Accidentally Aphrodite (23 page)

“Can we take a walk?”

“You bet. Lemme grab my coat.”

Slipping out her apartment door, she waited for him at the top of the steps. Seeing his handsome face and thickly muscled body coming up the stairs made her throat tighten.

Quinn headed toward the small park he’d found her in the other night, aimlessly walking as the sun began to set and she attempted to gather up the courage to say what she had to say. To really live in reality for the first time.

She stopped at the park’s entry and looked up at him in all his perfection. His smooth olive skin, his eyes, warm and brown with gold flecks. Those lips she’d savored like a fine wine last night.

“Wanna tell me what’s up?”

No. No, she didn’t. But she would. So she’d never get swept up in her daydreaming again. “I think I’m going to be okay now.”

He grinned. “Of course you will. You matched your ex and his new girlfriend today. Nothing says okay like that.”

Quinn shook her head, burying her chin in her scarf to keep the tears from falling. “No. I mean about being Aphrodite. I think I can handle it now. On…alone. On my own.”

His gaze deepened, his eyes swirled with emotion. “Is this about last night?”

She put her cold fingers to his lips and gulped. “Don’t say anything about last night.
Please.
It was amazing and wonderful, and despite the fact that I matched Igor today, I’m still a little raw. Maybe even a little unsure of my personal choice-making skills right now. But I’ll never regret what happened between us, Khristos. Not ever. You’ve taught me so much about myself and love and given me insight into a million different things. I’m just not in the right head space…”

“I get it,” he said—the very words she knew he’d speak.

Her pulse throbbed in her ears. If this was the right thing, if she was basing her new choices in smarter life journeys to avoid crashing and burning for the umpteenth time, why did it feel so differently than it had with any other breakup?

Why did it feel like her chest would explode and she’d never be the same if she didn’t spend at least some part of her day with Khristos? She hardly knew him. Incredible sex wasn’t the only kind of glue holding a relationship together.

Maybe this was what doing the right thing felt like—and it sucked.

Grabbing his hand on impulse, she looked up at him and forced a smile. “You were the best teacher ever. But you have a life I know you want to get back to—even if it isn’t really filled with leggy blondes and big yachts. You’re free now. You deserve the chance to live without the apple around your neck like some monkey on your back. I can handle this alone now, I think. We knew that was what would happen eventually, right?”

“That was the plan,” he said quietly, his voice eerily tight.

“And I’ve already asked Nina and the rest of the girls if they’ll stay with me in case these bad guys we haven’t heard from since I was knocked on my ass show up. You said yourself; we don’t have any super-strength or whatever to protect me. So if someone’s still coming for me, why should you be in the line of fire?”

“Quinn—”

“No!” she almost shouted then pulled back and inhaled a steadying breath. “Don’t say anything else. I can always get in touch with you if I find myself with a question. Just go enjoy your freedom, Khristos. Besides, before long, I’m sure we’ll see each other around on the forums or maybe even at a virgin sacrifice,” she teased.

Throwing her arms around his neck, she hugged him hard, savoring his scent, memorizing the way his hands felt at her waist.

She took a step away and smiled. “I’m gonna go get some of that amazing pizza Arch was talking about. We goddesses need our fuel. See you back at my place for one last dinner before you set your charge free on the world at large?”

He stared at her for a moment as snow began to fall, wreathing his body in shimmering white. “You bet,” he murmured.

And then she turned and began to walk, trying to keep from running until she was out of his line of sight.

When tears stung the corners of her eyes, she fought them hard.

Because doing the right thing and making healthy life choices wasn’t always easy or pain-free.

Right.

Right?

Chapter 14

A
s Quinn walked away, it hit him all at once. He wanted this woman—and she was letting him go so she wouldn’t make another poor choice. She was playing things smart for her future. They didn’t know each other on a deep, personal level yet. They’d spent a week wandering around New York City, matching people up, and then they’d made insanely incredible love.

Lovemaking he couldn’t forget—her soft curves, her willingness, her sweet lips against his when she came. He’d only just begun to taste her, and she was out.

All in the span of the week, a week Quinn could have chosen to turn into one big fairytale. Which quite obviously, she was opting out of doing.

Yet, he felt as if he’d always known her. And the parts he didn’t know, he wanted to know.

Did love happen that fast?

Of course it does, you dipshit. You’ve seen it hundreds and thousands of times in the course of your mother’s reign as Aphrodite.

Just as it hit him and he made sense of his feelings after last night, just as he’d been about to confess he was falling in love with her—she’d dumped his ass like a she was making a deposit at a Jersey landfill.

He took his time walking back to her place, each step he took, feeling worse than he had the step before. His chest ached—tight with the words he’d wanted to say to Quinn.

When he approached Quinn’s, peering around the railing to her steps and into the basement window like some lovesick fool, his chest hurt harder.

Fuck.

Marty was setting the table. Wanda was laughing about something with Carl. Archibald was waving his finger around with Darnell following his instructions. Ingrid sat in a corner, curled up with one of her medical books.

And Quinn was lying on the couch, a gel pack over her eyes.

Clearly, dumping him had been exhausting.

And that longing he’d once described to Quinn assaulted him once more.

He was going to throttle his mother’s pretty neck when he got ahold of her for ever giving him the damn apple to guard in the first place.

His mother was…

His. Mother.

A memory slammed into his brain all at once. How could he have forgotten that screaming match with her over a decade ago?

Jesus. He could fix this insane longing for a woman who didn’t want him in no time flat. All he had to do was find his mother, and if the forums weren’t deceiving him, she was happily posting under the alias she thought no one knew about.

Except he knew about it, and it was time he and his mother had a long talk about apples and her lack of grandchildren and making him fall in love with a woman who very clearly had no interest in him.

Sending a quick text to Marty, Wanda and Nina, with a warming to keep a sharp eye on Quinn, he snapped his fingers. Because ending this shitty brand of suffering needed to happen now.

“Mother!” he bellowed, storming through her bleached-white, rose-filled cottage on Mt. Olympus. “You can’t hide forever!”

His mother appeared from behind the column on the small patio overlooking the ocean, her hair piled on top of her head, her reading glasses perched at the end of her nose. Wind chimes tinkled and the ocean breeze wafted in on a perfumed breeze.

“Khristos! Oh, honey, it’s so good to see you!”

He stopped short in front of her, pulling off his jacket and knit hat and letting them drop in a wet puddle to the floor. “First of all, don’t you ‘it’s so good to see you, pookie’ me like I haven’t been trying to get in touch with you for almost a week,” he growled.

She patted his cheek with a warm smile. “Don’t get in such an uproar, it does ugly things to your skin, Khristos. And pick up those clothes. I just washed the floors and you’re dripping all over them.”

Patience. He pleaded with the gods for patience so he wouldn’t throttle her pretty neck. “
Where
have you been?”

She shrugged her slim shoulders and said evasively, “Around. Resting, discovering a life that’s all mine now to do as I please.”

“How could you just abandon your duties like that?”

“They were no longer my duties, precious. You fixed that. Besides, you know how to take care of business. I taught you well. I trusted you’d teach that adorable Quinn everything she needed to know. And you did. Just look at her, making matches faster than
Match.com
.”

His gut stung. He didn’t want to hear about matches or love. He just wanted this ache in his chest to damn well go away.

Khristos sucked in the sea air and clenched his jaw. “Okay. That aside, I need you to make it stop. Make it stop
now
.”

His mother’s beautiful face, like creamy porcelain and peaches, looked astonished. “Make
what
stop, darling?”

“That overbearing, controlling, give-me-grandchildren-or-I’ll-make-you-miserable love spell you put on the apple. You know, I almost forgot about it until today, when I was having my ass handed to me by my never-gonna-believe-in-fairytales-again Quinn. And then I remembered that argument we had, and it all made sense.”

Her look of bewilderment almost had him. Almost. Damn, she was good. “A love spell on the apple? Argument? I didn’t do anything to it but leave it in your care, Khristos.”

“That’s crap, and you damn well know it, Mom!” he thundered, glowering down at her, his jaw tight. “You’ve used that apple to keep me in check for centuries. You said so yourself.”

She made a pouty face, crossing her arms over her chest. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. You just watch your tone there, son. How dare you come storming in here and yell accusations at me. Just who do you think you are?”

He tried to remember his father’s words—to be patient with his mother. To love her for who she was, not who he wanted her to be. But goddamn it, this loving someone who didn’t love you back was pretty shitty.

Knock it off, good man, next you’ll be playing Air Supply and wandering around sniffing Quinn’s frilly pillows. Fight for your man-card.

He had to fight not to seethe his next words. “You’re joking, right? How can you stand there and tell me you had nothing to do with what’s happening to me?”

“
What
is happening to you, honey?”

“Have you already forgotten what you said to me?”

Aphrodite yanked her glasses off and set her book on a nearby table littered with pictures of them, happy, laughing, playing badminton with Zeus and his brood. “What exactly did I say to you?”

“You told me if a woman ever got her hands on the apple—which the stats favored; I mean, how many men do you know who’d be kooky enough to confess their love woes to an apple in the Parthenon?—you said I’d fall helplessly in love with her. Yes, you did. Which to me meant, better hang on to that damn apple, Khristos, or possibly end up in love with a serial killer. It was your controlling way of demanding I get busy and make you some grandchildren.”

Aphrodite appeared to pause in thought before she said, “Was your grandmother on that damn tour bus to the Parthenon again?”

“Bingo, Mom! She fed Quinn that crazy story about talking to the apple about her breakup with the man she wanted to marry to purge her soul of strife or whatever the story was. Quinn, being the mythology addict she is, and still pretty sore from the end of the relationship she thought would lead to marriage,
believed her
.”

“Does she still smell like a goat?”

“
Who
?” he all but shouted.

“Grams, of course.”

“Rumor has it, yes.”

Aphrodite grinned. “So she’s still selling that story to the tourists? Gods, she’s good. She cracks me up.”

“Is that the point? No. The point is, Quinn is now Aphrodite, and I’m in love with her because you couldn’t keep your nose out of my life! If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times—let
me
find the love of my immortal life. But no, you just couldn’t let it be.”

“I’m still missing something here…”

He ran a hand over his jaw with an exasperated sigh. “How convenient you’ve forgotten that argument. I almost did, too. But then I remembered, it was like World War III. We didn’t speak to each other for almost a decade. And I remember that threat—clearly. So make it go away.
Now
!”

Aphrodite laughed, a bubbling chuckle of casual abandon. “Oh, honey, no, no. no. I would never actually put a love spell on the apple. I said I
should
put a spell on the apple so you’d stop chasing women. Your memory’s slipping, son. Try some ginko biloba. I hear it helps. I was just keeping you on your toes to teach you about consequences, give you responsibilities to tend. You know how I feel about my past, how remorseful I am for some of the horrible things I did in my misguided, orgy-filled youth.”

Khristos cringed and held up a hand. “Stop right at orgy, please.”

His mother shook her head as the room tinkled with more of her laughter. “I’ve told you at least a thousand times about all the trouble I’ve made, and not without good reason. I told you because I didn’t want that for you, and the way things were shaping up, with you off chasing every toga from here to eternity, I had to do something, didn’t I?”

He damn well didn’t chase togas.

Wait—what?

There was no spell? He’d spent the better part of his adult life pretending to be something he wasn’t to avoid getting caught in a web that didn’t even exist?

Which meant—he really was falling in love with Quinn?

Oh, fuck.

“Do you mean to tell me that I’m not falling in love with her because of a love spell, but because…”

“Just because, honey.” Aphrodite smiled at him, a smile beaming with love. “There’s no spell, no shenanigans, nothing. That’s your heart, telling you you’ve found the one. I’m so happy for you, Khristos! Oh, we’ll have grandchildren in no time!” She whirled around, clapping her hands. “Mom!” she yelled. “Did you hear?”