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That meant she hid in the palace library and reveled not only in the books but in the fact that no one questioned her right to sit around and read as much as she liked about whatever she liked. Or to sit in a window seat and daydream. No one came to lecture her. No one demanded she attend them. No one punished her if she wandered off by herself for hours.
Daphne learned quickly to track her down in the stacks, where Nina could always be found sitting with her feet up, a book open in her lap.
If she didn’t look too closely at her situation, she almost felt free.
Or at least off on the sort of holiday she’d always longed to take after she finished seeing the world.
But on the first morning of her second week in Theosia, Daphne hurried her through her breakfast, then told her there would be no library time today.
“Library time is the only thing keeping me sane,” Nina told her aide—who she had made the head of her staff. They had both stared at each other, then nodded, and that had been that. Painless, really.
“I have faith in your sanity,” Daphne replied. “In or out of the palace library.”
And then delivered her to the airfield, where liveried servants waited to escort her onto a waiting plane. Zeus was already there, reclining in a leather seat as if it was a throne. Or as if he wanted her to think it was.
“Where are we going?” she asked as she sat down in one of the bucket seats, aiming a smile at the hovering air steward. She declined refreshment, her gaze on the man across from her. And the way he looked at her, all that dark green heat.
“I’ve spent the week planning how we will reveal ourselves to the world,” he said when the steward was gone.
“Reveal ourselves?” Nina didn’t like the sound of that at all. “I don’t know what you mean. You are overrevealed as it is, surely. There was a swimsuit edition of you only last month.”
“I do look fantastic in a swimsuit,” he said, as if she’d been lavishing him with praise.
Nina could only roll her eyes. Because he was right. He did.
“Come now,” Zeus chided her, his mouth curving. He propped up his head and all that dark blond hair with one hand. “You cannot possibly imagine that you can turn up out of the blue, hugely pregnant with the child of a prince, and reveal nothing about how you came to find yourself in this state. Especially when that prince is me. And then, of course, we have decided to marry. It will need announcing.”
“I don’t see why.”
He only smiled. “You do. You don’t want to see why, but you do. It will be reported on either way. Better to attempt to control the narrative.”
“Alternatively, we could try just going about our lives,” Nina said dryly. “I think the world would catch on, narrative or no narrative.”
“You worked for Isabeau for far too long not to know how this works,” Zeus said, too much laughter in his gaze. Mocking laughter, she thought. “You know this game as well as I do. Why are you pretending you don’t know how to play?”
She tried to ignore the way her pulse rocketed around, because it had nothing to do with anything. It was proximity, that was all. Maybe it was biology. Maybe a pregnant woman couldn’t help herself from feeling this way in the presence of her child’s father. Maybe the need to want him was in her bones.
But that didn’t mean she planned to surrender to it, either.
She tried to think strategically, the way she would if she had a little more distance from the scenario. The scenario being a wicked prince who looked at her as if he wanted nothing more than to taste her. If she were Zeus, what would she do? And why would it require a trip?
And he was right. She did know.
“You’re staging some kind of engagement scene,” she said after a moment or two. “You want to start them all talking about us again.”
She almost saidon your terms, but she remembered herself. The last time they’d been talked about had been on his terms, too. The only difference this time was that he was telling her what he was doing in advance.
Nina was tempted to feel a bit of outrage about that but couldn’t. Because the way his smile broke across his face felt like a reward, and it made everything in her...shift. Then roll.
Then keep right on rolling until it became a molten, hot brand between her legs.
“Very good, little hen,” he said.
And God, the way he said that.Little hen.It shouldn’t be allowed.
Her breasts seemed to press against the fabric of her dress. She had to tell herself, sternly, not to squirm in her seat. It would only make things worse.
“I don’t know what makes you think you can call me that,” she said, because she was reeling. And because she was desperate for some hint of equilibrium. “You do know that Isabeau called me that as an insult, don’t you?”
