Goddess of Light (Goddess Summoning #3)(19)

"Where will you be?"

"Well, I certainly won't be with you!" She grinned and gave his shoulder a playful punch. "I'm going to have one more of those lovely martini drinks, and then I'm returning to Olympus. I'll meet you there tomorrow after the invocation has been fulfilled. You can give me a full report, and then we'll decide what to do about Bacchus." She gave him a little push forward and watched him walk towards the mortal who had unwittingly bound the aid of a goddess. She patted her hair, which was, of course, already perfectly arranged. Apollo should be back to normal by morning.

"...If you want to grant my wish, bring me a man who is really godlike for a change."

As she finished speaking, the hair on Pamela's forearms tingled like a jolt of electricity had zapped its way through her body. Wow! She smiled an apology to the waiter, who quickly cleaned up the mess she'd made. She usually had a pretty good tolerance for wine, but her head was definitely feeling woozy. Good thing she wasn't driving.

"I'll bring you another glass, ma'am," the waiter said. Then he glanced at the tissue wrapped around her finger. "And how about a Band-Aid, too?"

"Thank you, that would be nice," she said, ignoring how flushed she felt. He'd already turned away when she thought that she should probably have told him she'd just cork the bottle and take it to her room. That would be the sensible thing to do. She fiddled with the tissue. She didn't feel like being sensible. Actually, besides being a little flushed and tipsy, she felt invigorated. It had been empowering to admit her desire aloud. Okay, the wine may have had something to do with it, but she liked to think that that wasn't all there was to it. She had finally acknowledged something that had been unconsciously eating away at her for months, maybe even years - that Duane had somehow invisibly branded her as Nonromance Material. And now that she had given voice to her fear, it didn't seem so monstrous. It was like taking a midnight trip to check the closet for the boogie man - the walk was scary, but after the door was open, the return wasn't so bad. So she'd just start her return. As V would say, she needed to get out there more. Make herself available. Stop thinking of men only as business acquaintances. Well, she couldn't do that by corking the bottle and scuttling back to her room.

"I hope it does not pain you too badly."

Pamela looked up from her finger... and up and up... into eyes so blue that they couldn't possibly be real. And just how tall was he? Her brother was six two, and this guy had to be at least a couple of inches taller than that. Then her gaze widened to include his face, and all thoughts of blue eyes and her brother disappeared. What a scrumptious man! The lines of his face were firm, his chin square and strong. His hair was the gold of summer sun, thick and curly.

He was, quite simply, perfect. He looked like he had stepped from the pages of a magazine ad - and not one of those oh-so-chic, androgynous ads that made women look like men and men look like little boys. This man was old Hollywood handsome, like Cary Grant or Clark Gable. Only he was blond and... her thoughts fragmented as she realized what else she was seeing, and she was mortified to hear a small giggle escape from her lips. He was blond and gorgeous and wearing something that looked like an ancient gladiator costume and left very little of his amazing body to the imagination! Pamela felt her face warm again, this time out of shock and secondhand embarrassment.

"What?" she asked, staring stupidly, having completely forgotten what he had said.

"Your finger," he pointed at the tissue-wrapped appendage. "I saw you cut it. I said I hope it doesn't cause you too much pain."

His smile made her stomach tighten with a ridiculous little nervous quiver. Dimples! The guy had dimples, which lent his masculine beauty an unexpectedly sweet boyishness. Boyish and breathtaking and very, very tall - a totally lethal combination.

"Oh, uh, yes..." She shook her head as if to clear the cobwebs from it. Oh, bloody buggering hell, she'd definitely had too much wine. "No... I mean, no, it's nothing. Just a silly mistake."

"Do you know that in the Ancient World people did not believe in mistakes? They thought every action carried with it a purpose, an omen, a meaning, and that the future could be foretold through things as simple as leaves of tea or smoke rising from a ceremonial fire."

Pamela could hardly believe what she was hearing. Her mind flitted from thought to thought like bubbles in a windstorm. Could a man who looked like that actually carry on an interesting conversation? Just exactly why did he look like that - not as in incredibly handsome, but as in bizarrely costumed? And that accent! It made his deep voice seductive... intriguing... It wrapped around her and slid down her spine like hot oil.

Pull yourself together! The rational part of her brain berated. Sober up, girl! Weird outfit or not, this man is prime flirting material. She needed to stop staring like a slack-jawed tourist and speak intelligibly.

"No, I didn't know that," she said in her best let's-pretend-I'm-sober voice. "It's been too long since my last college humanities class, and I'm ashamed to admit that the only part of history I really paid attention to was my art history class that focused on the elements of ancient architectural design." The words ancient architectural design slurred together alarmingly. Oh, God! She was babbling. She sounded like an inebriated egghead.

"Ancient architecture interests you?"