The Playboy God (Gods of Olympus Book 7) Read online

  “Fake love,” she says a little too quickly.

  The amendment hurts me like an arrow to the chest, but I nod. “We’re two people madly in fake love.” I think for a moment before adding, “And I’m going to sue Nadya as soon as I can call my lawyer.”

  13

  Carrie really sucks at keeping people out of my office, I think as I look up from my laptop to see Steven storming in. Not that I don’t enjoy having Max in the office with me, but I would give anything to have a competent secretary again.

  Then again, not even Max would be able to keep Steven back when he’s like this. He’s flushed and huffing like he took the stairs instead of the elevator.

  “Mr. Liu!” Carrie calls after him from her desk as she gets to her feet. “Mr. Liu, you can’t—!”

  “It’s fine,” Max assures her as she starts closing the door behind Steven. I get a glimpse of Carrie looking perplexed through the crack before the door shuts completely.

  Steven stands in the middle of the room, looking at Max and me, like he completely forgot what he came to say. His mouth opens and closes uselessly, and he ends up throwing up his hands. “What the hell happened?”

  Max and I exchange glances. She looks at me with eyes pleading to not mention Gotham or the hospital or any of last night. And I know why. Even though it would offer a very easy solution for us to repair this bad publicity, it would drag Gotham into this mess.

  That’s the last thing I want.

  Even mentioning it to Steven would put her family’s anonymity in jeopardy. He’s a good man, but he’s relentlessly careerist. If he thought that was the only way to save our plan, he’d do it in a heartbeat.

  So, I opt for vagueness as I rise out of my office chair. “An emergency came up that we had to take care of.”

  Steven’s eyeballs nearly bulge out of his head. “An emergency?” he repeats, stomping his way over to me. He’s a little shorter, so he has to look up at me. “An emergency? Don’t you know what the newspapers are saying about you?”

  I nod. “All false.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” he says, exasperated. “What matters is what everyone is saying! They’re saying that you broke her heart at the gala—” he points to Max, “—and that you’re back together with Nadya King.”

  “Nadya and I were never ‘together’ in the first place,” I tell him with a stony glare.

  “That’s not what she said!”

  “So, whatever is reported is now real news?” I ask, raising my voice. “This is all fake, Steven. Do your job and fix it.” I turn away from him to sit back down at my desk. I look over at Max, who is barely concealing her relief that I didn’t bring Gotham into this.

  I give her a reassuring wink, and she inclines her head forward in thanks.

  Steven scoffs behind my back, and I glance back at him. He shakes his head, putting his hands on his hips. “I can’t fix this if you don’t help me, Damien. What happened? Just tell me, and I’ll figure out a way to spin it.”

  I shrug. “I can’t tell you.”

  He stares at me. “You can’t tell me?”

  I only nod.

  “Why not?” His eyes flutter in disbelief. “Were you doing something illegal? Screwing some other woman who’s not Nadya or Maxine? Or were you actually sleeping with Nadya last night?”

  I have to take a deep breath to not explode at him for his accusations. “It was a private matter,” I tell him thinly.

  “A private…” His voice trails off, and he turns his attention to Max. “A private matter? One that had you nearly on the verge of tears?”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” Max answers, crossing her arms.

  “His fault or not, the evidence is pretty damning that something happened between you two last night. And with this new report from Nadya…”

  “I’ve already contacted my lawyer to deal with that,” I interject. “And if she knows what’s good for her, she’ll retract her statement or face a very steep lawsuit.”

  Steven laughs, throwing his head back. “She’s already ruined your business, Damien! Even if what she says is fake, because of what happened last night, everyone will assume that it’s true.”

  “So fix it,” I tell him again.

  We glare at each other for a few moments. He relents and staggers back, combing his hands through his dark hair, shaking his head like he can’t believe it. “I’ll need something,” he pleads softly. “I can’t just go out there with nothing.”

  He sounds like a man at the end of his rope. Surely, I’m not that bad of a client. Then again, I have the attention of the gossip magazines accusing me of breaking Max’s heart while Nadya capitalizes on it and makes me out to be the bad guy.

  “We went to the hospital,” I tell him in half-truths. Max stiffens, but I keep going ahead to assure her that I’m not sharing her family life with him. “I got food poisoning.”

  “Food poisoning,” Steven repeats slowly, like he’s making sure that he heard correctly. “From the gala?”

  “I cooked something for myself before the gala.” I nod toward Max. “You can ask her. I’m useless without her around, so I haven’t had much luck with cooking anything by myself.” And that’s the truth as well, which can be corroborated by any of my contacts. I’m miserable in the kitchen. “I must have cross-contaminated something, and it hit me during the gala.”

  Steven crosses his arms considering it. “So why did Maxine look like she was crying?”

  “She was disappointed to be leaving?” I offer.

  Max lets out a noise that sounds like a growl. “Me? Disappointed to leave the gala? I think you’re forgetting that I’m a working-class girl from Jersey.”

  I smile at her. “Or it could be that you were worried about me?”

  She chuckles. “We can go with that.”

  I look back to Steven. “Would that work? Especially if I had food poisoning last night, Nadya wouldn’t want to be anywhere near a man vomiting out both ends.” Hell, I’ll even make myself sick now to prove her wrong. I do not mind ruining her image of a sordid affair with a gross-out story.

  Then again, that would probably turn off some potential clients. No one wants their matchmaker to have diarrhea.

  Even though I’m supposed to be only human. As a god, I’ve never had food poisoning.

  “Okay,” Steven says. “If I do go forward this with…turn of events…” His jaw tightens. “Why did you wait for a limo instead of just calling an ambulance?”

  “Well,” Max says, stepping in front of me, “he was concerned about ruining the gala for everyone with their concern. Plus, having a screaming ambulance at the front of the Met would be a real buzz-kill.”

  “Besides,” I add, playing off her story, “if I did vomit in the limo, my driver knows how to be discreet. We were trying to be courteous to everyone and avoid scandal.”

  “Which didn’t happen,” Max says under her breath.

  Steven regards us in cold silence for a long moment before nodding. “All right,” he says. “I can try that. No promises that it will work.”

  “I have full faith in you,” I assure him.

  He doesn’t even look at me as he puts his finger to his chin, thinking. “Nadya, however, is something that I don’t know if I can control. She could refute that—”

  “And I will karate-chop her ass,” Max says.

  “I thought you took jiu-jitsu,” I say, and she raises an eyebrow, impressed that I remember.

  “I take a few different classes,” she says. “For defense.”

  I smirk back at her, and, for a few heartbeats, time stands still, except for this flip-flopping motion in my stomach. Max is full of surprises, even the smaller ones. And even though she looks a little haggard around the edges—no doubt from yesterday—she’s still well put together.

  Steven clears his throat, and we both come back to our senses and look away from each other.

  “You two could pass for real lovers,” he says with a sigh. “Someone just
needs to come into your office and see this.”

  “So let them,” I say with a shrug.

  “Don’t think I won’t do that.” He sighs, placated with our plans for now. “What I suggest until this thing with Nadya is cleared up, is that you and Maxine lay low.”

  It’s Max’s turn to shake her head. “No,” she says. “We’ve already had another client cancel since last night. If we don’t do anything to fix that, Damien will lose more clients. And we are supposed to be in a relationship, so if we’re not seen for a bit…”

  We all know how that will be interpreted.

  “I don’t know,” Steven says. “If there’s another gaffe from you guys like there was last night—and if Nadya pounces on that—we could be even worse off.”

  I want to tell him that I’m paying him to turn those worse moments around, but stress lines the corners of his mouth, and there are dark circles under his eyes. He cares a lot about the outcome out of this little stunt, almost as much as I do.

  “Maybe we’ve been in the public eye too much,” Max offers, breaking into our thoughts, and Steven frowns at her.

  “What do you mean?” he asks.

  She shrugs. “I mean, we’ve been to the Met Gala, at the hottest restaurants in town, benefits—it’s like we’re trying to look like we’re in love.”

  “Well, we are,” I tell her with a wink.

  “Yeah.” She lets out a breath. “But, maybe we’re being too obvious about it. Like those celebrities that get married for the media coverage and then divorce twenty days later.”

  Steven sighs.

  “But,” Max looks at me with a soft smile, “maybe we need to step back from all of this glitz and glamour and really just do what normal couples do. Go to the movies. Stop at a fast food place and split a milkshake and large fries. Or stay home and Netflix and chill.”

  I raise an eyebrow.

  “And you think people would be interested in that?” Steven asks, incredulous.

  She shakes her head. “No. But…if I were really dating someone, that’s what I’d do.” She glances at me. “It’s what I have done in the past.”

  I watch her for a punchline, but there’s nothing, just complete honesty. “And that’s what you’d rather do?”

  She nods. “Romance doesn’t have to be all about going to these expensive places. It’s about the moments in between. And the laughter. And sharing something that no one else does. And it could be at those places. But it could also be…smaller.”

  She’s right. She’s not a publicist like Steven, but she knows herself better than anyone. Going to these places and events isn’t like Max. She’s lower key than this. And that’s exactly what we should be appealing to.

  “You could have told me this before I spent thousands and thousands on our dates,” I tell her with a chuckle.

  “Sorry about that,” she says with a shrug. “But it’s been fun.”

  Steven snorts. “Just fun?”

  “And I think that the less-public dates will come across as more genuine,” she adds. “And it will allow us to still go out in public while recovering from this.”

  I nod. “All right. Does that sound fine to you, Steven?”

  “I guess so,” he says. “No promises that it will work.”

  “Isn’t that all of your job?” I point out.

  “I’m just saying,” he says, “that it’s a risk.”

  I laugh. “This whole thing has been a risk. But a necessary one.” I look at Max. “Are you sure?”

  She smiles and nods. “Until the bitter end. We’re all in over our heads with this.”

  If only she knew. And I can’t tell her how far I’ve fallen for her. How she’s captivated the god of love.

  14

  I hate romantic comedies.

  Some of them are well-done and enjoyable. But those are the ones that are rooted in reality. A lot of them, like this one, would be resolved if the main characters just talked about their differences and came out with the truth.

  I just want to rage at the screen and tell the couple to just come out with it. It would save me an hour of my life instead of dealing with this “will they, won’t they” drama.

  And trust me, I know that I’m being hypocritical. To the nth degree. I haven’t told Max that I’m Eros. I haven’t talked to her about the feelings that seem to be getting stronger and stronger every day. Is it love?

  I’m not sure.

  Even if it is love, I can’t act upon it.

  Gods like me never have a great track record with mortals. One only has to look at Greek mythology. Poseidon and Medusa. Orpheus and Eurydice. Zeus and pretty much every mortal woman he ever slept with.

  There’s a reason why Greek tragedies were so popular in Ancient Greece. We gods didn’t give mortals a whole lot of hope. We aren’t even nice to our own kind, let alone mortals.

  I know that I would end up hurting Maxine, which I want to happen even less than losing my business.

  So, yes, I can be hypocritical of romantic comedies.

  Max is curled up at my side, munching on some popcorn as we sit in an empty theater in New Jersey watching this romantic comedy. I’m acutely aware of her presence, the way she smells, every breath she takes. It’s like I’m committing every sense and moment of our dates to memory because I know it won’t last.

  It’s been two weeks since the Met Gala debacle. My lawyer served Nadya with a summons and a complaint to get my libel suit started, and Steven has been hard at work to get my reputation reversed. Max and I have continued with our “fake” relationship without repercussion. The good thing is, no one can comment that we went into hiding.

  The bad thing? Nothing’s gone too far in the way of repairing my reputation and my business. The phones have been silent all week. I’ve had two more clients quit on me.

  Thankfully, no more couples have broken up. I just need to deal with Elena’s shit, and everything will be fine in time.

  So I tell myself. There are things that have changed with this that I won’t be able to repair in my head. Like my complicated feelings for Max.

  “I can hear you snoring,” she says suddenly, ripping me out of my thoughts and back into the theater.

  “I wasn’t snoring.”

  “Oh?” She sits up, and even in the darkness of the movie theater, I can see her smirk as she watches me through narrow eyes. The couple on screen in front of us are painfully trying to get through all their hang-ups. I think it’s the fourth misunderstanding they’ve had in the last hour.

  “I was just thinking,” I tell her.

  “That you’re enjoying the movie?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  She laughs and props her elbow on the armrest. She quirks a sly eyebrow. “You’re bored like me?”

  “I—” I stop mid-retort at her amused expression. “You don’t like it either?”

  She yawns, settling back into her seat. “Not even a little.”

  “I thought you wanted to see it.”

  “Well, I thought it would be better than this.” She gestures to the woman, who is crying. “They’re just being idiots up there.”

  I snort and shake my head. “I thought I was the only one.”

  “Come on,” she says, slapping my knee as she gets to her feet. “We’re leaving.”

  “But we still have…” I look down at my Rolex. Shit, there’s still forty minutes left in this movie. I can’t imagine anything worse. “Let’s go.”

  She takes my hand and leads me out of the movie theater. The theater staff frowns at us as we leave, but I don’t care. Max doesn’t seem too bothered either as she holds my hand and grins as we head out to the street.

  “I’ll call an Uber,” I say, taking out my phone from my pocket.

  She glances back at me. “Why? We’re about ten blocks from my house.”

  I frown. “Well…”

  “Come on. We’ll get milkshakes on the way. Gotham will want one.”

  One thing that I’ve lea
rned since doing these more low-key kinds of dates with Max—she always has her family on her mind. It’s her one constant.

  I find myself admiring her at every turn. She’ll do whatever is right for them, whether that’s working long hours for an asshole boss or entering into a crazy arrangement.

  “And your dad?” I tease. “What about a milkshake for him?”

  She snorts. “I’ll get him a small, but it’s bad for his cholesterol. He’ll hold it against me all the way to the grave.”

  I follow her lead down the sidewalk. She walks and swings our arms together with a wistful smile on her lips. Here in her hometown, she looks relaxed and less like a woman who has to deal with hard-to-please clients for her day job.

  She takes me to this hole-in-the-wall ice cream place called the “Ice Palace,” although the first “a” is missing from the sign, so she calls it the “Ice Place,” and the kid behind the counter doesn’t correct her.

  “That ‘a’ has been missing for as long as I’ve been alive,” she tells me offhandedly.

  The kid grins. “It’s an institution here, mister,” he adds. “The Ice Place. What do you want?”

  I glance at the too-long menu. “Vanilla—” I start, but Max cuts me off.

  “He’ll have the Madagascar chocolate with the pistachio.” She gives me a look, daring me to interject.

  “I wanted a vanilla,” I protest.

  “You can’t go to the Ice Place and get vanilla,” she chides. “Besides, I would have thought you liked your ice cream like your women. Exotic.”

  That comment burns, but I bite back my retort.

  “The lady has good taste,” the kid says, nodding. “I’d do it.”

  I sigh for dramatic effect, and I can feel Max’s smile directed at me. “Fine.”

  “Will that be all?” the worker says.

  “A small funfetti with white chocolate,” she says. “And two large s’more milkshakes. Gotham and I always get the same flavor,” she tells me. “He usually ends up drinking half mine anyway.”

  Then, to my surprise, she reaches into her purse to pay.

  “I’ve got this, Max.” I take out my wallet.