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Just a man and a woman, a pretty ring, and the baby they’d made.
Deep inside Nina, a voice whispered...what if?
But his security detail entered the room, and the breathless moment was gone. And afterward, Zeus took her to a restaurant so exquisite that there was no name on its door, and when he ushered her inside, the maître d’ nodded as if they were regulars, then greeted them both by name.
And it was later, much later, when Nina felt drunk on good food and great art. And, if she was being honest, the man beside her.
“I’d like to walk back,” she said when the car pulled up before them on the narrow side street. “Either my feet don’t hurt or they’ve gone completely numb.”
“Very well,” Zeus said and then looked behind her, doing something with his chin to alert his team.
Her hand still felt strange with the ring on it, so she kept curling it into a fist and holding it up. As if, were she not careful, the ring would tip her sideways and take her tumbling down to the ground.
But then he solved the problem by taking that hand in his, and that was...
Nina told herself that she was drunk, even though she hadn’t touched a sip of alcohol. She felt that giddy. As if she was graceful enough to turn cartwheels, walking down the street in the dark with a man so beautiful that every passerby who saw him stopped and looked twice.
And there were so many things she wanted to say to him, out here in these old streets. Points she needed to make, and then, while they were out here in the dark and the cold, perhaps a confession or two.
She was saved from all that, in the end.
Because by the time they arrived back at their hotel, a crowd had formed. Almost before she registered that all the people were waiting—and for them—the flashbulbs began popping.
It was as violent as it always was, and that was before they started shouting.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. She almost tripped over her own feet and was grateful she was holding on to Zeus for dear life as he pushed on through the wall of noise and disorienting bright lights.
It was a fight to make it into the hotel lobby, where it was mercifully hushed—but Nina could still hear all the shouting from outside. Zeus’s security detail led them across the lobby until they reached the private elevator that brought them directly up to their rooms at last.
Nina was shaking. She didn’t realize until they were inside their rooms with all the doors locked that Zeus was laughing.
Honest to Godlaughing.
“Why do you think it was funny?” she asked him, letting go of him to hold on tight to the nearest wall. She tried to reach down to take off her shoes, but she’d forgotten that her belly was in the way.
And she had to hold herself back from kicking him when he came over and knelt down to remove them. Just as she had tonotpunch him, hard, on his shoulder when she had the opportunity.
“You are shaking,” Zeus said as he rose, his gaze narrow as it scanned her face.
“That was...” She shook her head. “I’ve been near scrums like that before, obviously. The last time they were shouting my name, I was half-asleep. This time I actually heard all the vile things they were saying about me. Or to me. I don’t know how you can find it the least bit entertaining.”
And somehow it felt right when he moved his hands to grip her shoulders. Gently enough, but they were still his hands. Holding her.
“Because that was all it took,” he said, gazing down at her. “One evening out and here they are.”
She could still hear the shouting in her ears. Her eyes were still dazzled by all the cameras. “Why do you want that?”
He looked confused—or whateverconfusedwas on a man so convinced that if there was an answer worth giving, he already knew it. “We discussed this.”
“We did not discuss it. You ranted on about telling stories and twisting narratives, but I didn’t think...” But her voice trailed off.
“What, then, did you think it would entail?” he asked, his voice a gruff thread of sound. She didn’t know why it sounded so loud when she’d heard real volume outside. And when she knew he wasn’t shouting himself.
But all Nina could do was shake her head. “I don’t know.”
“Trust me.” His hands gripped her a little tighter, then he let her go. And she remembered, suddenly, that bronze mask in the halls of his palace. He had never resembled it so much as he did now—and there was no trace of laughter on his face. “This is exactly what I wanted.”
But that was the thing, she thought later, shut away in her room with the lights of Paris pouring in through the raindrops that coated her window, like the tears she refused to let herself cry. She did trust that all of this was what Zeus wanted. But how was she meant to trust that what he wanted was any good for her or the baby?
