Sophea pointed to her menu.
“Very well,” the old woman said with a sniff. “But I hope you are not this bossy in the bedroom. Men find such things demoralizing, and it makes it difficult for them to raise the sun.”
She buried herself behind the menu while Sophea’s face scrunched up in a delightful manner. “Raise the sun…?”
“Erection, I believe. I could be mistaken, but that’s what I assumed she implied.” He picked up his own menu, and cast a quick glance over it. “I say with all innocence and not the least bit of innuendo that I agree the sausage special sounds like the best choice.”
She snorted a little, but managed to keep from either blushing again or bursting into laughter. She did lean over to help the old woman go over the dinner choices. Rowan watched her as she read the small print, explaining what the various dishes were. The more he was around Sophea, the more she puzzled him. Dragons and their mates could be deceitful just like anyone else, but he wasn’t catching the least whiff of that with her. Instead, she was treating the thief just as if she were a perfectly normal old lady, and Sophea was her caregiver.
He shook his head to himself. He needed to stop being so sympathetic and remember why he was there.
“I think you would enjoy the pasta, but I refuse to ask where they got their olive oil from. I’m sure it’s perfectly fine even if it wasn’t imported from Greece.”
“That shows what you know,” Mrs. P said with a knowing smile. “Take a word from me, gel, and never say that in front of Zeus. He’s always been adamant that the cradle of western civilization is Athens.”
Rowan signaled the sole waiter that they were ready.
“Zeus is a mythical god,” Sophea argued. “So he’s hardly likely to be upset if I say that good olive oil comes from places other than Greece.”
“Where did you get that idea?” Mrs. P asked her, rearranging her silverware into first one arrangement, and then another.
Rowan absently noted that his silverware was missing.
“About the olive oil?”
“No, that Zeus isn’t real.”
“I don’t know, maybe… reality?” Sophea said, pulling Mrs. P’s handbag from the floor, and deftly extracting Rowan’s silverware from it. She hesitated a moment, shot the old woman a telling look, and pulled from the bag a small vase containing a single rosebud. The water was still in the vase.
“You know her better than I do,” Mrs. P said, addressing him. “Is she refusing to admit the truth, or is she just ignorant?”
“Hey!” Sophea said, pausing in the act of buttering another roll. “Let’s keep the name calling to a minimum. And just for the record, Rowan does not know me. We just met on the plane, remember?”
Rowan studied Sophea. He liked her face. It was what people referred to as heart-shaped, but softened, so her chin didn’t look pointy. Her eyes were deep set, but with a little tilt that belied her mixed ancestry. Her hair was a rich shade of brown that reminded him of the chocolate they’d just been mentioning—it hung to her shoulders, a rippling curtain of silk that drew him like no other woman’s hair had.
For a moment, the idea of her straddling him, her hair teasing his naked flesh, flashed through his head, but he quickly stifled such inappropriate thoughts and tried to remember what the conversation was about.
“Er… do I have something on my face?” Sophea asked, becoming aware of his scrutiny.
“Eh? Ah, no. My apologies for staring. I was considering what I knew of you and why you would try to make us think that Zeus wasn’t a real person.”
She gawked at him, and it was so genuine, he had a niggle of suspicion that she wasn’t faking her reaction. “Oh, come on, now. You’re not going to start with that weird stuff that the others are doing, are you?”
“What weird stuff?”
She nodded toward Mrs. P. “She told me she knew who my husband was despite the fact that Jian had only come to the U.S. once, and then he was killed. And she said some pretty odd things about him. She said he was a dragon.” She gave a short laugh. “A dragon! Have you ever heard anything that crazy? It’s right up there with insisting that a mythical Greek god is alive.”
“The Greek pantheon are demigods, not full gods, I believe,” Rowan answered, wondering what she had to gain by refusing to admit the obvious. She must know that he wasn’t fooled. Perhaps if he made it absolutely clear that he knew just who and what she was, she’d drop the pretense. He had a feeling he’d like her a whole lot more if she stopped pretending.