Page 57 of Accidental Fiancé

They grinned at me. Apollo’s smile was a little lopsided, which was his only physical flaw. His jet-black hair had a tight curl, and he let it grow shaggy like a rugby player. Fitting, considering he had a build like one. If it weren’t for that crooked smile of his, he would have been close to perfect.

He taunted, “Admit it, Fool-ian, you missed me.”

“Fool-ian?” Maggie asked with an amused grin. “He tells me you’re an attorney general, Apollo. Surely, you can do better than that.”

“Of course, but when I was a kid, Fool-ian was the height of mockery. Thought I’d bring it back. Gotta keep the most successful person in the family in his place.” Trademark Apollo, using insults to talk me up to the woman I was dating. He was a good guy, even if he was a dick about it. That way, he could hide in plain sight.

“Speak of the devil,” Marcus said behind me. He yanked me into a bear hug that teetered on the border of pain, then held my shoulders at arm’s length, grinning. “Long time, no see.”

I had a thousand questions I wanted to ask, most of them revolving around Chloe, but she stood next to him, carefully observing every word and expression.

“Indeed, it has been a long time.” I introduced him to Maggie, and right after they shook hands, Chloe leaned to his ear and whispered something I couldn’t catch over the din of the crowd. While she spoke, her eyes darted to Maggie. It was obvious she was talking about her but there was no polite way for me to interrupt so I simply said, “Chloe, dear, why don’t you share with the rest of the class?”

Her blue eyes sparkled with feigned innocence. “What do you mean, Julian?”

“What were you whispering about?”

“That’s between us,” Marcus said. The gloating smile on Chloe’s face was enough to turn my stomach. With three words, my cousin confirmed everything I hoped wasn’t true.

Not only was he dating Chloe, but he was under her spell.

It hurt me to see that. As a kid, he had been my other role model. Where Apollo was bold and gregarious, Marcus was more measured and reserved. Unlike Apollo, Marcus kept his brown hair cut short, his green eyes wary and watchful. He had the body of a former football player. Muscular, though he was getting a little soft around the middle.

Apollo teased, “It’s not nice to keep secrets, especially among friends.”

My cousins knew exactly who Chloe Foster had been to me in high school. They were there for me the day after I got into the worst fist fight of my life—Apollo stitched me up himself. Marcus had continuously murmured, “We are in so much trouble,” while Apollo worked on my brow and I tried not to squirm. That was why my eyebrow healed so badly. My fault, however, not Apollo’s. He was only trying to help.

Just as it was my fault that Maggie was in the line of fire now.

“Well, you kids have fun,” I said, sharply avoiding whatever was coming next. “We’re going to find Piper and tend to whatever mischief she’s up to.” I slung my arm around Maggie to get her out of there.

“Oh, but you’ve only just arrived,” Chloe chided.

“That’s the funny thing about parenthood, Chloe—you don’t always get to decide how you spend your time.” I escorted Maggie into the hallway, where we had evidently been keeping all of our air. Filling my lungs greedily, I asked her, “Are you alright?”

Maggie shook her head, a stark expression on her face like she’d seen a ghost. “I?I don’t know if I can do this.”

Shit. “She’s awful, I know. I had no idea Marcus was dating her. I don’t know what he’s thinking.”

“Didn’t you say he runs some historical preservation company?”

“A charity, yeah.”

She blew out a breath. “Chloe told me at the reunion that she’d been volunteering at a historical society. Maybe that’s how they bonded.”

A sinking feeling took over deep inside of me. I took her hand and led her down a narrow hallway that the staff used. Near the end of that hall was a storage closet I used to hide in when I was a kid, and sure enough, it was still used for storage now. Shelves lined three walls of the small space, each full of cleaning products. I led her inside and closed the door behind us, shoving a mop handle between the knob and one of the shelving units as a makeshift lock.

“She set him up,” I rasped, too angry to think clearly.

“What?”

“She set all of this up,” I explained as I paced. “Chloe volunteering? What, out of the goodness of her heart? No way. She went to his charity on purpose.”

“You think she hunted Marcus down?”

My throat went dry. “Without a doubt. We live in a major metro area with millions of people, and I don’t believe in coincidences. This was a calculated plan on her part.”

“But why?” Maggie asked.

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