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“Can I get you two anything for dessert?” Marco asked as he gathered our empty plates.

This I knew. Now. “Whatever the chef recommends. Cappuccino for her.”

Reyna was looking at me with a barely concealed smirk, the corner of her mouth closest to me curled up. The side away from Marco, which seemed important for some reason.

She opened her mouth, like she was going to chastise me for ordering for her, especially when she thought I did it wrong.

But two could play at that game. Holding her gaze, I added. “Decaf, if you would, Marco.”

Reyna’s mouth closed slowly, drawing my attention to her lips. Cruel little thing.

“Well crafted,” she said, after Marco scurried away again. “I thought you hadn’t been listening.”

“I told you—I’m taking you seriously,” I said, having to intentionally soften my voice in the middle of speaking. I had no idea where that rough tone came from.

Reyna released a short breath of laughter, then reached up to smooth her hair down with her hand. It was a reflex it seemed. There wasn’t a hair out of place, the dark brown strands pressed into a smooth wave. “There’s a gala on Sunday. My family and half of Rome will be there. That might—”

“The Borghese Gala, yes. I was invited. But I’m going as your date.”

Reyna’s eyes narrowed at me. “I was going to suggest that.”

“See?” I said, grabbing her hand on the table when Isaw Marco appear out of the corner of my eye. “We’re already agreeing.”

“For the love of Jupiter,” she muttered under her breath.

“Yes?” I asked, just because getting under her skin was rather fun. And when her head snapped back up and she looked at me with orange licks of fire flaming in her brown eyes, I knew that while this was necessary, this was also going to be a test of control.

One I wasn’t sure I could pass.

Chapter 6

Reyna

“I have no idea why I agreed to this,” I muttered under my breath while I waited in my kitchen, trying my mighty best not to pace back and forth.

I didn’tpace. I was a firm believer of afake it ‘til you make itmindset, shoving down all my nerves and fear by telling myself it would be okay if I acted like it would be.

But that same conviction was slipping through my fingers like sand. I glanced at the large clock hanging over my sofa one more time. The hand notating the minutes had barely moved an inch.

And that meant I still had one minute to suffer through before Persy came to pick me up. That was if she was even on time.

Although if she shared her brother’s penchant for timeliness, she’d be walking through the door at the turn of the hour.

The trek to Olympus was a journey for a human, as we forced to rely on our own technology, thoughaided by Hephaestus and Vulcan, to find our way up the peninsula and into the mountains. But gods—they could just do that thing where they stepped through space and appear wherever they wanted to at the drop of a hat.

I smoothed my hands down the fabric of my dress to avoid looking at the clock again, knowing all of fifteen seconds had probably passed since I last looked. Normally, I would have figured out what I was going to wear weeks ago, not only confident in my choice but excited to wear it.

But this time, I’d changed my mind more times than I could count.

It pained me to admit it, but it wasn’t the attention I knew I was about to get.

It was Adrian.

I wasnotconcerned with what he thought about me or what I looked like—that would violate the careful set of rules I made up in my head for this agreement—but I couldn’t ignore that this was the only thing that changed.

I finally settled on a black dress, floor-length and hugging my figure with a simple, sleeveless cut. The gala was honoring the arts and was held at a modern museum, so I paired the dress with sheer black gloves, embedded with small black crystals made of onyx that sparkled under light.

My hair and makeup were elevated but still within my style. All a recipe for a confident, casual Reyna. Not a Reyna that was fiddling with the fingers of my gloves, trying not to damage the delicate fabric.