Accidentally Aphrodite (8 page)

What would she defend herself with? Her vast jugs and miles of charm?

Nina let her head fall back on her shoulders with a groan of pure displeasure. “Oh, come
on
, Whiny Pants. It’s GD matchmaking, not brain surgery. It’s not like you accidentally got some rare super power the entire dark side wants. It’s hooking people up, you twit. Like this is totally your gig, Lady Lumps. Think of it as one big episode of
The Bachelor
where every day somebody gets a stupid rose.”

So many surprises tonight. “
You
watch
The Bachelor
?” Quinn squawked.

It was one of the shows she’d vowed to give up on the mental list of things she’d made as she’d packed her bags in a flurry to come home from Greece while Nina barked orders about sharp objects and no more than two ounces of fluid per flight.

“Yeah. When these two fuc…
nitwits
make me. I do a lot of Monday-night shifts at OOPS, and they always force me to watch under the label ‘girls’ night.’ There’s popcorn and wine and all sorts of shiz I can’t eat or drink. There’s crying and wadded-up tissues and big, girlie sighs when those heifers are chosen like cattle at a 4H fair.”

Marty sighed a raspy escape of air. “We come to keep you company. That we happen to watch
The Bachelor
while we do it is pure coincidence. And I hate to say it, Quinn, but I agree with Nina. This is your thing! Your moment to shine. If what Ingrid tells us is true, who knows more about romance than you?”

Oh, just everyone on the planet? She knew when to quit, and after Igor and the humiliating debacle of his infidelity with Shawna Sutter, it was blatantly obvious she didn’t know real love from a boil on her ass.

Dropping back to the couch, Quinn shook her head. “I think my record stands for itself at this point. I can’t find my own soul mate. How can I be trusted to find someone else’s? So maybe there’s a way we can pass this power off to someone else. Maybe knock down a better candidate and make them bite the apple? I’ll hold ’em down if you steamroll.” She held up a fist to Ingrid to encourage her help. “You in, buddy?”

Khristos slid forward on the coffee table then, bracketing her face with his big hands. “Quinn, look at me and listen to my words. There is no handing this off to someone. This is
forever
. The second you nicked that apple with your teeth was the second you gave up your mortality and became Aphrodite. Period.”

Mortality? “I’m immortal now, too?”

Khristos nodded his dark head. “Just like Dracula.”

“I don’t like this turn of events.”

“I don’t get this sudden change of heart. Back in Greece, you were all eye of the tiger.”

That’s because Ingrid had been right. She’d been in shock. Now that shock had worn off, and quite frankly, she wanted out.

“Your motherland does something to me I can’t quite explain. Plus, I’m sure I had a touch of heat stroke. I mean, my boobs did inflate. All that pumping me up must have in turn deflated my brain cells. Something clearly had to give. But I’m back on my turf now and my turf says I’m the minimum wage of Aphrodites.”

“On the contrary, darling,” a disembodied voice scolded, though it was tinkly and light.

Quinn’s heart began to race as her eyes scanned the room. The air grew still again, much like it had back at the Parthenon. Which meant she was in line for a Nicki Minaj ass.

Immediately, she was on her feet and tripping over Khristos’s shoes to get to Nina. Scooping Buffy and Spike up, she huddled them close and hopped in Nina’s lap before wrapping her arms around her neck and burying her face in the vampire’s thick cloud of hair.

And then the voice spoke again while the air crackled with fissions of electric blue and pink and the room rumbled all around them. “You will perform your duties as Aphrodite, Quinn, and you will perform them well, or my son will suffer the wrath of the gods!”

Chapter 5

A
h. There she was. He’d known it wouldn’t be long until word made it to her that her power had been taken.

Perfect.

“Get off me, Lite-Brite or I’ll give you a real reason to freak,” Nina ordered, attempting to pull out of Quinn’s hold on her. “Jesus H, you’re like a damn octopus.”

Nina lifted Quinn up off her lap and stood her in the corner of the room, but Quinn wasn’t letting go. She clung to Nina’s hand, her legs visibly shaking as the other women rushed to her side.

Khristos looked heavenward, hands on hips, ready for third-degree verbal lacerations from his mother’s sharp tongue. But he wouldn’t allow her to frighten Quinn. This wasn’t her fault.

“Mom, knock off the big, scary disembodied voice thing, would you?” he ordered. “Delicate flower here. If you want to rumble, show yourself. But you’ll do all the rumbling with
me
.”

Silence. Deafeningly so.

He was getting the silent treatment—which was just as well, considering the vocal treatment involved things breaking and sometimes a slight shift in Mt. Rushmore. But it also meant she was pretty damn pissed. And to be fair, she should be.

She’d just lost the power to do what she loved to do best. Meddle. Mythology told the story of Aphrodite, the master at evoking love and lust in men, and while that much was once true, the game had grown cold for his mother—whose real name was Esther-Lou.

She’d mellowed over the centuries, and what she really loved was helping people find love and happily ever afters—likely because she couldn’t find one of her own. But she loved love in all shapes and sizes. Especially if you took into account the amount of Hallmark movies she watched as a barometer for her sentimental streak.

Yet, she’d been talking about retiring for years now. She was tired. She’d complained just last family dinner about it. She wanted to travel, maybe find a nice condo in Boca to settle down in. Relax, sit by the pool, read a book without the constant interruption of matchmaking.

But what she wanted most was for Khristos to settle down and give her grandchildren. Making him guard the apple was her way of sticking it to him for remaining a bachelor for so many centuries.

She’d often said he’d bucked responsibility his entire life, using his charm and good looks to go about his merry way without being caught up in the net of a relationship. Guarding the apple was, according to her, a last-ditch effort to teach him a lesson in accountability.

And he’d done a damn good job of it for hundreds of years.

Until Quinn.

And a distraction on his part that, despite what Nina had joked, wasn’t a leggy blonde. Add to that what he’d chalked up to a small seismic occurrence he couldn’t explain, and his perfectly good union of man and apple had ended.

However, his mother didn’t like having things taken from her before she was ready to give them up. She hadn’t planned on losing her powers by having them ripped right out from under her. They were supposed to be handed down to Iris, the Goddess of Rainbows, who was chomping at the bit to take over.

Which meant now
two
women would want his head on a platter. Two volatile, chaotic, very angry women.

“Was that really your mother?” Quinn finally squeaked.

Shit, shit, shit. She was frightened, her pretty eyes wide, her hand shaking as she stuck to Nina like glue, and it saddened him. She’d had a tough go with this prick Igor. He wasn’t so much of an asshole he couldn’t see that. He’d heard the story while she’d confessed her love woes to the apple.

So what choice did he have but to tell the truth?

He moved toward Quinn slowly, his eyes on her face. “Yes. That was my mother, and I promise, she’d never hurt you. I wouldn’t allow it.”

Quinn’s head poked out from behind Nina’s back, her wide eyes just peeking an inch over the vampire’s shoulder. “But she does hurt people? Is it a practice she makes a habit of?”

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. This was his fault and his fault alone. He had to remember that and remind himself patience was a virtue—one Quinn and her fears would likely sap the life right out of.

But he had no one to blame but himself for this quandary, and he’d do whatever he had to in order to help her be the best Aphrodite she could be.

If she’d just get out of her own way.

“No. She doesn’t make a habit of it. I promise you, everything will be fine.”

Quinn licked her lips, her face pale, her grip on Nina of the Kung-Fu variety. “What did she mean, you’d suffer the wrath of the gods?”

He jammed his hands in his pockets and wondered if she had any whiskey stashed somewhere in that tiny kitchen of hers. He was going to need it. “Don’t worry about it.”

“So she’s into idle threats, too?”

“No. There’s nothing idle about my mother.”

Quinn snorted as though she understood. “I can relate.”

“My mother will cool off.”

“You didn’t answer the question. What did your mother mean by the wrath of the gods?”

He chose to remain silent. She didn’t need any added pressure to a situation that was already stressful.

Quinn cocked her head, the lovely cascade of her chestnut-brown hair falling from her braid and sweeping over her shoulder as she pushed her way past Nina with a confidence she hadn’t displayed as of yet. “Does it mean you’re due for some kind of punishment if I don’t do this and do this right?”

If daily floggings and jail time on Mt. Olympus could be considered punishment, then yes—he’d be punished. In fact, he might still be punished even if Quinn managed to pull this off to the gods’ and his mother’s satisfaction. But he wasn’t going to tell her that. Not with her in such a skittish state, and he didn’t want anyone’s pity. Instead, he shut up.

But suddenly, there was a fire in her shiny new violet eyes. “You’re not answering the question. Will you get into trouble if I don’t do this?”

“There are many definitions to the word trouble, Quinn.”

She approached him, her pretty face a mask of concern. “You
will
be punished! I can tell. What is it with your people? They’re a vengeful bunch, huh? I get unrequited love, but wow, the whole Narkissos thing? Pretty harsh, don’t you think? And what about Prometheus? Did he really deserve to end up chained to a rock and have his liver pecked out by an eagle every night for simply having the audacity to create fire?”

Khristos nodded his head. He’d be amused at her knowledge of the gods if the truth weren’t so painful. “In all fairness, Zeus has begun to show some remorse for his over-the-top behavior in sensitivity training. Unfortunately, I still can’t get Echo or Nemesis to relent. Nymphs are the worst. It’s like talking to a brick wall.”

“You’re joking now, but you won’t be LOL-ing if you’re chained to a spinning wheel of fire for eternity!”

He wiggled a finger at her in admonishment to lighten the mood and hopefully ease her rising panic. “I kinda have to side with Zeus on that one, Quinn. I mean, Ixion was willing to hit that beast of a woman Hera even after a good old-fashioned warning from Zeus. It’s not nice to touch someone else’s merchandise.”

Quinn winced, her cute nose wrinkling. “Is Hera really that awful? Because I often wondered if the myths weren’t embellished just a teensy bit.”

“She’s a nightmare of a horror.”

She sucked in her cheeks—adorably so, and planted her hands on her hips. Gone was the meek, sad-over-her-recent-breakup Quinn, and in her place was the warrior who thought she was saving a rare Greek artifact. “Forget that. Is that really the point here?”

Nina gave Quinn a small shove between the shoulder blades. “What is the point, Lite-Brite? Because if you don’t make it soon, I’ll wring it the eff out of you. Are you in or are you out?”

She flapped her hands at Nina, dismissing her without even realizing she was brushing the vampire off—which in his estimation was a good sign she’d rally if the going got tough, because sometimes in matchmaking, it did.

“The point is, will these gods dole out some sort of excessive punishment if I refuse to participate? And I want the truth, Khristos. Don’t sugarcoat—just straight-up honesty, please.”

As he watched her make a demand of him, watched her eyes flash and her full lips move, he realized she was only
perceived
as weak, and not just by others but also herself. On the inside, this woman had the ’nads of a gladiator if she was willing to attempt to keep him from the wrath of his ancestors.

And she wasn’t just stronger than she thought, she was compassionate. She didn’t know him, yet he saw the fear in her eyes when she realized he could end up punished severely. That trait would go a long way in her matchmaking.

But if the gods chose to punish him for his carelessness, they wouldn’t care what the explanation was. They were all burn-him-at-the-stake overkill now, ask questions later.

Quinn would eventually find out about it, and for some reason, he didn’t want her to think poorly of him for lying.

“That is a possibility,” he finally said, because it was the truth.

Quinn rolled up the sleeves of her sweater, her mouth set in a line of determination. “Then consider this Aphrodite thing on.”

* * * *

A hand brushed the hair from her face; the fingertips were callused, the touch gentle. “Quinn,” a voice, thick and deep, rumbled in her ear.

Yes, sexiest man on the face of the planet?
“What?” she groaned.

She had a goddess hangover the size of Yankee Stadium. As she peeked at her alarm clock, she realized why. She’d had only two hours of sleep. Two hours of restless, haunted-by-horrible-dreams sleep.

The apple, in all its bitten glory, sat on her nightstand. Still just as perfect and gold as it had been before she’d gotten on her high horse and had chosen that brief moment in time to finally take control of her life.

After deciding she was all in last night, she’d handed out blankets and as many pillows as she could find to everyone and gone to bed, determined to keep Khristos from doing time. While she lay in bed, what she’d done began to really sink in and she’d come to the conclusion she was mostly to blame.