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CHAPTER SEVEN
NINALEARNEDAlot about Zeus over the following weeks.
When he mounted a campaign, he did not play around. He had made their hotel in Paris their home base, and she quickly realized why. Its little-used front entrance was on a busy street, but its back entrance was gated and equipped with a security officer. That meant that Zeus could decide when and if to play paparazzi games.
First he started telling his stories.
He did not get down on one knee. Instead, he slid the ring on her hand over breakfast their first morning there and told her to get used to wearing it. Then he called in what appeared to be the entire Parisian fashion world, paying Nina absolutely no mind when she protested, and insisted they use the front entrance.
“You must mean the back,” she said when he ended the call. The ring was heavy on her hand. It dazzled her, catching her eye with its sparkle every time she breathed. The more she gazed at it, the more impossibly magical it seemed.
Even on a hand like hers.
“The more of a commotion out in front, the better,” Zeus said. He offered her that wicked curve of his mouth. “Trust me, little hen.”
“Well,” Nina said, blinking at the blinding jewel on her finger. “That’s very unlikely.”
Zeus only laughed, low and hot, so that it rolled around inside her and made her feel shivery. Everywhere.
By the time they came, in a horde, Nina certainly wasn’tready. But at least she’d eaten and tried her best to get used to the idea.
Ten slender and severe-looking men and women, almost all in black, took over the suite’s small ballroom. They wheeled in racks stuffed with fabrics and garments. They conferred with Zeus, pursing their lips and frowning at her, but then murmured appreciatively when they draped certain fabrics over her.
They did not appear to needherinput at all.
“I don’t need all of this,” she complained, in the middle of the melee.
But Zeus only eyed her as if she was something adorable. Yet edible.
“I do,” he said.
It wasn’t as if Nina hadn’t witnessed a fitting like this before. She’d sat through far too many of them, in fact. What she hadn’t experienced, however, was a fitting like this in which she was the center of attention.
Gown after gown, fabric after fabric. Her measurements were taken, then retaken, while theatrical arguments in French swirled on all around her.
At one point, standing on a raised platform while a crowd of fashionistas revolved around her, she thought,This is how a queen must feel.
The ring on her hand seemed to buzz a little, as if it knew she’d actually dared to imagine herself in the role.
She sneaked a look at Zeus and found him watching her. He was leaning back against the far wall, another one of his dark suits looking as rumpled on him as ever. His ankles and arms were crossed, giving him the look of a sort of fallen angel.
But his green gaze was as hot as it was dark. And it was focused on her.
Nina flushed. And burned.
And yet she couldn’t look away.
Almost as if she wanted him to see what he did to her.
When the fitting was finished, they left her with what seemed like an entire wardrobe that very same day. Yet promised to come back with what one stylish gentleman told her werethe important pieces.
Nina both wanted and didn’t want to know what those might be. Because she still couldn’t quite accept that this was happening, maybe. Or because she and Zeus were left alone in a ballroom filled with racks of clothes. With no one else in this suite apart from his unobtrusive security detail.
He was still leaning against that wall. Like a taunt.
And all the things she felt, all the ways she burned, bubbled up inside her like a sob. She wanted to explode. She wanted to launch herself at him. She wanted—
“You must change into one of these new options,” Zeus told her idly, though his gaze was still hot. Too hot. “You like art, do you not?”
