Goddess of Light (8 page)

“Please bring me the olive and cheese appetizer tray and a bottle of . . .” She studied the Italian reds listed under Chianti Classico with three glass ratings, and her eyes lit up as she recognized the '97 Castello di Fonterutoli Riserva. She'd stumbled on a fantastic Italian wine article in the last issue of
Wine Spectator's Magazine
, and she was sure that she remembered the name. “A bottle of the '97 Castello di Fonterutoli Riserva Chianti Classico.”

“Excellent choice, ma'am. From Tuscany. The winemaker boasts that in ancient times the gods themselves strode through their vineyards.”

“That figures,” she muttered under her breath after he'd turned to go. “I'm trapped in a trailer park version of ancient Rome, and now I'm going to go from tipsy to thoroughly toasty on wine from a deluded winemaker.”

Pamela sighed again. She'd had such good intentions at the beginning of the evening. After V's pep talk she'd taken a long shower and towel dried her short hair into a mussed, sexy tousle. Dressing for success, she'd chosen to wear the little black dress she'd practically stolen at the Denver Saks end of season sale. She loved the way it ended in a soft, feminine ruffle a few inches above her knees. And then she'd completed the ensemble with delicate onyx chandelier earrings and a glittery purse that was as ridiculously small as it had been expensive. She'd finished with the pièce de résistance—a to-die-for pair of Jimmy Choo black silk slides with mod butterflies and hearts embroidered on them in bright, retro colors.

She'd checked her reflection in the gilded floor-to-ceiling mirror before she'd left her suite. She looked good. Very good. The black dress hugged her petite body, and the slides leant her five-foot-one-inch frame three and a half much-needed inches, making her calves look long and lean.

Yes, she had been ready to flirt.

Until she'd paused at the entrance to the casino to ask a nice-looking man in the casino's distinctive Romanesque uniform where she paid the cover charge. He'd laughed so hard that he'd snotted on himself.

“Lady, you're missing the point,” he'd said between chortles. “Casinos
want
people to come in. The more people, the more money they spend.”

He'd walked away laughing and shaking his head. Her evening hadn't gotten any better. Her dinner had been fine, but the scenery had continued to weigh on her. She'd told V that she was going to change the way she looked at this job—to shift from tasteful to fanciful. But the more she saw of The Forum, the more desperate she felt. It was just all so incredibly tasteless, inelegant, cheap and gaudy.

No, she corrected herself, scratch the cheap. Her eyes drifted back to the enormous fountain that held the grotesquely animated images of Bacchus, Caesar, Apollo and Artemis. That had definitely cost serious money, as would the ridiculous reproduction Eddie wanted in his home.

The waiter reappeared with her olive tray and a crystal carafe of wine the color of blood. She inhaled the rich Chianti aroma, which automatically brought to mind Marilyn's Pizza House, her favorite pizza place in the world, which was conveniently located just down the street from her design studio. Marilyn's always had a great selection of Italian reds, as well as large-screen TVs that endlessly played Marilyn Monroe movies. This Chianti was definitely worthy of Marilyn. She savored the soft, lingering taste of the excellent wine with slow sips and chose a dark kalamata olive. She took a bite of thickly sliced buffalo mozzarella. It was all delicious.

Life in The Forum, she decided with a full mouth, did have some positives. The food was excellent and the selection of wines, superb, even at a small café such as this one. And, she begrudgingly admitted to herself as the Chianti spread its red magic through her body, although the exteriors of the shops were gaudy and their design horrid, the interiors were couture heaven.

Sure, her foray into flirting hadn't gone so well. But that really hadn't been her fault. The only prospect she'd had so far had been wearing a gold chain. He couldn't count. It's true that she'd been scared away from the casino by the cover charge debacle, so her gambling had been, thus far, nonexistent. But the weekend was just beginning, and she shouldn't think of it as a complete loss, at least not yet. Maybe she would just turn it into a shop-a-thon. Or at the very least a shoe-a-thon.

The thought of buying more shoes temporarily brightened her mood, until she imagined what V would say about her being stuck in a rut and falling back on old habits instead of embracing new experiences. Pamela chewed an olive as the waiter paused at her table to refresh her glass of wine. V might be right. Maybe she wasn't trying hard enough.

Resolutely Pamela closed the magazine and refocused on her surroundings. The crowd around the fountain had definitely thickened. A young woman who had impossibly beautiful blond hair caught her attention. She was talking to another girl whose hair was equally lovely, flowing in a thick, silver-colored wave down to her waist. Both girls were wearing costumes that Pamela supposed were meant to look as if they had stepped from the streets of ancient Rome. Sheer, cloud-colored fabric floated in seductive drapes around their lithe young bodies. One instant they appeared to be fully covered and modestly clad, then one of them would laugh and turn gracefully—almost as if she was a dancer—and a cunningly concealed fold in her robe would open to expose a glimpse of creamy skin. Also it seemed that the girls were covered in some kind of golden glitter, because as they moved through the tourists and towards the fountain, they left a sparkling trail in their wake. Pamela pulled her eyes from the duo and looked at the rest of the crowd. None of the men seemed to be able to keep their eyes from the seductively costumed women.

It was, she decided, an excellent publicity ploy. At least from the male perspective. And wasn't that just typical? She cast her eyes through the growing group of people who were congregating around the fountain. Just as she thought, most of them were female. Yet the duos of scantily clad young
women
kept increasing. And did one handsome young lad equally as revealingly dressed join them? Of course not.

“I'll bet women didn't really dress like that in ancient Rome,” Pamela grumbled to herself. “They'd catch their death.”

“COME ONE, COME ALL, COME TO THE MALL!”

Unexpectedly, the center statue's canned voice boomed over loudspeakers, catching Pamela unaware. She glanced at her watch, surprised that it was already eight o'clock.

“Ah, but tonight we have a special show for you! Nymphs, I command you dance for the Las Vegas revelers, two by two!”

Well, that made more sense. The actresses were meant to be portraying nymphs. As the similarly attired young women stepped from the crowd and began to dance around the fountain, Pamela had to acknowledge that they were very attractive. She watched the show as she sipped more wine, thinking that she had never seen so many expensive hair extensions. The “nymphs” twirled and laughed and leapt in a graceful circle, flinging their thick manes as if they had been born with them.

The awful statues of Apollo and Artemis came alive, one right after another. It seemed the evening show focused on the dancing nymphs, who were admittedly more entertaining than the animated statues who spoke in bad rhymes. Pamela even realized that her foot was tapping in time to the pulsing rhythm of their dance. It really wasn't a bad show, she thought as she refilled her glass again.

 

When the dancing girls began to sing, she was pleasantly surprised. Their lyrics were far better than the nonsense that the mechanized statues spouted. And their voices! They were incredible. Entranced, Pamela listened as the song brought alive a time long dead when people actually believed gods and goddesses walked amongst them and granted their wishes. Despite her cynical opinion of her surroundings, she felt herself caught up in the performance, so much so that she wanted to slide off her stool and join them in their hypnotic dance.

That, she thought with a tipsy giggle which quickly turned into a snort, was utterly ridiculous. Especially in her three-and-a-half-inch Jimmy Choo slides. But for some reason her unusual desire to frolic with the pretend nymphs didn't shock her. She eyed the half-empty carafe; it must be the wine.

She blinked as the tempo of the dance increased, and the glitter that surrounded the nymphets seemed to blur her vision, so much so that when she reached for her glass of wine, she misjudged the distance and bobbled it. In slow motion, she watched as the crystal stem fell over, shattering on the marble tabletop and spraying red droplets in a crimson arc over the floor around her. Guiltily she snatched up her linen napkin and tried to soak up the quickly spreading stain. Thank God the glass had fallen away from her; she would have hated for her chic dress to have been covered in Chianti. Jeesh, what a mess she'd made. She was just thinking that she'd have to leave the waiter an extra big tip when she wiped at the table a little too enthusiastically and a sliver of glass sliced across the pad of her index finger.

“Ouch!” She shook her hand as if the sharp pain burned. “Oh, bloody buggering hell.” She couldn't believe the amount of blood that was running from one little cut. It even made her stomach feel a little queasy as it mixed with the pooling Chianti.

She pressed the already soaked napkin to her finger, but even the sting of the fresh cut didn't distract her from the conclusion of the nymphs' fabulous show. They were so graceful, and their silky voices seemed to call alive poignant emotions that she usually repressed . . . desire stirred within her . . . desire for something she couldn't—or wouldn't—quite name . . .

Heartfelt wishes. Well, she wished that she hadn't spilled her wine or cut her finger. But the instant her mind formulated the thought she felt the wrongness of it. Wishing something so trivial after the beautiful dance seemed almost blasphemous. As she unclasped her purse and dug for a tissue to wrap around her finger, she was suddenly filled with sadness that her heart's desire had been nothing more than to undo an insignificant accident. Surely she had more heart than that left in her. Surely Duane hadn't destroyed it all.

 

The echo of the words beat through her body in time with the pulse she could feel in her finger. Duane couldn't have ruined romance for her; she wouldn't let him.

 

Impulsively, she raised her chin and stared at the group of nymphs who were smiling and sinking into graceful prima ballerina curtsies as the crowd broke out in applause. Then Pamela blurted the thought that had been haunting her mind since her conversation with V.

“My heartfelt wish is that my stupid ex-husband hasn't sucked all the romance out of me, but the truth is that I'm afraid he has. So if you want to help me out . . .” She paused, trying to remember the goddess's name (asking the female deity to bring romance back into her life seemed to make the most sense) and then feeling a little foolish, even though the crowd's cheers drowned out her words, she continued, “Uh, Artemis, you could bring romance into my life.” Then, remembering the disgusting, gold-chained gigolo, she added, “Oh, and Artemis, I'm tired of men who think they're gods. If you want to grant my wish, bring me a man who is really godlike for a change.”

CHAPTER SIX

“HOW could this have happened?” Artemis exclaimed after pulling her still-staring brother into a relatively quiet corner. “The mortal completed the invocation!”

Apollo nodded his head numbly. “She even used your name.”

Artemis wanted to strangle him. “You think I don't know that! I feel it.” She narrowed her eyes and glared around them. “Where is that rotund fool Bacchus? This was his doing. His stupidity caused this; he should be involved in cleaning up the mess.”

“Cleaning it up?” Apollo pulled his gaze away from the mortal woman who had just unknowingly bound an ancient goddess to fulfill her heart's desire. “Don't you mean granting it?”

The goddess opened her mouth for a hot retort—and then closed it just as quickly. Her brother was right. There was no getting around it. The bond had been forged and then neatly soldered into place. She could feel the weight of it like an iron shackle.

“All right. It has happened. There is nothing to do but fulfill the mortal's whim and be done with it.”

Apollo said nothing, but his eyes moved from his sister's angry face back to the mortal woman. He couldn't stop staring at her. She had wrapped a flimsy piece of something around her wounded finger, and she was still trying—unsuccessfully—to wipe up the spilled wine.
She' ll probably cut herself again,
he thought, and he had a sudden urge to rush over to the table and caution her. He actually breathed a sigh of relief when a servant arrived with a cloth and made short work of the mess. Apollo watched as the woman smiled sheepishly. He couldn't be certain, but he thought that her cheeks were flushed. They were nice cheeks, he decided. High and well-formed. They complemented her heart-shaped face. He felt himself smile. That hair! He should have loathed the fact that a woman would cut her hair so short, but on her he found the shorn locks strangely attractive. It gave her a fey look and made her appear delightfully rumpled and mussed, as if she had just tumbled from her lover's bed.