Page 61 of Making It While Faking It
I feel exposed as Achilles takes my hand, and I turn to Lauren, who says, “Let me show you two to your table.”
We’re seated in a booth with royal-blue-velour-upholstered cushions. Instead of sitting across from me, Achilles sits beside me.
“Now,” he says, our noses nearly touching. “I have you all to myself.”
The icky way those girls made me feel dissolves as I smile at him.
“How was your day?” I ask.
“Busy. And yours?”
“Busy.”
His lips are a fragment of an inch closer when he says, “I missed you.”
Our lips are even closer when I say, “I missed you too.”
He licks his lips. They tasted so divine when we kissed out front.
Then I remember something and smirk. “So, should we practice Dr. Brandt’s script for public conversation?”
Achilles snorts a chuckle. “I think we’re beyond her script, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I reply, tilting my head curiously. But there are thoughts, or better yet questions, running through my mind that I haven’t asked Achilles but want to.
“What is it?” he says, reading my expression.
“Well…” I start but stop when Tom, the head waiter, stands at the edge of our table to take our order.
Like the slow release of gravity, Achilles and I reluctantly back away from each other so that I can order the seared scallops and he the filet mignon, and then we both agree on a bottle of Mes Fleurs champagne.
Now that we’re alone again, that tethering energy draws us close.
“What were you going to say?” he says. I love that he’s smiling at me these days more than frowning.
“Oh, yes…” I swallow nervously. I hadn’t even given what I want to ask Achilles any thought until this morning as I walked into the foyer of the apartment to ride the elevator down. The front desk had a cab waiting to take me to the restaurant. Ready service along with twenty-four-hour food service almost makes living so high in the sky bearable—almost. “The pen in the glass box—what’s up with that?”
Achilles’s eyebrows ruffle then reverse. Then he sits very still for a moment, his breathing nearly suspended until he clears his throat.
“It’s a pen for Pen—Penelope,” he says in a tight voice.
My eyebrows flash up as I feel his pain. “Who’s Penelope?”
Achilles purses his kissable lips as though he doesn’t want to reveal Penelope’s identity. Right away, I know he loves this woman, and because of it, I automatically lean farther away from him.
“Well, what a coincidence,” a deep voice says. I rip my attention off Achilles, who quickly turns to see Orion and a very attractive woman, who’s not his type at all, actually, standing next to our table.
“Achilles, hello,” the woman says as if she’s shocked to see him.
Orion’s smirk is mischievous, and I know why he looks so naughty when Achilles says, “Pen, Penelope…” and becomes at a loss for words.
Without being invited to sit,Orion and the woman whose presence has been captured in a glass box sitting in Achilles’s foyer slide into the opposite side of our booth.
“This is a crazy table we’re seated around, isn’t it?” Orion says. “Exes all around.” He turns to the beautiful woman, who hasn’t stopped staring at Achilles with glassy eyes. “Did you know that Treasure is my ex-girlfriend too?”
“I was never your girlfriend?” The words come out breathy, as if they left my mouth without my knowledge.
Achilles hasn’t said a word or moved an inch. However, his power scowl has made a big comeback. Finally, he does do something. He puts his hand over mine on top of the table and squeezes.
