Page 83 of The Billionaires

Just “follow?” No greeting kiss for the fake girlfriend? No hug? No “nice to see you?”

Fine. Be like that. I let him lead me inside the house, where I finally get to see his Gram.

The first thing that springs to mind is just how tiny this woman is—and this is coming from me, who’s far from a giantess. The second thing: she must have laughed a lot in her life. The evidence of it is etched into the lines around her mouth and in the dimple in her cheek.

The same kind of dimple that Lucius has, I realize with a peculiar pinching in my chest.

Lucius gives her a big, warm hug and kisses her on the cheek—thus proving that he knows that greeting hugs and kisses are things people do.

Gram beams at him, and the whole situation is extremely adorable, especially since Lucius is just a few wires short of being a robot.

“Gram, this is my girlfriend, Juno,” he says, making me feel like I’ve just received a gold medal. “Juno, this is?—”

“Pearl,” Gram says to me. “Call me Pearl.”

I grin. “My best friend is also named Pearl.”

She grins back. “I hope I’ll also become your friend, just like the other Pearl.”

I hope she will not overshare about sex the way the younger Pearl does—like that time my friend told me she unironically enjoys a sexual act called a pearl necklace.

“You weren’t exaggerating,” Gram says to Lucius. “She really is strikingly beautiful.”

He looks taken aback—which makes me doubt he ever told his crafty grandmother such a thing.

I do my best to salvage the situation. “So, Pearl, do you have pictures of Lucius as a child?”

She gives me an approving look. “Going right for the jugular. I like you already.”

As she leads us to the living room, Lucius whispers, “That’s unfair. I didn’t see such photos of you yesterday.”

Pearl hands me a thick photo album, and I plop on the couch.

Lucius sits next to me. My heartbeat picks up. His large, muscular frame radiates enough heat to boil eggs… or fertilize them.

When Pearl sits on my other side, I open the album and greedily peruse it, an ear-to-ear grin splitting my face at the cuteness overload. Lucius was the most adorable kid ever, with a dimpled smile and big gray eyes. If we had a son?—

No. I close the album with a loud clap and look guiltily at Pearl. “What about his teenage years?”

That should be safer, right?

She grimaces. “Unfortunately, Lucius’s mother ‘borrowed’ that album and never returned it.”

“As is typical,” Lucius mutters under his breath.

Before I can comment, a burly middle-aged man walks into the room, carrying a tray with drinks.

“Ah, thank you, dear,” Pearl says to him before turning to me. “This is Aleksy.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Juno,” I say to Aleksy.

Aleksy sets the drinks on the coffee table. “And I you,” he says, and I detect an Eastern European accent.

With a courtly bow, he leaves us be.

I ask Pearl which drink is hers and hand it to her.

“Polite, too,” she says approvingly to Lucius. “Don’t mess this up.”

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