Of Poseidon

her, shuffling to the kitchen behind her.
    Rayna is sitting at the table, pulling enough polish, clippers, and buffers out of her kit to open her own nail salon. “I know I said I wanted the French kind, but I really like this color,” she says, holding up a cantaloupe shade.
    Rachel shakes her head. “That’ll look tourist tacky against your olive skin, honey bunches.”
    Hoping to get a different opinion, Rayna jiggles the bottle at me. I shake my head. Pouting, she slams it on the table, then dumps the entire contents of the kit on top of it. “Well, is there any color that would look good?”
    I take the seat next to her. “What’s Toraf’s favorite color?”
    She shrugs. “Whatever I tell him it is.”
    I raise a brow at her. “Don’t know, huh?”
    She crosses her arms. “Who cares anyway? We’re not painting his toenails.”
    “I think what’s she’s trying to say, honey bunches, is that maybe you should paint your nails his favorite color, to show him you’re thinking about him,” Rachel says, seasoning her words with tact.
    Rayna sets her chin. “Emma doesn’t paint her nails Galen’s favorite color.”
    Startled that Galen has a favorite color and I don’t know it, I say, “Uh, well, he doesn’t like nail polish.” That is to say, he’s never mentioned it before.
    When a brilliant smile lights up her whole face, I know I’ve been busted. “You don’t know his favorite color!” she says, actually pointing at me.
    “Yes, I do,” I say, searching Rachel’s face for the answer. She shrugs.
    Rayna’s smirk is the epitome of I know something you don’t know. Smacking it off her face is my first reflex, but I hold back, as I always do, because of the kiss I shared with Toraf and the way it hurt her. Sometimes I catch her looking at me with that same expression she had on the beach, and I feel like fungus, even though she deserved it at the time.
    Refusing to fold, I eye the buffet of nail polish scattered before me. Letting my fingers roam over the bottles, I shop the paints, hoping one of them stands out to me. To save my life, I can’t think of any one color he wears more often. He doesn’t have a favorite sport, so team colors are a no-go. Rachel picked his cars for him, so that’s no help either. Biting my lip, I decide on an ocean blue.
    “Emma! Now I’m just ashamed of myself,” he says from the doorway. “How could you not know my favorite color?”
    Startled, I drop the bottle back on the table. Since he’s back so soon, I have to assume he didn’t find what or who he wanted—and that he didn’t hunt them for very long. Toraf materializes behind him, but Galen’s shoulders are too broad to allow them both to stand in the doorway. Clearing my throat, I say, “I was just moving that bottle to get to the color I wanted.”
    Rayna is all but doing a victory dance with her eyes. “Which is?” she asks, full of vicious glee. Toraf pushes past Galen and plops down next to his tiny mate. She leans into him, eager for his kiss. “I missed you,” she whispers.
    “Not as much as I missed you,” he tells her.
    Galen and I exchange eye rolls as he walks around to prop himself on the table beside me, his wet shorts making a butt-shaped puddle on the expensive wood. “Go ahead, angelfish,” he says, nodding toward the pile of polish.
    If he’s trying to give me a clue, he sucks at it. “Go” could mean green, I guess. “Ahead” could mean … I have no idea what that could mean. And angelfish come in all sorts of colors. Deciding he didn’t encode any messages for me, I sigh and push away from the table to stand. “I don’t know. We’ve never talked about it before.”
    Rayna slaps her knee in triumph. “Ha!”
    Before I can pass by him, Galen grabs my wrist and pulls me to him, corralling me between his legs. Crushing his mouth to mine, he moves his hand to the small of my back and presses me into him. Since he’s still shirtless and I’m in my bikini, there’s a lot of bare flesh touching, which is a little more intimate than I’m used to with an audience. Still, the fire sears through me, scorching a path to the furthest, deepest parts of me. It takes every bit of grit I have not to wrap my arms around his neck.
    Gently, I push my hands against his chest to end the kiss, which is something I never thought I’d do. Giving him a look that I hope conveys “inappropriate,” I step back. I’ve spent enough time in their company to know without