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Nina made a noise of frustration. He found it cute.
Yes.Cute.
More unforeseen reactions. Zeus hardly knew what to do with himself.
“Your assorted scandals never bothered her.” Nina scowled up at him. “Why should they? She always enjoyed her own fun. It was that it was me, her dumpy charity case that she was saddled with because the palace worried she seemed too unlikable. But then, you know this. It’s why you chose me.”
“Surely lightning struck us both. That is how I recall it.”
“It was a clear night in summer.” She shook her head. “We were not engaged in the same enterprise, I think.”
“Little hen,” he chided her. “You break my heart, which is nothing, as anyone will tell you. It is but a cheap little trinket. But you also poke at my pride.A dangerous game. I am not only certain that we were, both of us, very much engaged in the same glorious enterprise that night. But that you enjoyed yourself thoroughly.”
Zeus remembered more about that night than he wanted to.He rememberedthe heat, the unexpected longing, the blast of unconquerable desire. He remembered the way his lips had moved over hers and the responses he had coaxed from her.
How it had all become need and flame—then burned out of control. So brightand greedy that instead of the happy, carefree seduction he’d intended, all charm and release, he’d had no choice but to throw himself into it.
Headfirst.
And he might havespent the past six months telling himself he remembered very little about that night, but that was a lie.
He remembered everything.
Her taste. Her scent.
The small sounds she’d made in the back of her throat.
“I’m afraid the night dims a bit in my memory,” she said now, her brown eyes glittering. And she was lying. He could see that she was lying, but in a way, that was more fascinating. “Given what happened the next morning.”
She looked at him as if she expected he might collapse in paroxysms of shame at that. Sadly for her, he was still...himself.
“Desperate times,” he said, with the grin that had gotten him out of more scrapes than he could count.
And he could see that she was not unaffected.
But she did not giggle or melt. She frowned.
“I’m embarrassed to say that it took mesome time to work out what had actually happened,” she said. Without the faintest hint of a giggle. “Then I realized. You called them.Youpersonally invitedthe paparazzi in that morning.”
“I am devastated to discover that you were so misled in your assessment of my character.” Zeus enjoyed watching her brow furrow all the more. “Were you truly under the impression that I was or am a good man?”
Though he remembered, little as he might wish to, that making love to this woman had made him wish he was. If only because the gift of her sweet innocence had demanded it.
But it had been too late.
“I have never thought you were anything but you.” And that was what made her smile at last, edgy as that smile was. At least it looked like a real one. “If anything,understanding the role you played in this has helped make my course of action clear.”
She looked down at the belly between them. He did the same.
But luckily, he’d now had some time to think about the opportunity she presented.
Zeus always had liked an opportunity.
Especially if it helped stick the knife in deeper.
“I do hate to be indelicate,” he began. She letout a laugh, and he grinned. “You’re quite right. I don’t. But you must know that there’s almost no purpose to this confrontation scene you have planned, all tears and recriminations followed swiftly by demands—”
“You’ve had this conversation often, have you?”
