Page 62 of Taming Achilles

“Susmaryosep!” I assumed that was an expletive in her native Tagalog. She ran over to me, her small, cold hands cupping my face as she lifted me to standing, and inspected my injury. “You could have broken his nose!”

“No, I couldn’t have,” Callum said, resuming his whiskey glass and sitting down again, crossing his legs at the ankle.

“He didn’t break it on purpose,” I said to Lea with a small laugh. Then to Callum, “You can’t be that mad at me then.”

The scent of copper and metal overwhelmed my senses, as I flopped into the armchair once again, and resumed my glass.

“Alcohol is a blood thinner,” Lea chastised, as she went over to the kitchen, and I heard the sink running. “I can’t believe you two are fighting over Pippa Fox.”

She returned with a rag in hand and started wiping at my face.

“We’re not fighting over Pippa,” Callum said with a shake of his head.

“Och, enjoy the fact that she’s jealous,” I joked, taking the cloth from Lea and holding it to my nose. Against her medical advice, I kept on drinking. “Believe me, it’s gratifying to have your woman actually showing an ounce of possessiveness.”

Lea tried to stand away from Callum. She tried to take a seat on the sofa, but his arm jutted out and he pulled her to him so she sat on an armrest, his tense arm around her waist.

“I walloped him because my best man has been lying to me for over twenty years.” He gestured to me with his whiskey hand.

I tapped my foot on the ground, wondering how much I had to tell.

“Closer to twenty-two,” I finally admitted. “She and I started in secret …” I shook my head, remembering our first kiss. How old were we then? “Maybe when we were fourteen. I don’t remember. Since I knew I liked the look of tits.” I chuckled to myself. Even the memories of puberty were wrapped in my worship of Pippa. I was pathetic. “We were the only kids left at St. Michael’s over the holidays. That’s when we got to know each other.”

Our families left us behind in the lonely, empty halls of the school. Left to fend for ourselves, we did what unsupervised teenagers would do.

“Bollocks,” Callum said with a slow chuckle. “I should have broken your nose, then.”

I took a healthy dose of my Macallan, wondering what I’d do without Caledonia Security, without Callum and the lads. Without the family I had built for myself in boarding school. Chocolate was thicker than blood, but it wasn’t thicker than betrayal.

I watched as Callum’s thumb started caressing the skin under the hem of Lea’s shirt. A simple, intimate act that was so routine for them now. I grew jealous of it. Not for Lea. But of the intimacy itself.

“I take it Pip has revealed the arrangement we had,” Callum said.

I looked over at Lea, wondering if this was a topic we should be discussing in front of his new wife.

“She knows everything,” Callum said, then teased, “she was probably listening at the door.”

She narrowed his eyes at him, but her little smile told me that he was right.

“Aye,” I said. “She told me it was a marriage of convenience.”

“It was an engagement of inconvenience between two desperate people,” he said. “But why wouldn’t she have just married you?”

I shrugged. “No title.”

“Ah, yes, I remember that. Her father was obsessed with the title.”

I nodded.

“I find it hard to believe she wouldn’t just defy Lord Fox,” he said. “If what was between the two of you was real.” He was transitioning from a hurt friend to a concerned friend. “Are you sure she’s worth …”

“I need to know something,” I interrupted before he could disparage her. Then it would be my turn to wallop him in the nose. “When you were in the Circus, did you have multiple passports?”

Cal tilted his head, looking confused at my sudden change of topic.

“No, most of us went around as ourselves, not having secret identities. The people that did were in the darker caverns than I was.” His eyes narrowed. “Why?”

I didn’t elaborate, but pried for more information.

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