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But she liked it. She liked thinking that he might be right and that she wasperfect.
She had to focus on the job, though. On the task. The payout. Which was no different than spying, except this was the endgame. She wanted to make Alexandra and safetypermanent. And it was now within her grasp.
Unlike Lysias, who felt like a potential earthquake, which could happen out of nowhere and ruineverything. “Shouldn’t you be calling me Zandra?” she asked, trying to speak the way she imagined her character would speak. Softly. With a kind of deference that wasdefinitelynot natural to her.
Lysias led her out the door and toward a sleek limousine waiting for them. “I think it’ll be easier if we use Alexandra. We’ll say that this is the name your adopted parents gave you and that you are currently most comfortable using it.”
She nodded. Sensible. Smart. Why did he smell so good? How could a smell be so distracting?
She tried to get into the car elegantly, as many people had instructed her over the past few days, but she was sure she failed. She watched Lysias get in after her, all graceful and fluid movements.
“How did you learn?” she asked him. “All this...” She waved, frustrated that her vocabulary could not encompass that which she wished to ask. Frustrated he claimed to belikeher but somehow fit into this world of wealth with such ease. “If you began life on the streets—”
“That is not where Ibeganlife. That is where I wasexiled. I grew up in the palace of Kalyva.”
She stared at him. Shocked by this simple admission. “But...”
“I told you, my parents worked for the king and queen. Therealking and queen, not their disgusting excuse for a son. We lived in the palace. I was a servant’s child and treated like one, of course, but I was always a curious boy. So I watched. I learned.”
Every time he spoke of his childhood, she tried to picture him as a boy. And came up empty. She could only imagine the impossibly large man sitting next to her. Existing always as this beautiful example of what the human form could be.
They fell into silence as the limousine pulled away from the house and began the journey toward Athens. Al tried to keep her gaze on the window, but it kept finding its way back to Lysias.
“Where have you been?” She hadn’t meant to ask him that. She hadn’t meant to acknowledge she even noticed she hadn’t seen him since that dinner three nights ago. Still, she couldn’t take back the words, so she watched him and waited for an answer.
His face was blank—which was different than his revenge anger. Different even from the billionaire mask. This was something else. Something...dark. It had an uncomfortable mix of fear and sympathy entwined in her heart.
“Did my staff not take good care of you?” he asked offhandedly. Almost.
“You can’t answer a question with a question.”
“Ah, but I can. And do. And will.”
Al frowned at him, but he didn’t look her way. He settled himself into his seat and made a big production,she thought, of looking the handsome, relaxed billionaire on his way to any of his many important events.
She tried not to sigh, because nothing about Lysias mattered. The job, the payout mattered. She smoothed her hands down over her skirt. Everything was tight, which was a strange sensation. Showing off what she’d spent a lifetime hiding. But she’d seen herself in the mirror. She knew she looked pretty and sophisticated. It had been a shock to see her reflection in the mirror, and yet she liked it.
But it was stillstrange.
She was doing all right with the heels, though why any woman chose such torture devices was beyond her. She was more bothered by the fact she wanted to itch her hands through her hair as she had been expressly told not to so as not to ruin the sleek hairdo the stylist had spent nearly an hour creating.
Without warning, Lysias took her hand in his, and she jolted. At the way his touch sizzled through her. At how much effect he could have simply by taking herhand.
It was dangerous. But she’d spent too long dealing with danger not to revel in it alittle.
“You are my fiancée. You must have a ring.” And with that, he slid a cool piece of jewelry onto her finger.
She looked down at the sparkling stone. It looked like the kind of ring a billionaire would give his fiancée. Big and gaudy. She loved it. The way it sparkled. The way it felt. Which she knew wasn’t the point. It wasn’treallyhers.
So she ripped her gaze from it and tried to focus on the reality of the situation. “Maybe we should go over everything again,” Al said, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth before she remembered her lipstick and stopped herself. Shelikedlooking pretty, but it was an awful lot of work to remember how to maintain it all.
“There is nothing more to go over,” Lysias said with a wave of his hand. “Tonight you need only to smile prettily for the cameras, stick close to me, and I will handle the rest. In fact, the less talking you do, the better. You are to be nothing but arm candy tonight.”
Arm candy. She didn’t like that term at all, but she supposed that is whatAlexandrashould strive to be. The quiet, happy billionaire’s fiancée. “Do I know how to smile prettily?” Al wondered. “I have been given quite a few lessons over the past few days, but smiling was not one of them.”
He finally turned his attention to her, and it was like a spotlight. She felt warmed, lit up. Like someone else.
“Well then, let us see a smile.”
