Page 27 of Making It While Faking It
I whip my face toward a sound of someone breathing and that feeling one gets when there’s another person in the vicinity.
Then, suddenly, I’m locking eyes with the last person in the world I thought I would see tonight at this house.
“Treasure?” Lolly sounds worried.
“I’m here,” I’m only barely able to say. “Um, let’s talk tomorrow. I have to go.” Without waiting for her response, I end our call with my head feeling cloudy.
My mouth is caught open, and my attention is trapped by Achilles Lord’s gaze.
In the middleof the opened pergola that runs up against the house stands Achilles Lord. The lights woven into the many flowers and trimmed bushes illuminate him as though he were a famous male model posing during a photoshoot. Quickly, I see that he’s wearing black pants that his fit thighs and strong legs were specially made for him. He’s not wearing a crisp white dress shirt, which is the sort of garment I thought he slept in—heck, he’d be buried in. Instead, he’s wearing a light-gray polo shirt that appears to be made of the softest cotton material. I hate that he looks so attractive—I really do.
Then I notice the cigarette caught between his lips as he’s frozen in place just like I am.
“Hello?” I say carefully.
His stare seems to open up and spread across my face. “Hello.” He sounds just as chilly as always.
I swallow to moisten my tight and achy throat. “What are you doing here?”
Cigarette captured between his teeth, he scoffs as if the answer to my question is too incredible to speak. He takes the cigarette out of his mouth.
“You smoke?” I ask unthinkingly. Not many people smoke anymore.
“No,” he says, and I think I see a suggestion of a smile.
“Then why are you smoking?” The words leave my mouth unfiltered. But yeah… I’d like to know why he’s smoking if he doesn’t smoke.
“I quit,” he says, face deadpan.
I point at the cigarette between his fingers, and smoke streaks from the tip. “Well, that’s exactly what quitting looks like.”
To my surprise, he blurts a light chuckle. It feels like the iceberg between us is slowly starting to melt.
Anxiously, I check over my shoulder. There’s no turning back now, and it’s not as if I want to. The big question hasn’t been answered yet either. So I finish closing the distance between us. “Are you here on business?”
Achilles’s infamous grimace is back with a vengeance. “You don’t know?”
Now I frown too. “I don’t know what?”
“Why I’ve been invited to dinner? Hell, I think it’s why you’ve been invited too.”
I visualize the dining room, where I should be in my assigned seat by now. My mom is probably continuously checking her watch. Pretty soon, she’s going to excuse herself to call me.
“I’m having dinner with my family. My grandmother is in town and—”
I’m cut off by his bitter laugh, which stops when he drags on his cigarette. It’s as if what I said has triggered him into needing a puff.
I lean sideways to see past him to the glass sunroom and its French doors which open to the entrance of the garden from a step-down foyer. When my eyes meet Achilles’s again, he’s already staring at me. No, it’s more than a stare, his eyes are exploring me. And the depth with which they’re doing so momentarily takes my breath away.
“Your grandmother and my grandfather arranged this get-together,” he says as he smashes the tip of his cigarette with the sole of his expensive leather shoes.
What he said isn’t computing in my head. It makes no sense. What do his grandfather and my grandmother have in common? “I don’t understand.”
“They’re in a relationship, which has been going on for many years.”
My jaw drops, and I am speechless. My grandmother and Achilles’s grandfather, who happens to be my grandfather’s nemesis, getting it on?
Now it all makes so much sense, and because of it, I burp a laugh. “Am I surprised? No,” I say with another laugh. “It’s even better than Shakespearian drama. It’s a low-rated soap opera.”
