Page 79 of Cinderella Is Faking It

We followed Brody to the deck behind the house. The low sunlight dipped the entire wooden patio into a warm glow that perfectly matched the smell of smoke and grilled meat.

“I was beginning to think you’d stand us up!” Beck’s brother looked so much like him, my spine stiffened at the sight. Just as tall, just as tan, same dark hair and dark eyes. Beck was a few years younger but the only detail that betrayed the age difference was the sprinkling of white hairs on his brother’s head. Where Beck sported a well-trimmed stubble, Julian was clean shaven.

He set down the barbecue thongs and walked over, a pearly white smile splitting his face. “You must be Cordelia, I’m Julian,” he stretched his hand out for me, and I instinctively shrank against Beck’s side.

“Hi,” I gasped, mentally replaying the memory of sharp pain shooting through my flesh just because I’d shaken another man’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

To his credit, Julian dropped his hand without dropping his smile. “First things first, do you eat meat?” Up close, he looked even more eerily like Beck, except Beck’s nose was just crooked enough to add a little spice to his features and Julian’s was straight as an arrow, ripped straight from the pages of a fashion magazine.

“I do,” I replied, glancing past him to the smoking grill station, “as long as it doesn’t look remotely like an animal.”

“What does that mean?”

“Chicken nugget, yes, chicken wings, no.” He furrowed his brows at me, clearly confused by the logic, but I just shrugged. I couldn’t help the fact that I liked chicken nuggets too much to ever become vegetarian. I could at least avoid having to pick at bones.

“She’s allergic to peanuts, and no tomatoes,” Beck said, the first words he’d spoken since stepping outside.

“Well, I’m not roasting peanuts today, so you don’t have to worry.”

I was covering my second mini burger in ketchup and mayo when Brody knocked her foot against mine under the table to get my attention. “Is it true that you haven’t left your house in 15 years?”

“Brody,” Julian chastised without looking up from his own plate.

“What? It says so on Google.” Brody waved her phone through the air, having ignored her father’s no-phones-at-the-table rule for the last thirty minutes.

“Don’t trust everything you read on the internet. I’ve been out. Just not a lot.” Ha. Vague enough. Maybe I could get through the evening without having to outright lie to her. As much as I could tell myself that it didn’t matter with Beck, lying to a kid felt wrong. How did parents ever keep up the tooth fairy scheme?

“It also says you gambled away your whole family fortune and you’re seducing Uncle Auggie to get his money.”

“Where does it say that?” Beck plucked the phone from her hands, but I recognized her grin while he was still scrolling. Apparently the Becketts had the same evil twinkle in the left corner of their mouths when they tried to get a rise out of you.

“At first, I was only in it for the money, and I was going to leave him high and dry,” I mused, “but it turns out he’s really good in bed.”

Brody screeched with laughter, while both men at the table paled. If I knew anything about teens, it was that you had to meet them at eye level. If she could joke about me seducing her uncle, so could I. “Ohmygod,” she gasped, “no, but- no but seriously, what happened here? You’re way different than Ashleigh. She was such a grade-A-bitch.”

“Language,” Beck hissed, at the same time that Julian moaned: “Manners.”

“Ashleigh?” I asked after a moment of nobody else speaking up.

“My ex,” Beck supplied, “the one you googled and considered age appropriate.” Oh right. It wasn’t lost on me that he didn’t defend her against Brody’s insult.

“How long were you together?” I stabbed my fork into a baby potato.

“Too long,” Brody moaned, but stiffened at a stern look from her father.

“Two years,” Beck supplied, his hand finding the spot where my chair ended and gave way to my bare back. His fingertips grazed up and down my spine. “It was mutually beneficial until it wasn’t.”

“That sounds more like a business agreement than a relationship.”

A tired smile played over his lips. There was probably more to their story than he was willing to discuss in front of Brody, but he just shrugged and said: “Sometimes they go hand in hand.”

“Spoken like a true romantic,” Julian teased, “the true formula for love: passion, commitment and board room meetings.”

Beck’s hand stilled for just a heartbeat, and I wouldn’t have noticed if Julian didn’t sport the exact same lopsided grin as Brody had earlier. “Are you seeing anyone?” I asked, more than happy to stop talking about Beck’s ex.

“No,” Julian shook his head and directed a more genuine smile at Brody, “I already have my hands full with this one.”

“Please.” His daughter let out a gagging sound and tossed her braids over her shoulder. “You’re a textbook commitment-phobe.”