Playing Fearless

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I turned around smiling sheepishly while my heart was racing a mile a minute. What if he didn’t like me, would he send me to the family in Miami? What if my question had led him to think I was a stuck up teenager? I swallowed, but my throat was suddenly bone dry.

I was met by a tall lean man with black hair and green eyes which twinkled mischievously. He was smiling at me, clearly my question had amused him. He removed his hands from the pockets of his black suit – which I was fairly certain was a custom one – and extended a hand towards me, “Hi, I’m Lucas, but you can call me Luke.”

I was pleasantly surprised by his laid back and positive attitude that I actually stuttered when I told him my name.

He smiled at my reaction, “My wife and son are not here at the moment, but they’ll be back soon,” he informed me, “And you already met Troj and Marlie,” he gestured first at the german shepherd which sat obediently by his leg, and then at the little puppy which was bouncing around trying to steal my shoe laces.

I laughed, “Yeah,” I picked Marlie up and flicked his nose playfully as I ruffled the fur on top of his head, “They’re adorable.”

“I’m sure you’ve got some questions for me,” Luke said and I noticed that Howard was nowhere to be seen anymore.

I ducked my head a little, “A few,” I admitted, but truly I was massively confused.

“Come on, we can go inside and talk,” he smiled and began walking up towards the house – sorry, mansion. He whistled, “Come on Troj.” The dog sprang to his feet and followed us inside.

I was about to close the door after me but was met by another hand, a man who looked to be slightly up in his years smiled at me and said, “I’ve got it, Miss.” I nodded a little dazed and turned around to follow Luke.

When I saw the room I almost dropped Marlie right on the floor, so I carefully put him down before I accidentally killed my guardian’s pet. I don’t think that would’ve given me many points, no matter how good it seemed to have gone outside in the ‘driveway’.

It was massive. Words completely escaped me as I took in the size of the hallway. Carefully clutching my backpack which hung on my shoulder I followed him into a room which supposedly was the living room.

Large, huge, massive, gigantic, enormous. Call it whatever you want but I was completely immobile. I took in the room and felt my chin just sink deeper and deeper towards the ground.

It was all quite classy and stylish. The windows provided a lot of light and it lit up the dark wooden furniture which decorated the room. Two sets of leather couches were placed in a corner, one of the facing a fire place which I doubted had ever seen a pair of flames…

I sat down opposite Luke on the sofas and the room was filled with silence, it felt sort of awkward because I noticed he was looking at me in a calculating way, but not in the creepy stalkerish way. No, just as if he was seeing something important for the first time, which made me feel a little special… I squashed that feeling immediately.

“I can see you are your mother’s daughter,” He smiled at me. “You’ve got the same sparkly eyes.”

“I could say the same about you,” I said. I could clearly see he was my mother’s brother because of the cheekbones and the chin.

“Ah, yes. Me and Clarisse were half siblings. I was her ‘brother from another mother’ so to speak,” he winked at me and I had to laugh. “We had a falling out because of her… lifestyle.”

“You mean the drugs,” I said, both of us in a more serious mood now.

“Yes. I knew she was experimenting but a lot of teenagers do that, I did it myself too. But when she stopped coming home some evenings without notice and I would find her lying about somewhere else, I knew things had gotten out of control and confronted her. She didn’t like that.” I didn’t doubt him, my mother never liked to be confronted about her addiction. “I wanted to send her to rehab, but she refused and took off. We never spoke again.” He said grimly, but after a few seconds of silence he looked at me, “That’s why I never knew about you, because I never heard from her and nobody else did either. This was eighteen years ago, two years before you were born.”