Bad Blood: Latter-Day Olympians Read Online Free PDF Page A

appear in person, in the a.m. ” As if this was a crime . “I hear Travolta insists on doing all his business at night, just so he doesn’t get mobbed.”
    Put that way…
    “Well, we’ll never know what it’s about unless you show him in, assuming stars like him wait around. Go. Oh, hold up.” I unlocked my desk drawer and handed him the envelope. “If Kasim King shows up, give him this.”
    Jesus saluted, then turned on his heel and marched sharply out of my office.
    I slid my chair back in preparation to rise in greeting, then forgot all about it in the next second when all of a sudden, there he was—Apollo-freakin’-Demas, all six foot two ridiculously ripped inches of him. I had one of those bizarre romantic-comedy moments where the world contracts, spatial relationships are meaningless and he was all there was in the world—just his turquoise eyes meeting my bronze, silently speaking volumes. All those statues carved in his likeness were such pale imitations as to be sacrilege.
    Then I shook it off.
    “Okay, I get it. If I stipulate that you’re a hottie, can we cut the act and move on?”
    The look on Apollo’s face was so worth the price of admission.
    “How?” he asked.
    He was already rebounding with an intimate smile, but at the same time his gaze sharpened, as if he were suddenly really focused on me and not just whatever had brought him in.  
    I shrugged. “Cynicism. It’s a gift.”
    “And not your only one.”
    “Oh. You. Charmer,” I deadpanned, choosing blatant insincerity over the more overt and somewhat-soggier rudeness of a raspberry.
    “You think so?” he asked undaunted.
    “Isn’t that why you bring in the big bucks?”
    “Oh, is that why? Nothing at all to do with my talent then,” he shot back.
    Damn, he was good at the banter. The more I felt myself responding, the more inexplicably irked I became. “I don’t think you came to me for a critique. Why don’t you take a seat and tell me why you’re here.”
    Apollo grinned, as if he could see right through me. He tugged my distressed leather guest chair into a position more to his liking and didn’t so much settle in as take it over. His long legs stretched out before him, his posture relaxed just slightly and his arms curved around the rests. I tried not to notice the way that strained the black silk T-shirt across his pecs or the way the supremely fitted jeans outlined his thighs.
    When I dragged my gaze back up to meet his, I was disconcerted to find him studying me the same way. Well, not the same exactly—not like a starved person eyeing filet minon—more like a birder avidly noting the characteristics of some rare or maybe previously undiscovered species.
    He seemed in no hurry to begin, so I gave him a prompt. “Why don’t I set the scene, get the ball rolling? My assistant tells me that stars like you don’t come down from the heavens for mere mortals like me, so I’m guessing this is too confidential to trust to an underling? And, since I’m a little outside your social strata, you probably didn’t pick me out of the phone book, so dish.”
    “Dish?”
    I rolled my eyes. Interactions with Armani aside, I wasn’t generally this big a pain in the ass. I just had a tendency to give my inner wiseass free rein when something put me off-kilter. It tended to tip the scales back in my favor.
    “That’s your cue to jump right in, the water’s fine.”
    Apollo cocked his head to one side. His lips quirked and his eyes sparkled in what I took to be—oh holy freakin’ moly. He wasn’t the least bit put off. He was, gods help me, intrigued. The old tales had more than enough warnings about what happened to mortals naïve enough to play with gods. I had no urge to become immortalized as a flower, tree or monster. Not that he was, of course, a god. The whole thing was just silly. Even if those azure eyes, the red-gold hair, the sun-kissed warmth of…
    Apollo settled back into his chair and rolled his shoulders,