She shot me a glare and dropped her gaze into her lap. My mother looked depressed, like she always did when confronted by my godless ways.

"She knows hundreds of stories," I continued. "Mythology from every continent and every era in time. Mythology about how the world began, what people used to believe-"

"The nice thing about being human," Nell said softly, "is that you can determine the reality of the world for yourself. People have always done that throughout time, and mythology can reveal to us what those creative beliefs were. If you believe that God created the universe and everything in it, you're certainly not alone."

Creative beliefs. I had those sometimes. If I could write a mythology, the reality of the world for myself, it would involve me, Nell, a bedroom, and forever after.

"It's late, Mom. Nell's tired, if the inquisition is over."

"Oh, of course you must be exhausted, dear," she said. "She'll be staying in the smaller guest room, Jeremy. Everyone else will be arriving tomorrow, along with all the kids. Do you like kids, Nell?"

She nodded. "I do, but I haven't been around them much."

"Will you want a big family someday? You know, Jeremy is an uncle fourteen times over."

"Mom!" I said. "It's late, do you mind?"

I led Nell down the hall to the guest room after the awkward leave-takings and good nights.

"Fourteen?" Nell whispered. "You have fourteen nieces and nephews?"

"My brothers and sisters are all breeders. Lots of kids."

"How many brothers and sisters do you have?"

"Five. Two sisters, three brothers."

"Wow."

It seemed strange that she didn't know things about me like how many siblings I had. Why had I told her so little about myself? Why did I know so little about her? I thought on the flight back to Portugal I would ask her hundreds of questions. I wanted to know it all.

"Let me guess." She smiled. "You're the baby of the family."

I slapped her ass. "Why do you say that? Because I'm so immature and self-involved? Actually I was one of the ones in the middle. What about you?"

"I have a big family too. But they're all fucked up."

"You'll find everyone in my family is perfect," I said. "Except me."

"Why did you say that about the Bible? You made me feel totally stupid."

"Well, that's what you believe. We talked about it a long time one night."

"Still, if your parents believe in the Bible, why go out of your way to rub my opinions in their faces?"

"Why hide who you are, just to keep some strangers happy?"

"They're not strangers. They're your parents. Anyway, follow your own advice. Why hide who you are?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why not just tell them what I am to you, if you're so against hiding the truth?"

"Because some truths they just couldn't handle."

"Because you only reveal the truths that make me look bad, not you."

I sighed and glared at her. "It's Christmas Eve tomorrow. Why don't you try to summon up some small inkling of holiday spirit and stop acting like such a bitch?"

She rolled her eyes and started into the bedroom. I stopped her for one long, deep, passionate kiss to replace the sex I couldn't have that I so desperately wanted. I could have tried for a quickie, I suppose, but something about being in my parents' house ruined me for sex.

Later, in my own childhood room, I pulled the box out of my jacket and looked at the ring. She would love it. Girls loved rings, didn't they? This one was big but not too outrageous, a brilliant cut, a rare and exceptionally pure diamond. Just like her.

In the morning the parade of arrivals started. By noon the house was crawling with my annoying siblings and their hyperactive kids. Nell was a champ. No one played the innocent, adoring girlfriend better than her. I loved to watch her and picture her as only I knew her. Dressed in corsets or garters, bound, clamped, tortured, fucked, and in the throes of an orgasm. None of my vanilla siblings could ever understand. None of them would ever have what Nell gave me. I watched her mingle with the other women, all wives and mothers. Somehow she fit in.

Well, I suppose she was a woman after all. She had the genes to be a wife and mother. She hadn't been born a sex toy, and she certainly wouldn't die a sex toy. Someday she would become something more. A student, a mythology expert. A girlfriend, a real one. A wife. She would be somebody's wife someday, wouldn't she? She was almost thirty. She would want to settle down soon.

She held the children and interacted with them differently than I did. Instead of looking at them as nuisances or oddities, she treated them like little people. It was very entertaining to watch. And thought-provoking. When she quieted the colicky baby no one else could quiet, I caught myself wondering what a baby of ours might look like.

Anyway, it didn't matter. She wasn't cut out for the movie-star life, and I wasn't settling down into marriage and parenthood anytime soon.

"Jeremy, Nell is spectacular." My squeaky-clean brother-in-law Ed sidled up to me. "She's great with the babies too," he added, poking me in the side and nearly getting punched in the face for it.

She's great in a lot of ways you would never understand. I was absolutely certain Ed fucked my sister missionary-style every time, if they even had sex anymore after three kids.

"She is great," I agreed, moving out of poking range.

"How long have you been together?"

"Long enough. In my line of work, even a month or two is a golden anniversary."

Ed looked at me with pity. I wanted to punch him again.

"Well, don't let this one get away like the other ones."

I was hard-pressed not to snort at the idea of the other ones "getting away." If he only knew. If all of them only knew, I'd be driven out of the house into the cold and thrown off the side of the mountain. Nell too.

By nightfall, the same conversation had been repeated twenty times, including at least four times by my mother. This one's a keeper. She's so great. Don't let her get away.

I turned the ring around and around in my pocket. I waited until the end of Mom's interminable Christmas Eve dinner, then stood, pretending I didn't hear my mother's small gasp of joy.

The value of family, the magic of love, the blessing of finding the one you're meant to be with, blah-blah-blah... I looked around the table at the smiling faces of my mother and father, my many brothers and sisters and their husbands and wives. I went on and on in the way someone who's done countless press junkets and interviews learns to do, and it sounded good. It sounded like something from a romantic script. Maybe it was from some script I'd read. Whatever. I couldn't repeat it again, because the entire time I was thinking of the ring in my pocket and thinking about giving it to Nell. By the time I went to her and knelt down, everyone knew what was coming-hell, my mother was bawling openly.

Only Nell stared at me in disbelief.

No, not disbelief. Fear, loathing, outrage. Don't do this. Don't make a mockery of me.

"Nell," I said quietly. "I want you to wear my ring."

I emphasized the words I want and purposely declined to ask, Will you marry me? I shoved the ring on her finger before she could pull her hand away.

We left soon after. I used work as an excuse and paid an extra twenty-five hundred dollars to fly us out of Charlotte on Christmas Eve.

"It's just a ring," I said in the car on the way to the airport. "It's just for-"

"For show. I know. It was a wonderful performance. I just wish you had let me in on it in advance."

"Well, these kinds of things are better when they're a surprise."

"These kinds of things? You mean fake engagements?" She crossed her arms over her chest. She was so irresistible when she was pissed off. "You know, this is just like that time you blindsided me with that fucking contract. You're such a sick, sadistic bastard."

"It's just supposed to ward off the stupid stalker. Don't flip out. You overreact about everything. You'd think by now you would just be able to take this stuff in stride."

She didn't answer, and the silent treatment continued all the way across the Atlantic to the layover in London, where we were swarmed by paparazzi begging to see the ring.

Are you engaged? Show us your sparkler, Nell! When's the wedding?

I sheltered her from the pushing and shoving as best I could.

In our remote little villa, we'd started to let our guard down. The paparazzi hadn't been around very much, but the attention would be ten times worse now that this "engagement" was out. My stupid-ass family. Of course they would have called everyone they knew the instant we left. My mother had probably called in an announcement to the Charlotte newspaper when she'd gotten up to bring the coffee and cake.

Of course I'd known people would find out eventually, but this was a really, really bad time to be battered by the paps. I thought about the end of January, returning to L.A. If Nell stayed with me, which seemed very doubtful at this point, life in the spotlight would get very hard for us both. I had the awards season coming up shortly, then the inevitable premieres and appearances to promote this film and another one being released shortly afterward.

God, what was I thinking, giving her a ring? As if she would stay, as if she would put up with that badgering and picture taking for the rest of her life only for me. I grew more and more agitated, torn between ripping it off her finger and gazing at it mesmerized, imagining what might be. She was engaged to me now, and everyone would know it by the time we reached Portugal. It would be in the morning tabloids, on the covers probably.

But none of these troubling and complicated thoughts deterred me from the desperate feeling of needing to be alone with her. I needed to take her, to fuck her. I let her fume and pout beside me, her monosyllabic answers to my questions arousing in their own way. Foreplay. I had no doubt we would exchange some heated words eventually, when it was just her and me and we could openly say what needed to be said. I think that was the whole reason for this middle-of-the-night marathon trip back to the villa. We needed to be alone, truly alone. Actually we needed to be naked.

"I'm going to fuck you when we get there," I whispered to her somewhere between London and Lisbon. "I'm going to tie you up and whip you really, really hard."

She feigned sleep, but I saw the dark circles under her eyes tense a little.

"Pretending you don't hear me doesn't mean it isn't so," I said. "Just so you know."

We arrived at the villa late Christmas Day, jet-lagged and grouchy. We'd both slept almost the entire way across the Atlantic, so we were an unfortunate combination of wide awake and pissed off.

"Go get undressed," I said as soon as we dropped our bags, "and put on something really sleazy."

"Right now? This instant?"

"Don't try me, Nell. Just do what I say."

"I don't have anything sleazy. You don't like sleazy lingerie, remember?"

I took her arm and frowned down at her. "You don't have anything sleazy? Not one thing? You should, for when I feel like treating you like a fucking whore. Just go get something on. Now."

She stomped off to her room and returned a few minutes later in a black push-up bra and garter belt with lace-top stockings. Very nice. Slutty. Black, for mourning. The ring flashed against the dark lace and ribbons, an incongruous sparkle of light.

"Kneel down here." I pointed to a spot in front of the fireplace and then began to build a fire to chase away the cold.

"Why doesn't Kyle join us anymore?" she asked after a while. "I mean, it's been so long."

I looked at her. She was kneeling where I told her to kneel, but she didn't look very submissive.

"Kyle's in L.A. until tomorrow."

"I know. I'm just asking why, in general, he doesn't join us anymore for sex. I used to enjoy getting fucked by him every once in a while."

I laughed. "You're a terrible liar. Honestly, you suck at it."

"Well, why doesn't he?"

"I don't know." She was purposely trying to annoy me, but I wouldn't take the bait. "Maybe because that's not what I want."

"Are we going to sleep with Jessamine and Mason again?"

"Just shut up, Nell." I stacked the small wood near the bottom and lit a match. The fire started slowly, a small flame igniting tinder, then the smaller branches, then up to lick at the larger logs.

"Do you love me, Jeremy?" She asked quietly, but she might as well have screamed it.

I spun on her. "Tell me your name, you little slut, and then I'll tell you if I love you."

"No. I'm never telling you that. You can't have that, not on top of everything else."

I stared down at her, kneeling, her white breasts heaving above the scanty push-up bra, her hands in little fists at her sides.

"What do you ever let me have, Nell, besides your body? Why would I love you?"

"Why did you give me this stupid ring if you don't love me?"

"I told you why."

"I don't believe you."

"You think I love you?" I turned back to the fire, watching the flames rise higher. "Well, I don't. I pay you a lot of money so I don't have to love you, and you don't have to love me."

"I love you," she said.

I turned and glared at her. "You do not."

"I'm very sure I do, even though I wish I didn't. I really wish with all my heart that I didn't love you."

"You don't. This is just more submission, more kneeling, more offering, more 'I'm yours.' You can say it beautifully, but I don't believe any of it, not a word. I never have. I never will. I don't believe you!"