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“It is what he didn’t do.” But he would not speak of this. He refused.
Zeus rose then, gazing down at this woman who had already upended his world. He thought that perhaps he should have taken against that, but the truth was, he liked it.
She was not boring, this hen of his, and he would have liked her for that alone.
But there was a child to consider. And to his great astonishment, he hadn’t been lying when he’d said those things to her about wedlock and fatherhood. Even if, were he to be scrupulously honest, he hadn’t actually known he had such traditional notions knocking around inside him.
Until now.
“We will be married,” he said, and though he knew he sounded severe instead of his usual lackadaisical self, he did nothing to temper his voice. “Soon. I suggest you come to terms with it. If you do not, nothing will change, I should not like to see you so needlessly unhappy, Nina.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You are all heart,” she murmured.
Zeus left her there, out on the balcony with the sea all around, to think over her choices. And because if he didn’t walk away from her, he wouldn’t, and he couldn’t indulge that kind of need. Not when it was nothing so simple as a forgettable pleasure.
It was harder to leave her rooms than it should have been.
Zeus tried to distract himself from the greedy longing storming around in him by imagining what form of rebellion she would take on now. Would she still try to look a mess, as it seemed she had in both previous parts of her life? Would she fashion herself Princess Pigsty?
He thought that sounded entertaining.
But it wasn’t her little rebellions that kept him up that night. It was the touch of her hand to his. The press of her belly beneath his palm. The way she’d tried to hide the way she was breathing when he’d toyed with her fingers.
That flame. That need.
The night he told himself he could barely remember, yet had never forgotten.
He was thin-tempered the next morning when his butler let her in again, leading her out to the morning room.
And yet, one look at her and he felt fully restored.
Because Nina had clearly chosen her next rebellion. Sheer perfection.
She stood before him looking nothing short of edible, no sign of the clownish buffoon she’d played in Haught Montagne to be seen.
Her blond hair was woven into a crown of braids atop her head, showing off her slender neck and wide mouth. And instead of yesterday’s tent, she wore something clingy enough that he could see her generous breasts and that marvelous bump, but all the rest of her, too. Her delicate shoulders, her lovely legs.
She was beautiful. She always had been, but today it was on display.
“Did you find a hairbrush in your bathroom suite?” he asked mildly.
Nina glared at him but straightened her shoulders. “I might as well marry you as not, I suppose.”
“I’m touched,” he said. “Deeply.”
He did not rise from the small table where he took his breakfast. The expansive windows let the sun in, and he liked to bask in it while he sipped at an espresso and tracked various items of interest in the financial pages. Only after this ritual did he venture into his actual office, where he spent more and more of his time since his father’s decline these last months had forced the reluctant Cronos to shift the bulk of his duties to his son. Zeus had gone to great lengths to make himself seem ineffectual—as if the kingdom ran itself. If anyone outside the palace even knew he had an office, they assumed it was a PR affair kept on hand for no other purpose than to clean up the messes he made.
He had one of those, too. But that wasn’t what he did all day.
Another thing he did not intend to share.
Zeus waved Nina into the seat opposite him and then leaned back to give off his usual impression of an indolent little princeling. The one she already thought he was. So she could truly contemplate the step she was taking.
Nina took her time sitting down, and he couldn’t tell if her discomfort came from him—or the fact that she’d proven his point by effectively unveiling herself. And he liked his games, it was true. But it was untenable that she should sit with him indiscomfort.
“The first time I noticed you was at an opera some years ago,” he said, though he would have sworn he had no such memory. That she had been there, like wallpaper, until he’d decided to use her as a weapon to effect his escape. Yet it seemed he could remember that night in Vienna with perfect clarity. “You sat just behind me, and I did not hear a note. All I could think was that you smelled of strawberries.”
“That’s because I was eating them,” Nina replied in that bland way of hers. Her lips twitched. “Dipped in chocolate, naturally, or what’s the point? Perhaps you were hungry.”
