Page 100 of Angel Eyes

“Should I expect any surprises this week?”

I smothered a smile. “I included a few suggestions, but feel free to disregard them if you don’t agree.”

Benoit had been flabbergasted the first time he’d found one of my notes in the margin of his lesson plan. Shortly after becoming his assistant, I’d taken it upon myself to review his sample lesson plans for the entire semester and quickly discovered the curriculum was severely lacking in female representation. So, I wrote him a note, suggesting he consider working in a piece by French author Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil—better known by her pen name George Sand—to round out the course. He’d given me a baleful look, but, to my surprise, had announced to the class the following morning that instead of reading excerpts from The Three Musketeers as planned, we would review chapters from Indiana.

Since then, we’d fallen into something of a friendship and had taken to calling each other by our first names outside of class. He even encouraged me to be more vocal about my opinions, though he still challenged me in front of the other students to keep them from labeling me a teacher’s pet.

“Veuillez m’excuser.” Benoit cast a look over his shoulder as I spotted Louise, one of the assistants from the first-floor administration office, standing in the open doorway. “Pardon the interruption, but someone is downstairs looking for you, Ms. Chandler. I told them I would check to see if you were still here. Shall I send them up?”

I dipped my head in a nod, a blush staining my cheeks as I darted a glance at Benoit.

“You seem to have a lot of visitors lately,” he said, eyeing me over the rim of his glasses. “Maybe I should just add your name to the door and save people the trouble of looking for you.”

“Seriously? Julien Benoit and Juliet Chandler? It’s like some sort of bad pun.”

He chuckled, pushing his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “Hmm, you’re right. Our names are quite similar.”

“Wait,” I said, my mouth opening in mock horror, “is that why you picked my admissions essay out of the pile? Because my name is almost identical to yours?”

He gave me a wry grin. “I must confess, that is it exactly. Narcissist that I am, I saw your name and my heart swelled with the hope that I had finally found another soul who shared my literary genius.” I snorted a laugh, and he winked at me before returning to his desk.

I had just started flipping through his edits when there was a knock on the door, and I glanced up, my eyes widening when I saw who was standing in the doorway.

Lily.

“Um, hi.” She shifted awkwardly, shoving her hands into the back pockets of her ripped denim shorts and digging the toe of one Converse sneaker into the heel of the other. “Gabe said I might find you here. Can I come in?”

I looked over at Benoit only to find him staring at Lily, his mouth tilting into a deep frown.

Right. For all his joking around, his expression made it clear this was not, in fact, my office and visitors were not welcome. Though, now that I thought about it, he hadn’t seemed bothered when Cristian stopped by last week.

“Why don’t we chat outside?” I said to Lily. “There’s a café across the street—”

“You can use the sitting area.” Benoit stood abruptly, straightening his tie. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get some coffee.” He brushed past Lily and disappeared down the hall with hurried footsteps.

Okaaay.

I gestured toward the overstuffed chairs, my eyes briefly landing on the near-full coffee cup sitting on Benoit’s desk next to the lesson plans.

Lily lowered herself into one of the armchairs, and I’d barely taken the seat opposite her when she blurted out, “I want to apologize to you for my behavior at the dinner party.”

I blinked, my lips parting. “Lily, you don’t need to—”

“Yes, I do.” She pressed her eyelids closed, a wrinkle forming between her brows. “Just, please, let me get this out. I never meant to humiliate you, Juliet. I was projecting when I said all that stuff about it not being too late to pursue an education.” She paused, her hands balling in her lap. “You know how I said my mother is always going on about education being the key to success? Well, I never finished college. In a family full of overachievers, I’m the only one who never saw my education through. So, when I said your pursuit of a degree was an achievement, I genuinely meant it. It never occurred to me you were only attending your program out of interest.”

“You couldn’t have known, and I stopped Gabriel from telling you because I didn’t want to embarrass you.”

She nodded. “I gathered as much, especially after I heard you talking to that woman at the gala. When you told her you were a lawyer in America and had published all those articles, I felt like a complete idiot. I mean, how could I not have known the first woman Gabriel brought to meet us would not only be gorgeous but accomplished too?” She stared down at her hands, a deep flush crawling up her cheeks. “I know about you and Gabe.”

“He told you?”

She shook her head. “As soon as I saw you two at the dinner party, I knew you weren’t just friends, despite what you said. It was the way he looked at you. His eyes always give away everything he’s feeling, and when he looks at you, Juliet, they say you have his heart.”

“So, you two never …” I let the end of my sentence fall away. I sounded like a jealous girlfriend, but I had to know the truth. If Gabriel and Lily had history, I would deal with it, but not knowing would only lead to more misunderstandings.

“Gabriel has never looked at me as anything other than a little sister, though, for a long time, I thought I was in love with him.” My body tensed and Lily caught the movement. “That’s the other reason I came here today. I want to apologize for …”

Being in love with him?

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