If he found out, he’d be pissed and even worse, so would Zeus.
“There’s my darling girl,” Betsy’s voice sung out, the only thing to cut through that laminated silence.
I opened my eyes to smile at the middle-aged woman who’d nursed me as a child and passed my letters back and forth to Zeus until I was old enough to go to the post office myself.
She hooked a stool with her foot and slid it beside my chair then ducked down to look into my eyes and check the pulse at my throat.
“Always a nurse,” I muttered as I rolled my eyes. “I thought you’d give me a kiss before you inspected me like a prize horse.”
She clucked her tongue and then sank onto the stool. “You know I care about you, that’s why I do it. I know this sucks, honey, but I think Dr. Radcliffe’s course of treatment is the right one.”
I nodded because we’d already talked about this. “I know.”
She tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “How are you, honey?
I bit my lip because I hadn’t seen Betsy in a few months so she didn’t know about Zeus.
Apparently, I didn’t have to worry about telling her because her eyes widened like camera apertures zooming in on me. “You’ve seen him, haven’t you?”
“You could say that.”
“Oh God, he finally did it, didn’t he?” she asked the heavens. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
“Absolutely nothing,” I said fiercely. “You of all people shouldn’t judge us.”
“I don’t, sweetheart. I’m just concerned. He’s…an intense guy with an intense life.”
“I know all about it,” I told her with hard eyes.
She nodded slowly. “He told you about what happened with his uncle Crux?”
Fuck.
“Of course,” I lied boldly.
Her face softened with empathy as she reached out to pat my thigh. “He didn’t. You ask Zeus Garro what happened with his uncle ten years ago and then we’ll still see if you have stars in your eyes over him.”
I glared at her as she pulled out her knitting and went to town on a hideously ugly olive-green sweater. “This is for you,” she beamed at me.
“Great,” I muttered, looking away and hoping to hell that what she’d said about Zeus wouldn’t destroy anything between us.
The Garro’s lived off the main beach drive down a packed dirt road behind a chain link fence, overgrown sea grass and about five signs that warned of Danger, No Trespassing and Cross At Your Own Risk.
It wasn’t exactly a warm welcome but as Mute and I passed down the weaving road lined with parked cars, I looked around in awe at the surroundings. The ocean ran alongside the lane, the high tide line just a meter or two off the path. The blue water sparkled with fragments of shattered gold cast by the setting sun and the mountains cupping Entrance like a hand loomed up all around us, capped by snow and shrouded in perpetual mist.
I breathed the briny sea air into my lungs and then lost it all when we rounded a bend and caught sight of the house.
Zeus had built this one as well.
It was a pale wood clapboard house with thick slates around the windows and doors stained a darker wood. The roof had pale green tiles that blended in beautifully with the ocean at its side and the forest at its back. There was a wraparound porch with potted plants on it and a huge three-door garage built in the same style as the compact, two-story house.
I fucking loved it.
I was off the bike and running toward the painted forest green front door when it opened and Zeus stepped onto the porch, his feet bare beneath the frayed hem of his jeans and his torso snug in a criminally tight Henley the same colour as his pale grey eyes.
I launched myself up the stairs and into his arms.
He caught me easily with his hands splayed across my ass and planted a long, wet kiss on me before I could get a word out. When he was done with my mouth, I’d forgotten what I was going to say and blinked at him dazedly.
“How’s my girl?”
I stared into his grey eyes, cracked and lined like an ancient boulder over time. They were beautiful eyes thick-lashed under heavy brows, given character by that radiating fan of wrinkles to either side of them. I decided right then that I’d be happy to spend the rest of my life looking into those eyes.
“I think you dazzled her,” a well-known but surprising voice said from behind Zeus in the house. “King does it to me all the time, so I know.”
I peered around Zeus’s hair to confirm my suspicions and immediately jumped down to the ground as I yelled, “Miss Irons!”
She laughed as I used my entire body to move Zeus’s bulk out of the doorframe and then pulled my ex-teacher into a full body hug.