Goddess of Light

With linked arms, they made their way through The Forum Shops towards the main entrance to Caesars Palace. As they walked, Pamela couldn't help but notice the looks Phoebus drew; it was totally, nauseatingly obvious. Women couldn't keep their eyes off him. But she also noticed something else: Phoebus paid no attention to other women. He didn't return their smiles. His eyes didn't stray to steal an "accidental" glance here and there.

What he did do was to walk slowly, matching his long strides to her much shorter ones. He was attentive to whatever she said. His responses were witty as well as interesting. And he window-shopped. Really. Without being coerced, tricked or bribed.

He actually seemed to enjoy it.

The thought was enough to sober her up. Or maybe she was completely drunk, had passed out and was still at The Lost Cellar, slumped on her stool in a damp, drooling puddle pathetically passed out.

No, she was alliterating fluently. She couldn't be hallucinating.

Was he gay? She glanced at him, caught his fabulous blue eyes, and gave him a sexy smile. He returned the smile with an inviting warmth that said that there was no way he wasn't heterosexual. No. He definitely wasn't gay... So what was wrong with him? There had to be something...

"Are you married?" she asked abruptly.

His golden brows drew together as he frowned. "No. I have never been married."

"How about a live-in girlfriend or something?"

"No."

"So you're totally uninvolved."

"Yes," he said firmly.

Well, at least that wasn't what was wrong with him. In theory anyway.

Without any prodding from her at all, he paused in front of a shop called Jay Strongwater, which specialized in gem-encrusted picture frames.

"This really is excellent workmanship," he said thoughtfully. "The artisan has extraordinary talent."

"They are gorgeous." Pamela peered into the window and caught the reflection of a price tag on one of the very small frames. "Four hundred and fifty dollars! For a little picture frame! I don't think they're that gorgeous."

Apollo turned to her and put a finger gently under her chin, lifting her face. "I think there are some pictures that would be worthy of such a frame."

When he looked at her with that focused intensity (How could she have ever even considered that he might be gay?) she felt all jittery inside, like she was back in high school and he was her sweetheart. She certainly would have never admitted anything so sophomoric out loud, but that didn't make it any less true. They were standing so close that she could smell him - man mixed with the raw silk of his shirt, and something else... something as subtle as it was seductive. It reminded her of heat. Heat as in warm sun on a white beach where naked bodies basked in uninhibited...

She laughed a little too giddily, pulling her face from his grasp, and started walking again.

"Phoebus..." She ran her fingers through her hair, trying to calm the pounding of her heart. "I think you're a romantic."

His eyes glinted when he smiled at her. "Good."

She gave him an appraising look. "A lot of men wouldn't like being called a romantic. It's not macho enough."

"Quite often men are fools."

"I couldn't agree with you more," she said firmly.

Apollo laughed, enjoying her honesty. "You should know that I am not like most men. You should also know that it is my intention to thoroughly romance you."

"Oh..." She faltered, not sure how to respond to his announcement.

He laughed again, and nodded, but said nothing. Instead, he watched her. His words had flustered her, and he liked how her cheeks had instantly flushed a light rose. Her short hair made her neck look impossibly long. It invited the touch of his lips against the hollow of her delicate throat. The style of her dress was as foreign to him as was the clothing he now wore, but he liked the flattering, feminine lines of it and how it dipped down in a teardrop shape to reveal the tops of her softly rounded breasts. She was petite, but fully a woman. Her legs looked long and lean... How did she balance on those perilous shoes? They were little more than a swatch of fabric attached to spikes. Odd as they were, he did enjoy the way they caused her calves to stretch and flex, and her well-rounded buttocks to sway enticingly as she walked beside him.

She could feel him watching her, and it made her already jumpy insides turn into a pinball machine - What's he looking at? God, he's handsome. He smells good enough to eat. Is he thinking I look fat? Please don't let him be a serial killer - her thoughts pinged around and around. What was it about him that made her feel like each of her nerve endings had suddenly come screamingly alive? Maybe it wasn't him at all. Maybe it was just that she was so totally out of practice with men.

Don't be stupid, she told herself. She'd never had a hard time dating before Duane. She was the same person, just older and smarter. At least in theory. She paused in front of a Fred Leighton jewelry store where beautiful chandelier diamond earrings were showcased hanging from beveled mirrors. Pamela caught the reflection of his gaze in the glass.

All she had to do was to quit analyzing the situation so damn much. She was making this harder than it should be.

His steady gaze caught hers, and again she felt it, that wordless connection that sparked between them. She drew in a deep, relaxing breath.

"When you said that you gave me your oath that I would be safe with you, what language were you speaking?" she asked.

"Greek," he said.

"Is that the only other language you speak?"

He shook his head and hesitated before answering. "I have a gift for languages. I speak several."

"Really? I don't speak any other language. Well, I don't count my limited ability to order cheese dip, extra-hot salsa, and beer in Spanish. Actually, what I pretend to speak is probably more like Spanglish anyway."

In response to his questioning look she grinned and explained. "Spanglish - a bad mixture of Spanish and English. I am decidedly not good with languages, and I do envy people who are multilingual."

Her praise made Apollo uncomfortable. His "gift" with languages was nothing special - at least not for the God of Light. He was one of the Twelve Immortals; none of the languages of man were unknown to them.

"I am most fluent in Greek and Latin," he amended.

"What was it you said to me before you went to Armani's? Was that Greek, too?"

He loved how her tawny eyes reflected the faceted light of the diamond jewelry. "Yes, it was Greek. I said, 'Goodbye, sweet Pamela.' Did you know that in Greek your name means exactly that - all that is sweet? Pan is all, and meli is sweet, as in the honey, or the nectar of a flower."

She turned from the mirrors and looked directly up at him. "I had no idea. I've always thought that it was a boring, ordinary name."

"It is anything but that, Pamela."

When he said her name, his accent made it sound mysterious and beautiful. Of course, he could probably make the word excrement sound like a seduction, but, she admitted to herself, she loved knowing that what she had thought of as mundane for her entire life had really been hiding so much more.

"What about your name? What does Phoebus mean?"

"It means light," he said.

Pamela looked up at his bright hair and his eyes that were bluer than a summer sky. "Light," she repeated. "It suits you."

"Now I have a question for you," he said, changing the subject smoothly. "What does the word ginormous mean?"

Her little burst of surprised laughter made her mouth look even more inviting.

"Ginormous is a word my friend, V, and I like to use, but I don't think you'd find it in any dictionaries. It's gigantic and enormous mixed together. Like gihugic is gigantic and huge."

"The same as Spanish and English making Spanglish," he said.

She nodded. "Yep."

"So ginormous means bigger than large," he said as they both remembered that ginormous was how she had described him.

"Exactly," she smiled saucily. Well, there was something about him that went beyond height, that seemed to make him bigger than large. He was ginormous.

One of the multitudes of bellboys opened the glass doors for them, and they exited Caesars Palace. It was, of course, fully dark, but the night teemed with light and sound and excitement. Apollo and Pamela stood frozen, both awestruck by their surroundings. The entire front grounds of the Palace were filled with ostentatious, spurting fountains lit up like a beacon to the heavens. Stretch limos dropped well-dressed couples at the door, and uniformed valets scurried around like liveried mice.

"ƣ�Á¦Ñ¦É?¦Ó¦Ï!" Apollo breathed the Greek curse. He was thoroughly shaken by his first sight of automobiles. Zeus had insisted that before any of the immortals passed through the portal that Bacchus must first explain to them the details of modern day transportation, as well as the mortals' use of currency, electricity, and an extraordinary communication system called the Internet, so Apollo was able to logically identify the madness before him, but seeing the monstrous vehicles that appeared living, yet were actually devoid of all life, as well as the garish way the warm spring night had been illuminated with harnessed electricity, was far more overwhelming than he could have imagined. He focused on the most familiar of the bizarre visions - the fountain - and reminded himself that he was an Olympian god, one of the original Twelve Immortals. He could flatten everything around him with a thought.

One of the shiny black things blared and skidded to a stop as another monstrosity cut in front of it. Apollo moved quickly, placing himself between Pamela and the metal creatures and neatly retucking her from his left to his right arm.

"I know exactly what you're thinking," Pamela said softly.

Apollo's eyes jerked down to meet hers. Rationally he knew that she could not be reading his mind, but the thought of even the slightest possibility of her knowing what was going through his head was alarming.

"You don't have to tell me," she said, eyes sparkling puckishly. "You were thinking that the fountain is ginormous."

He hoped his relief wasn't too obvious. "Tragically, you are wrong," he returned her teasing tone. "I was thinking that it is gihugic."

"Well, that's only because you're confused about the correct usage of the word. Gihugic is not as big as ginormous; therefore, ginormous is the proper word to use when describing that" - she hesitated dramatically, casting her eyes the length of the Palace's front grounds - "that fountain."

He nodded his head in gracious acceptance of defeat. "I concede to you. Yonder monstrosity is definitely ginormous."

"So I wasn't really wrong," Pamela said.

When it came to women, Apollo was no fool in any world. He smiled. "How could anyone so beautiful ever really be wrong?"

"May I call a cab for you and the lovely lady?" One of the bellboys asked.

Apollo's "No!" was spoken with more passion than he intended - and he was suddenly glad that night in this world was already so filled with lights and sounds that the bolt of lightning that flashed across the sky in response to the God of Light's shout went unnoticed. Even so, he made certain to tighten control of his voice. "No," he said with considerably more calm. "The lady and I are walking."

"The Bellagio fountains are not far from here. Right?" Pamela asked.

"Yes, madam," the bellboy pointed. "Follow the sidewalk down to street level, turn right and cross the next street, and you'll be there. You can't miss it."

"Thank you," she squeezed Phoebus' arm. "Ready?"

Apollo was absolutely not ready. He would rather have faced the mighty serpent Python again, alone in the black caves of Parnassus, than to walk out into that alien night. But the petite woman on his arm strode ahead with the confidence of Hercules. Apollo gritted his teeth and plunged forward, all his senses on high alert.

"It's so warm here, really a nice change from Colorado. Even though it's May, we've had an unseasonably cold spring - it snowed again last week." Pamela tilted her head back and flung wide the arm that was not holding his. Laughing, she breathed deeply, loving the warmth of the desert day that still lingered in the air. "I didn't realize how much I'd been craving spring until I got here."

Apollo grunted a vaguely affirmative response. His gaze kept skipping from the enchanting woman at his side to the vehicles that sped past on the crowded street, to the huge glowing signs and towering buildings, many of which had colorful, moving images flashing over them. The thought came to him that he would have to make sure that Zeus ordered the nymphs to stay within the confines of Caesars Palace. Like beautiful little moths, they would be overcome with excitement at all the sparkling, flashing lights if they ventured outside. He hated to think about the scene that would be caused by the fun-loving semideities, drunk on light and sound.

"Careful!" Pamela's voice pulled him back to the modern world as her hand likewise tugged him to a halt. "Whew, that was close. I was so busy gawking that I almost didn't see the street, and this traffic is terrible. We better wait for the light."

They were standing on the corner of a street that seethed with cars, and Apollo realized that if it hadn't been for Pamela, he would have stepped out into the flow of traffic. Of course he couldn't actually be harmed by the metal things, but he certainly didn't want to try to explain to Pamela why he hadn't been smashed to pieces by one of them. Daydreaming in the Kingdom of Las Vegas was not a wise thing for him to do.

"That must be where the fountain show is," she said, pointing across the street to lights reflected off a body of water.

He squinted over the stream of vehicles and people. "I do not see any fountains."

In front of them a red circle changed to a green circle, and the people around them moved forward. Apollo hesitated, but when Pamela stepped confidently into the street, he moved with her, keeping a close watch for any errant vehicles that might streak into their path.

"I don't think the fountains are active unless the show's going on. Here, I'll bet this will tell us about them." She led him to a small signpost giving information on displays. Reading, she nodded, "Yeah, the fountain show begins every quarter hour." She glanced at her watch. "It's eleven twenty-five, so we have five minutes."

Recollecting himself, Apollo tuned out the wash of distractions around him and refocused his attention on the lovely woman he was supposed to be romancing. "Would you like to walk, or would you rather sit and wait for the fountains to begin?" He gestured to one of several marble benches that dotted the wide sidewalk that ran the length of the minilake.

"Walk, definitely," she said, and they began strolling slowly along the bank.

After a small stretch of companionable silence, Pamela said, "This place is such an odd mixture of tacky and refined, don't you think?"

Apollo wanted to tell her she had no idea how odd Las Vegas seemed to him, but he was heartened by the fact that Pamela obviously found their surroundings at least a little unusual, too.

"I couldn't agree with you more," he said.

"I mean, look at that," she pointed towards the opposite side of the street. "Over there it's nothing but one big cheesy 'come spend your money here!' trap after another. But over here it's different." She stopped and leaned against the white marble railing that had been fashioned to look like an old Italian balustrade. It ran the length of the water, separating the sidewalk from the pool. "On this side the street was built to make us believe that we are strolling down a European walkway. The lights aren't neon advertisements, they're lovely old-fashioned streetlamps separated by sweet little trees. And this" - she looked out across the water at the shops and restaurants of the Bellagio - "reminds me of a chic Tuscan village. I know it's all subterfuge, but the imagery works. As a designer I have to applaud a successful masquerade."

Something in her tone called his gaze back to her face. He was surprised to find that she looked sad, and it was that unexpected melancholy that had been mirrored in her voice. Until then she had seemed happy, even giddy, enjoying the evening and their shared conversation. What had happened?

"Is a masquerade such a bad thing?"

"It's not really bad," she said, still looking out across the water. "It's just that I sometimes wonder if anything is really as it seems."

He knew she was speaking of much more than architecture and streetlights. He wanted to comfort her, to tell her that she needn't be so sad. But how could he? He wasn't what he seemed. Or was he? At that moment he felt very much like a man who wanted nothing more than to make a beautiful woman smile.

"Sometimes things are more than they seem, better than they at first appear."

She turned to look at him and was caught in the impossible blue of his eyes.

"I wish that were true, but in my experience things aren't usually better than they pretend to be - it's usually the other way around."

"Perhaps," he said, trailing his fingers lightly across her cheek and down the smooth side of her long neck, "that is because you have not yet had the right kind of experiences."

Pamela's stomach tensed. Apollo bent to brush his lips against hers in a brief, soft suggestion of a kiss. And as their mouths touched, the fountains came alive.