Page 75 of Taming Achilles

“I love you,” she said into my chest. “Don’t ever forget that.”

“Aye, lass,” I stroked her hair. “Never again.”

I kissed her because she was mine to kiss again. Not just in the perverse evening hours. She was mine in the daytime. We had cut ourselves open last night. She hasn’t given me all her secrets. Not yet. But she had given me her being, her existence.

She was my Pippa again. With my ring on her finger. Everything else could be worked through. We could handle it. I could handle it. I’d be Atlas, holding the world as long as she loved me.

I’d unburden her of the weight of her secrets and make them mine to bear.

I tucked the radio bud in the shell of my right ear. I tapped it on, then spoke into it with a press of a button on its surface. “Red Baron, this is Braveheart. Do you read me?”

“Good morning, Geordie. I trust you and Pippa have made up?” came Callum’s perfect British voice.

Chapter 36

Pippa

The sun beat down, and seagulls squawked above us, circling for the unattended food that made up their Los Angeles diet.

I felt on edge, the hairs on the back of my arms electric, sensitive to any change in the air.

Geordie strode beside me, the two of us moving down the boardwalk. The loud ocean was to one side, and small beachfront homes to the other. We hadn’t gone a few feet before a swarm of cameras began dancing around us.

“Pippa, is this your new boyfriend?” a man with a strong New York accent asked.

The cameras clicked away. I didn’t smile. Neither did Geordie as we kept on walking, pretending that these vultures weren’t dancing around us, waiting for the first sign of blood.

Despite what most people believed, you don’t smile at the paparazzi because you don’t want to seem like you’re enjoying their attention. Because that is a headline in itself.

“Is he your ex-fiancés best friend?”

“George! George!” another cried, trying to get his attention, but he ignored them. “How did your friend feel when you were his best man and screwing his ex?”

The questions got worse, each one implying terrible things trying to get a reaction. But we kept on walking, hand in hand, steady and unburdened.

“Are you and Callum MacLachlan still friends?” One of the roaming paps jumped in front of us. “Or has he fired you from Caledonia Security?”

They really wanted to make us mad, didn’t they? But Geo looked like he was walking on sunshine. Nothing could bother him. If I wasn’t looking for the signs, I would have missed them. The way his eyes scanned for threats, how he silently inventoried every face.

A helicopter hovered overhead. That, in itself, wasn’t unusual. In fact, it was barely worth noticing.

But I knew they were ours. Alastair and Hugo.

In the crowd, I saw auburn-red hair tucked beneath an LA Dodgers baseball cap. The figure followed us at a respectful distance. Far enough away he didn’t seem like he was trailing us. He just looked like another man strolling down the beach.

“Have you and Callum MacLachlan compared notes on what it’s like to fuck Pippa Fox?” The lewd question came from a pencil-necked photographer. He walked backwards with his eyes in his camera viewfinder. He wasn’t looking where he was going, and the back leg of a jogger kneeling down to tie his shoe tripped him so he fell back, his camera shattering on the ground.

The jogger looked at the carnage, the expensive DSLR scattered on the ground, and smirked. His brown eyes flashed to me, before he came to his feet and started jogging in place, and watched the procession of us and the buzzing vultures. Brett Bradley.

I didn’t acknowledge him as Geordie and I walked by, and I pursed my lips to keep the smile from crossing my face.

Lookouts aren’t supposed to interact with the events unfolding. But obviously, Brett had other plans.

Despite the buzzing of the paparazzi, we could walk, hand in hand, his thumb caressing the face of his ring on my finger. With a mischievous glint in his eye, he brought up the ring, and kissed it. The cameras popped and snapped away, fighting for the best view of the enormous Venetian engagement ring.

“Are you engaged?”

“Aren’t you jumping from one engagement to another pretty fast?”

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