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"You guys..."
The clown towered over her.
"Someone just please tell me—-"
The clown bent his dark head, and just as her heart jumped out of her chest, his mouth moved dangerously close to her ear for a whisper."Kaliméra, Pippi."
Half an hour later, and a still-grumbling Pippi was being waved off by her family. Bloody traitorous family, to join forces with an outsider just to prank her.
As Acheron opened the door for Pippi, Rue rushed out to whisper impishly into her sister's ear, "Try not to lose your virginity until the third date."
Acheron's swift reflexes were the only thing that kept Pippi from losing her footing on the front steps, and when she looked up, the billionaire asked, "Everything okay?"
If it had been any other time, she would have cracked a joke about the irony of him asking such a thing. Shouldn't it be the other way around, since he was the one who had showed up on her doorstep wearing clown makeup while dressed in a four-thousand-dollar suit?
––––––––
IT WAS WHAT SHE TRULYintended to say...until she saw his face, and she remembered the last thing she had asked him the night before.
"You know..." She hesitated, worried about overstepping her bounds.
"What is it?"
Unable to muster enough courage to look at him, she instead focused her gaze on the knot of his tie as she mumbled, "You have the saddest eyes for a clown."
There was a long moment of silence, and then she heard Acheron say, "I missed a call from an old friend last night."
Pippi hadn't expected Acheron to confide anything at all, and that he had made her feel like she had been entrusted with the care of the crown jewels. She took her time answering, trying harder to read between the lines.
"And you're...bothered because you weren't able to answer it?"
"I suppose."
"Then...it's never too late to return the call."
"It's more a problem of whether I should."
Which most likely meant his "old friend" had something to do with the darker side of his past, Pippi interpreted. "If he hasn't done you any harm in the past, then I don't see why you can't at least listen to him."
A second later, and he was cupping her chin, and she had no choice but to look into his eyes.
"You're very good at hiding it, but you're actually very softhearted."
Her first instinct was to deny this, but then she saw his clown face, and a truth suddenly struck her. This was Acheron Simonides getting his face painted on just for the sake of taking her to work -and she couldn't even admit to being softhearted where he was concerned?
Teeth gnashing, she fought against the usual wave of shyness as she forced herself to say, "I'm only softhearted for people...I care about."
Seeing her practically choke on the words had Acheron realizing in amusement that Pippi was determined to be more expressive than usual.
Well, then, if that was truly what she wanted, far be it for him to stand in her way...
Pippi nearly lost her footing again when she felt Acheron casually slip an arm around her waist, with his fingers splaying possessively on her hips as he drew her close. Every inch of her was now plastered against his side, and she was all at once on fire and on edge.
All her life, she had steered clear of men like Acheron Simonides, and yet now she was letting him stake a claim on her body, and in full public view of their town's early risers no less.
Acheron chuckled when Pippi practically dove into the backseat of the car, and the sound had her making a face as soon as he joined her and pulled the door shut on her still-gawking neighbors.
The way the billionaire had held her might not have raised a single eyebrow in Miami, but with Isla de Flores being a sleepy town of less than 2,000 permanent residents, Pippi was glumly certain that Astrid would soon find herself besieged with questions about this morning's clownish visitor.
