fox. I was Dame Philippa. A baronetess. To be Lady Fox, I’d at least need to be a Baroness. But the Yanks never checked, did they? Frankly, many Brits didn’t either. Sometimes, even members of the aristocracy got it wrong.

It was, after all, an antiquated, and largely obsolete, system. All a thing with wax seals, silly hats, funny ribbons, and smelly oils over which some cardinal waved his hands and said the magic words to make it holy.

I blew kisses at the crowd. I delicately placed one hand on the entrance of the glass and metal skyscraper that reflected the California sky back at us. Now, it was past midnight, dark and mirroring the bright traffic lights of the sinful city of angels down to us.

“Tell us about your breakup!” One voice screamed, and there was a barely noticeable stumble in my gait. “Are you devastated?”

I smiled again. Because I wasn’t devastated. I was destroyed.

Not because of the man, but because of everything else that he was supposed to embody to me, and to the world.

But I had to dust myself off, stick out my tits, and model my way through the fashion shows. I would party and dance the nights away so that I could prove to everyone that I was not defeated. That I was still Philippa Briseis Fox, a woman of relevance and taste.

“Did Callum MacLachlan get married tonight?” One voice yelled, and then there was a bevy of those flashes again, each one hoping for that unflattering angle, the tear, the slight grimace that they could put on the front page of a tabloid. That’s what the war was with us, the socialites and the paparazzi.

Keep your cool, Pip. They don’t matter.

I put on my best smile, waved a hand, letting it all roll off my backside.

“I send nothing but well wishes to the happy couple,” then with a jab of my elbow into an imaginary person’s ribs I added, “better her than me.”

“Are you in LA to try and stop the wedding?”

“Did you get invited?”

“Are you devastated that he might be your last chance?”

Sexist, arrogant, and pathetic. That’s what all these questions were. Put me against another woman, and they’d make millions in gossip.

“I wish her absolute happiness in her marriage,” I insisted, keeping a little bubble of a laugh in my voice. “And there’s nothing wrong with being a single damsel.”

“Aren’t you worried that your clock is ticking?” That question jolted me in the womb. It was a flutter of desire in my lower belly. A hope. A wish. A future that could never be mine.

I gave the paparazzi a wink. Don’t let any hurt feelings show, Pip.

“Tell the truth! Did you want to shoot him?” Laughter from the vultures echoed around as they poked for a reaction. A picture of me looking angry or a sound bite or quote of a jilted bride would sell like gangbusters. When beauty falls from a pedestal, the schadenfreude is real.

“If I won’t even pose with a gun for a photoshoot, why do you think I’d ever advocate for gun violence?” I acted shocked. Shocked!

I had thrown a fit when a designer wanted me to pose in his western Americana gun photo shoot. Truthfully, the clothes were hideous. A total rip off of indigenous cultures and I was looking for any reason to get out of it without pissing off my fans.

I had feigned offence that they’d want me to pose with a rifle. So now I was the anti-gun, nice to little animals Pippa Fox. Genteel. Absolutely well-mannered, and loathed violence.

“He was a fool!” A voice in the crowd rang out. “You’re a star!”

“Oh? You’re so sweet. I wish every man was so kind.” I had said it before I saw who had spoken. Turning in the direction of the voice, I almost gasped when a tall, bald man stood, a white scar on his temple on full display. A large mountain of a man, head and shoulders above everyone else looked at me with impassive eyes. The eyes that should have belonged to a dead man.

Jason Rhodes.

I blinked, then he was gone. The crowd moved like descending ghosts.

I was seeing things, obviously. It was the stress. I had been so desperate to find and eliminate Rhodes that I was seeing him everywhere.

Don’t be an idiot, Pip. Your instincts have been shit for almost five years. Your senses are liars.

I blew a kiss out to the crowd, gave a final finger wave and went inside. Up to the Los Angeles penthouse, one of my last and only residences that wasn’t yanked from my pathetic little hands.

---