have?” Zeke asked. “The one that drives you completely nuts.”
“Only one?” she asked with a laugh, not daring to tell him about the numbers. “The one that drives me absolutely insane is messed-up eyebrows.”
“What?” He chuckled.
“Yeah, it’s bad. If I’m talking to someone and their brows are all crazy, I can’t focus on anything but their eyebrows. I literally have to restrain myself from fixing them.” Zeke instantly swiped his fingers across his brows. They both laughed. “What’s yours?”
“I’m thinking mine’s a lot worse than yours.”
“Oh no, I gave you mine. Now, spill.”
Zeke’s attention went to his hands held together in his lap. “I can’t share bars of soap with anyone, because I can’t handle hair or fuzz…well, any kind of anything on it. It really grosses me out if I see it. I freak out.” He still didn’t look back up at Grace.
“So … you scream like a girl who sees a rat?”
“I wish,” he said, looking a little deflated. “I get the dry heaves really bad. I’ve even thrown up a couple of times.”
“Wow, that is bad.”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“So what do you use then?” Grace tried to sound sensitive.
“I use watermelon body wash.”
Grace pulled her lips in between her teeth to keep from laughing. Despite the fruity scent, his solution didn’t make it sound so bad. When she was certain she wouldn’t laugh, she said, “At least you found a way to deal with it. I’m doomed. I’ve contemplated carrying around tweezers and an eyebrow brush, but I don’t think that’ll work.”
At that, they had another good laugh. Minutes later, Zeke stood. “I need to get home. I have homework. Give me a call if you need anything.” She agreed, and listened as he closed the front door behind him.
Quentin finally came in after dinner. “How are you feeling?”
“Pretty good. I still have a little goose egg.” Tentatively going over the sensitive spot with the tips of her fingers, she grimaced from the pain. “It still hurts.”
“You’ll be a hundred percent in the morning.”
“We’ll see,” Grace said.
“You feel well enough to go on a tour?”
“A tour? Where?”
“Here. I have something I’d like to show you,” he said.
“Um, okay.” She rose from the sofa and followed him out of the family room.
Quentin paused, turning back to her. “Go get Pandora and bring her with you.”
Grace’s eyebrows rose in question, but he remained quiet. “Okay, be right back.” She hurried as fast as her painful body would allow her up the stairs, grabbed Pandora from under her bed, and met Quentin back in the foyer.
They walked down the large, open hallway lined with oil paintings of her ancestors and family photos toward her grandfather’s office. “Quentin, were any of these men Chosen?” Grace asked, pausing to peer up at the faces.
Quentin turned around and stood by Grace’s side. “They all were.”
“All of them?”
“Every single one.”
Quietly, she scanned the faces of the twenty-five men who had come before her and her grandfather. She wondered about the lives they’d led, if they’d found solace in marriage, and if they were happy with the responsibility forced on them. “Did any of them marry?” Grace asked.
“They all did. You and Christophe would never have been born if they hadn’t.”
She hadn’t thought about it like that. “Do you think they were scared?”
“Oh yeah, they were.” A smile touched his lips.
Watching him, she regarded his smile. “You talk as if you knew some of them.”
Quentin turned to her. “I knew all of them.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” she asked with an uncomfortable chuckle. “You’d be like, seriously old.”
His mouth turned up in a smile that reached his eyes. “I am seriously old.” Turning back around, he continued toward the study.
Like a barking Chihuahua nipping at his heels, Grace fired continuous questions his way. “Really? How old are you, Quentin? You don’t look that old.” Before he could get any closer to the office, she briefly touched his arm and stopped walking. “Seriously, how old are you?”
His shoulders reflexively rose as he breathed in deeply, before turning toward her. “I’ve been here since before man.”
Confused, she cocked her head sideways. “What does that mean?”
Quentin’s gaze met hers. His right hand rubbed at the edge of his shirtsleeve. “It means, I’ve been around since time began.”
Grace’s eyes bugged. “But you don’t even look older than twenty-three. How is that possible?”
Quentin ran a hand through his hair, holding on to the back of his neck. “Because I don’t age.” She was about to ask another question, but then he sighed,