That is, if Tabitha didn't die first of hormonal overload poisoning.
"You know, I've always heard people say it should be illegal to look that good, but in your case, it really is true."
He frowned at her.
Tabitha grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the stairs. "C'mon, there's no time to waste."
"Where are you taking me?"
"I need a favor from you."
Valerius was oddly flattered by her request. It was extremely rare that anyone ever asked him for a favor. Those were things most people reserved for people they considered friends.
"What do you need?"
"Marla needs an escort for the Ms. Red Light pageant."
Valerius stopped immediately. "She what?"
Tabitha turned to face him. "Oh come on, please don't be a prude here. You're Roman, for heaven's sake."
"Yes, but that doesn't mean I have some innate qualification to be an escort for a transvestite. Tabitha, please."
She looked so disappointed that it actually made him feel guilty.
"Marla has been practicing for this for months now and her guy cancelled on her tonight. Her number-one competitor bribed him to escort her instead. If Marla loses, this will kill her."
"I have no desire to be paraded around a group of gay men."
"It's not a parade... exactly. All you need to do is walk her out in the very beginning when they introduce her. It'll only take a few minutes and that's it. C'mon, Val. She spent a year's salary on this gorgeous Versace gown."
Tabitha looked up at him with the most pathetically heartfelt gaze he'd ever seen. It absolutely melted him.
"There's no one else to call on such a short notice. She needs a really elegant man. Someone who's first class and I don't know anyone else who fits the bill. Please? For me? I swear I'll make it up to you."
Personally, he'd rather be beaten and killed... again. And yet he couldn't find it within himself to disappoint her.
"What if one of them gropes me-"
"They won't. I promise, I'll protect all your..." She arched a brow as she looked at his derriere. "Assets."
"And if anyone ever learns of this-"
"They won't. I'll take it to my grave."
Valerius let out a long breath. "You know, Tabitha, anytime in my life I have ever sought to help anyone, I've only made it worse for them. I have a bad feeling about this. Something will go wrong. Watch and see. Marla will fall off the stage and break her neck, or worse, her big wig will catch on fire."
She waved her hand dismissively. "You're being paranoid."
No, he wasn't. And as she led him toward the front door, every horrible memory of his life played through his mind... The time when he'd felt sorry for Zarek and had tried to soothe him after a beating. His father had then forced him to beat Zarek more. He'd pulled back the strokes, hoping they wouldn't be as painful as the ones his father had given Zarek. Instead, he'd ended up blinding the poor slave.
Then when he'd tried to keep Zarek from being caught outside the confines of their villa, he'd caused his father to pay a slaver to take Zarek away from everything the boy had known.
As a first-time general, he'd had a young soldier under his command who was the last surviving son of his family. Hoping to keep the youth away from the battlefield, he had sent him as a messenger to another Roman camp.
The boy had died two days out from an attack by rogue Celts who had stumbled across him.
And Agrippina...