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.

She snorted. “Right, of course they are. Because why wouldn’t they be?”

“Just as you are a dragon’s mate. A red dragon’s mate, one whom the silver wyvern says was not tainted by demons.” He met her gaze squarely, hoping she could read the sincerity in his eyes. “I understand what you are doing, but you should know that the act isn’t necessary. I have no fight with the dragonkin… quite the opposite, actually, since I’ve been engaged to help them, not to mention my history with the First Dragon.”

She stared at him for the count of eight, then gave a little shake of her head. “And you look so very sane. Sadly, you’re just as cracked as the rest. Well, fine, be that way. If you guys want to insist that the unreal is real, you go right ahead. But I’m just going to ignore it.”

“Why are you…” He stopped, and looked at Mrs. P.

She shrugged. “She is as she is. I cannot change it.”

“Are you saying she’s telling the truth?”

“Hey!” Sophea said, indignation causing her lips to thin. “I’m sitting right here, you know.”

“Possibly,” Mrs. P said, just as if Sophea had not spoken. “It’s difficult to tell, and really, I don’t see that it matters.”

“I have the horrible feeling that one of you is calling me a liar,” Sophea said through apparently gritted teeth.

“If she is telling the truth…” Rowan fully considered this previous suspicion. If that was the case, then it changed everything. Or did it?

“Yoo hoo!” Mrs. P, obviously tired of the conversation, dipped her knobby fingers into her water glass, and flicked the water at a middle-aged man sitting by himself at the table next to them. “You there, in the blue. Yes, you. Do you like older women?”

“You’re about to get a swift kick to the shin, buster,” Sophea told Rowan. “How dare you imply I’d lie? I never lie! It’s a personal policy of mine, one that I started when I was a little girl at the orphanage and had to be nice to people who might want to adopt me. Do you have any idea the sorts of people who want to adopt plump half-Asian girls? Let me tell you, they aren’t the cream of the crop.”