Her lips curve upwards. ‘Like the Greek god of war?’
‘That’s Ares. Poseidon is the Greek god of the sea, water. Earthquakes.’ I laugh.
‘Is Poseidon somehow significant to you?’
‘I’m Poseidon,’ I deadpan.
‘God complex much?’
I laugh. ‘You’re saying you don’t think I’m a Greek god?’
She lifts her brows. ‘Do you think you’re a Greek god?’
‘Hey, some women in the past might have called me—’
She shakes her head, reaching for her wine. ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m sure you’ve had lots of women in the past say lots of things to inflate your ego. Go back to the tattoo. Or did some ex-girlfriend of yours call you Poseidon? Possy?’
My laugh is a growl. ‘No.’
‘You sure? It kind of suits you, Possy.’
‘Stop it, Charlotte.’ My voice holds a warning, but I’m only kidding.
She sips her wine, her eyes sparking with mine. Hell, she’s sexy. ‘All that happens when you call me Charlotte is that you remind me of my brother, and that significantly reduces the likelihood of us having sex. Just FYI.’
‘Duly noted.’ Her tone is light but I know her well enough now to know there’s something more beneath it.
‘It was a dare.’
‘The tattoo?’
‘Yeah.’
‘A dare from who?’
‘Holden. My brother.’ I gloss over the complexity of our situation, not wanting to think about the bombshell that exploded through our lives last year, nor the fact he’s still reeling from it.
We all are.
‘He calls you Poseidon?’
‘I run our shipping business, our maritime construction, all the water stuff,’ I say with a lift of my shoulders, enjoying the way her eyes follow the movement. ‘Jagger’s Zeus—god of the skies, because he runs our construction side. High-rises.’
She makes a cooing noise. ‘This is adorable.’
I picture Jagger and Holden in my mind and try to imagine any circumstances in the world that would justify the three of us being called ‘adorable’. I can’t come up with any. Hell, we’re the exact opposite of that.
‘What’s Holden’s tattoo?’
My frown is reflexive. ‘Hades.’
‘As in hell?’
‘It was his idea.’ I think back to that weekend—Jagger?
??s twenty-first—and how drunk we all were. How Holden suggested the tattoos and casually mentioned he’d be Hades. ‘He runs our casinos; he used to joke that gambling was the devil’s work, so...’
‘Used to?’