Accidentally Aphrodite (12 page)

“So you’ve known Archibald a long time?” They’d seemed like old friends, laughing and talking about past get-togethers during the course of dinner.

“Yep. Since he was a vampire and I was just a kid. He’s a good guy and his game-day feasts, especially his artichoke dip, are what dreams are made of.”

She smiled absently, running her finger over the rim of her coffee mug, tamping down her envy. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around this paranormal thing. Hearing the word vampire as though it isn’t crazy is still a bit of a struggle.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

“So tell me about you. What do Greek gods do all day long?”
Attend orgies?

“I’m not a god. I’m just a descendent of one.”

“But it has its perks.”

“If by perks you mean guarding an apple with the power to make or break humankind, sure. It’s very perky.”

Was that bitterness she was hearing? Or boredom? She couldn’t read his tone well enough to know just yet. “You’re being very vague. Why is that, Khristos with a K? C’mon, you can tell me. Do you organize orgies? Iron togas? Make head wreaths out of olive leaves? Sip ouzo while beautiful women pop juicy olives into your mouth all day long as you bask in the glow of Mt. Olympus?”

He cocked a dark eyebrow at her and wiggled it. “I handed over orgy organization to a lowly serf years ago. After a while, when you’ve seen one orgy, you’ve seen them all. Togas get all tangled up around your feet if you’re not careful, not to mention a stiff breeze can present a problem. I hate olives and I prefer whiskey. Jack, to be specific, just in case you pick my name out of the hat for the white elephant this Christmas.”

“So you don’t have a job?”

“My job is to guard the apple.”

“And that’s it? Who pays your bills? Wait, do descendants of Greek gods have bills?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I have bills. How do you suppose we keep the Parthenon up and running? You don’t think sweeping off all those steps just happens, do you? It’s a collective god effort.”

He was mocking her, and the edge to his tone was growing harder by the second—which meant back off. What difference did it make what he did with his days anyway? It was none of her business.

She sat back in the booth and slammed her flappy lips shut. Keeping her distance from Khristos was the smartest thing to do. The less personal they became, the less trouble she could find herself in. She wasn’t going to let his classically handsome face and incredibly hot body, with abs that rippled beneath his stupid sweater that also accented his eyes, sway her either.

They could just sit in silence for the duration as far as she was concerned. Rooting around in her purse, she felt for the current book she was reading, soothed by the cover and the cool feel of it beneath her fingertips.

As she was about to pull it out and bury herself in it, Khristos surprised her.

“So can I ask
you
a question?”

“I refuse to take over the organization of orgies. I have to have boundaries. Togas are out. I’m too pale to wear white successfully. But I love olives, and while ouzo isn’t really my thing, I’m all for making head wreaths from olive leaves. I was hell on wheels in my last craft class.”

Khristos snorted. “No orgies. Noted. But my question is a little more personal.”

Oh, so now the hunky god wanted something from her that he, himself, wasn’t willing to provide? Huh. She folded her hands on the tabletop, watching the play of the neon signs flash over his face. “And that question is?”

“Igor. How did the two of you end up together? You both seem a pretty unlikely pair.”

How did he know anything about Igor other than what she’d shared out loud at the Parthenon? “How do you know what Igor is or isn’t like?”

“Because I do my homework, and you became my homework when you bit the apple. I needed to understand your state of mind, and how it came to be, in order to understand how to proceed. Being as you’re freshly broken up, it sometimes creates havoc with oversensitivity. No slight to you, it’s just how the heart and mind work.”

Her cheeks grew hot at the memory of all she’d confessed to that stupid apple. “He came into the bookstore where I work a lot.” Like every day for two solid weeks, watching her, flirting with her, asking for suggestions about books she liked.

“And?”

And she thought her daydreaming days had ended when she’d found Igor. He read Shelley and Keats to her while he peered at her over horn-rimmed glasses and she rested her feet in his lap, sipping Bordeaux.

They’d watched
Wuthering Heights
and
Gone With the Wind
together on Saturday nights, rebuffing loud nightclubs and crowded restaurants for crackers with Brie and strawberries dipped in chocolate while the strains of Chopin or Beethoven could be heard from her CD player.

They drank wine and talked classic literature while Rachmaninoff and Paganini dusted her cloud of love with the magical arrows of Cupid.

She rolled her shoulders. “And I dunno. He was smart and funny and well versed in all sorts of things I’m interested in, I guess.”

“So you had a lot in common?”

Had they? Looking back now, she wasn’t sure if he’d just pretended to have a lot in common with her because he wanted in her drawers. If Shawna was who he’d turned to, a woman she had absolutely nothing in common with aside from gender, how much did Igor really enjoy
Wuthering Heights
and listening to Paganini?

“I thought we did. Maybe in hindsight we didn’t.” This was uncomfortable and embarrassing, but it wasn’t as if he didn’t know the whole story anyway.

Khristos nodded, sipping his milkshake. “Nope. You didn’t. But he let you believe you did and you went along for the ride.”

Anger spiked along her spine at being exposed. “And you know this how?”

“Because Igor transforms himself every time some pretty woman catches his eye. You could have been into breeding scorpions and sword swallowing, and he’d have said he was, too. In the end, it all comes crashing down around his ears because he’s not really into sword swallowing. In fact, it bores him to tears. His reasons for beginning a relationship with you or anyone have little to do with anything other than the desire to have sex. At first, anyway. You saw the signs, you just chose to ignore them.”

“Scorpions have breeders?”

He rolled his eyes in that adorable way he did when she was pushing him over the edge of his patience. “Don’t avoid what’s unpleasant by deflecting. You know exactly what I mean. You didn’t feel Igor there,” he said, pointing to the area where her heart pounded erratically. “You felt him in your pretty head.”

Quinn snorted. “So you’re saying he pretended to like poetry readings and quiet nights by the fire because he wanted my smokin’-hot bod, and I let him because I wanted him to be someone he’s not? I think you can clearly see there’s nothing smokin’ about me unless you count my new melons, which I hope you’re going to talk to someone about deflating. Like, soon? Please? Bras cost the earth for a double-D.”

Khristos grabbed her fingers, forcing Quinn to look at him, leaving her uncomfortable with the depth of his gaze. “Don’t underestimate your feminine wiles, Quinn. You have plenty of those. That’s not what I’m saying at all. What I’m saying is, Igor doesn’t know what he wants specifically—what he
does
know is he just doesn’t want to be alone.”

She cocked her head and paused. What Khristos said washed over her in waves of truth. It explained why she spent so much time convincing herself Igor loved her, even though he’d declared as such. She’d never felt terribly secure when he assured her he felt the same way. Maybe because his words had never really rung true?

Ow.

That hurt—to be duped, to be used. “So he spent all that time with me, pretending to be something he wasn’t, just to avoid being alone. Perfect. I love the idea that I was a some kind of placeholder for Shawna.”

“You weren’t a placeholder for her, per se. Shawna could have been anyone, Quinn. She could have been your next door neighbor.”

“I bet Lydia would’ve loved to have known that.”

His adorable face scrunched up in a “huh?” look. “Who’s Lydia?”

“Our old next-door neighbor. She’s eighty-three, watches
Judge Judy
at ear-shattering decibels and loves pickled gefilte fish.”

“You love to avoid, don’t you?”

Quinn put her hands to her chest and mocked surprise with the bat of her eyelashes. “Me? The woman who’s been looking for her Mr. Darcy since she was old enough to know what the words ‘unrealistically’ and ‘romantic’ meant? That’s just plain silly.”

But suddenly, Khristos wasn’t joking. His face took a harder turn. As though he needed to drum into her head why she’d been so wrong about Igor. “My point is, Shawna could have been anyone. You were a placeholder until he figured out what he wants—and he was
yours
, by the way.”

She didn’t like that. She didn’t like it at all. “Igor’s a jerk.”

He pushed his milkshake aside, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Igor’s just confused.”

“Are you defending him?”

“Someone has to. I mean, the guy went to poetry readings for you. I’d rather watch paint dry than sit through something like that. But I won’t do something I’m completely disinterested in just to avoid sleeping alone. If I’m honest, I feel a little sorry for him. He was pretty lost for a really long time.”

Was? Her cheeks went hot, her jaw tight. “Oh, and I suppose now he’s not lost because Shawna and her ripped body and skimpy clothing helped him find his way?”

Khristos stared at her for a moment before he answered. “I don’t know if he’s still lost. But forget Igor. What I’m saying is, he was the wrong man for
you
, Quinn. I am absolutely
not
saying his infidelity was okay or fair to you. But in the long run, you’re better off because Igor doesn’t know what he wants in a life partner. You do.”

“The hell I do. I don’t know what I want, because when I think I
have
what I want, what I want turns out to be a fat lie.”

“All the romantic notions aside, like sunsets and picnics in the park while the breeze blows through all that luscious hair of yours, you want two things, Quinn. You want unconditional acceptance, and a real man with unshakeable morals.”

He thought her hair was luscious?

Knock that right off, dreamweaver.

Her heart crashed against her ribs. Yes. That was what she wanted. “Well, I didn’t get that, which is why I stink at this Aphrodite thing thus far. And isn’t what I did the same thing as what Igor did? I allowed myself to ignore the signs he was wrong for me because I didn’t want to be alone?”

Khristos shook his head. “You’re not afraid to be alone, Quinn. You’ve done that before and you were perfectly happy with your life and your books. A little lonely? Maybe. A little isolated because you live in those books you read so many of? Maybe. But you weren’t miserable. Igor is miserable. With himself, with his life. His validation comes from the coup of getting the girl. Once he has her, and she’s not what he’d hoped, he strays because he’s always searching instead of finding out what it is he wants. Instead of learning to like his own damn company. And yes, you were happy with Igor for a time, but you didn’t love him the way you want to love a man, the way you should love a man, and you never would have. Eventually, you would have been discontent and grossly disappointed.”

“Well, how nice. Got a big fat bow you can slap on that evaluation of my love life?”

He looked perplexed and it showed when he frowned. “Don’t take insult, Quinn. I’m just trying to help you get over your breakup.”

“Phew. You’re a real soother, huh? Next time, just hand me the gallon of ice cream and skip the assessments. It would be kinder.”

Still, he persisted as though he just didn’t get how insensitive his words came off. “I’m just trying to help you understand how this works in correlation to you.”

Using the heels of her hands, she pressed them against the table and stretched her arms. “Right, so we can hurry things along and you can get back to your playboying. Forgive me in all my novice for holding you up.”

“No. That’s not it at all. I’m telling you this for the future. So you know what you need to look out for. You want a man who challenges you. Not a man who conforms to your idea of what the perfect mate should be—because that’s not a man. Men—good, honest men—stay true to who they really are.”

She bobbed her head, grabbing her hat and her purse, her lips tight. “Thanks for all the man-fo. Look, I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere tonight. The feeling I had after dinner is long gone, and if you don’t mind, I’m really tired. So I’m just going to go home and get into bed and ponder all the things you tell me I want. I’ll see you back at my place later.”

She slid out of the red-and-white vinyl booth and snatched her jacket from the hook, trying not to stomp off like a two-year-old having a temper tantrum. Swinging open the glass door, she padded down the steps, her anger fueling each stride.

She wanted a man who challenged her. Really? She jammed her arms into her coat, making a face of disgust when she couldn’t zip it up over her stupid, oversized hooters.

As she made her way out of the small parking lot and onto the curb, she thought ugly thoughts. Thank God for Khristos and his analysis. How had she gotten to the ripe old age of thirty-five without it?

What hurts more, Quinn? The fact that he’s spot on, or the fact that you weren’t smart enough to figure it out for yourself and a man who bed hops had to tell you?

Dragging her purse over her shoulder, she simmered as she walked beneath the heavy, cloud-covered night, going over Khristos’s words about Igor and his desire to have anyone beside him in his ugly bed with the equally ugly leather headboard, as long as that someone had a pulse.

In the height of her reflection, she almost mistook the sound of someone crying for street noise. But the rawness of it caught her ear and made her pause. Her eyes scanned the street, not terribly well lit, and quite honestly, it was stupid on her part to be walking alone.