With love to the real Pamela,

owner of Ruby Slipper Designs,

who found her Apollo in Keith.

Lucky girl!

Acknowledgments

I am profoundly grateful to my good-humored friend, Pamela Rooks, who let me borrow her name and her business and then let me fictionalize… fictionalize… fictionalize! I would also like to thank her clients who patiently allowed me to traipse through their lovely homes as I followed their interior designer and asked a zillion questions.

Thank you and a wink to my fabulous webgoddess, Shawn Wilson, who bears an amazing resemblance to Vernelle…

And, as always, I am grateful for my Goddess Editor, Christine Zika, and my friend and agent, Meredith Bernstein.

"I have made my decision, Bacchus. The portal will remain open."

As Zeus spoke, he turned his back on the corpulent god and rested his hands against the smooth top of the marble railing that framed the balcony. He gazed down at the Great Banquet Hall of Olympus. The magnificent room was teeming with young gods and goddesses. Zeus' smile became self-satisfied. The immortals were matchless in their beauty, and when they gathered as they did on this evening, their combined allure was more resplendent than all the stars in the heavens. Then his expression sobered. No matter how perfect their exterior, he had slowly been forced to admit to himself that there was something lacking in the group below him.

They lacked the sublimely mortal touch of humanity.

The Supreme Ruler of the Gods indulged himself briefly in a particularly enticing remembrance. Aegina… she had been the most lovely of maidens. Her skin had been seductive mortal cream. He could still feel the imprint of its unique softness as she had pressed herself willingly against his feathered back when he changed himself into a mighty eagle and carried her away to make love to her. No, her body had not had the sheen of perfection that gilded a goddess's complexion, but she had responded to his touch with a naive exuberance that no goddess could ever match.