Page 9 of Winning Back Persephone

"True, but lots of people who might want to buy the handbags do. We might not follow the same customs as humans do now, but we have to follow their marketing highs and lows. You know that."

"It hasn't really been an issue.The Underworldis in the god realm, there's no real need to follow the human calendar."

"It would be different if you had a club in the human realm too." I grimaced as the words left my mouth. We'd talked about this so many times, and I knew how he felt about it. Hades was never going to open a club in the human world, he wasn'tinterested in expanding, something that had come between us more than once.

"True." He nodded and picked up his wine, swirling it around and smelling it before he drank. "So, a new launch sounds good. No doubt you'll have another million euro business on your hands before you know it."

"You know me, Hades, I don't rest when it comes to business."

"No, you don't. Though it would be remiss of me not to remind you to have fun sometimes."

"I like working."

He gave me a look that I understood but pretended not to. No doubt he was remembering all of the times he had to remind me to take a break and that workcouldwait until the morning. Whenever he'd done that, it had turned out to be fun, mostly because I got to spend the time with him.

"Maybe we should talk about something else," I murmured.

"All right." He paused for a moment, studying me intently with his dark eyes. "How are you finding Jinx?"

I stared at him in a little bit of shock. "Our dating lives are hardly a better subject than the reason we ended things."

He shrugged. "The only other thing I could think of was asking how your mother is, but that didn't seem any better."

I snorted. "She's as insufferable as you can imagine her being. She wants me to move back in."

"You're not living with Demeter?" There was a hint of surprise on his face.

"What? No, of course not."

"I just thought you would. When we took a break last time, that's where you went."

"That was over two thousand years ago," I reminded him. "I'm not about to be the two-and-a-half-thousand-year-oldgoddess who lives with her mother. Could you imagine?" A shudder ran through me even as I thought about it.

"She'd probably put a curfew on you and ban you from travelling to the god realm."

Without meaning to, I laughed. "And that would probably just be punishment for me lying to her about the fact I could only stay in the human world with her for half the year because of some pomegranate seeds. I still can't believe how long she was fooled by that one."

He chuckled. "Or by the fact you snuck back to the god realm every chance you got during the time you were supposed to be in the human world."

"You're a far better cook than my mother, and your bed was much more inviting. Wait, that's not what I meant."

"I know what you meant, Sephie," he said softly.

"It's just that it was more comfortable," I said quickly, though I didn't think he bought the lie. It was definitely because he was also there. It wasn't even about sex, though that had been good, it was having the warmth of his arms around me and the sound of his breathing lulling me into sleep.

Things I still missed.

Our food arrived, breaking through the tension building between us. I should have walked away when I realised I'd been sent on a date with Hades. I wasn't even sure how it had happened, there were supposed to be checks in place that meant this kind of thing could be avoided.

At least I enjoyed his company, and this wasn't a situation where we were exes who couldn't stand one another.

Though I had to wonder what it meant that Hades was my best match, considering all the resources and love gods that Jinx had at its disposal.

Chapter 6

PERSEPHONE

The sound of my doorbell made me go tense, and an irrational part of me wondered if it was Hades on the other side of the door. It was highly improbable when he had no idea where I lived, and he wasn't the type to ask anyone in order to track me down.

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