Tall, Dark and Divine (2 page)

The navy blue continued. “It’s been eons since that witch left him, and all he’s been doing is drinking and ignoring business. It’s time he snaps out of it.”

“It has been a long time,” the pink agreed, her voice muffled as if she were putting on lipstick. “He needs to just get over her.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“But do you really think bringing him here was a good idea? A bar?
This
bar? You know Dion; if anyone can turn someone into a raging drunk, it’s him.”

“I know,” the self-possessed one agreed coolly. “But at least there are other women here. Who knows? Maybe he’ll get laid and move the hell on.”

The hot pink chuckled. “Bad enough when he hides in his office all day sulking. How do you plan to get Dion to lay off him, though, Ari?”

“Oh, he’ll listen,” Ari said grimly. “Dion and I understand each other.”

The hot pink sighed, a bit wistfully. “You’re lucky.”

Ari sighed, too, but not wistfully. It was more like a snort, really. A derogatory snort. “He’s a womanizing bastard whose job it is to peddle wine and debauchery. You’ve watched him in action for long enough to know what he’s like. He flirts with every woman who comes in here and ends up in bed with a good number of them.” Her voice gentled. “I’m sorry, Brita. I know you like him. But I’m right, and you know it. He’s a dog. You might get him to bed, but he’ll never be faithful to you. You’re better off looking for someone else.”

“I don’t want anyone else,” Brita said stubbornly.

They must be talking about the bar owner—and bartender—Annie had met outside. She didn’t know that she could blame the invisible Brita, actually. The man was definitely gorgeous. Tall, dark, and handsome—Greek American, like so many of the men in the neighborhood—with shoulder-length black hair and the kind of primal magnetism that probably made women drop their panties as soon as he looked their way.

She’d had a few lustful thoughts about him herself, if truth be told. Most women probably did. And he must want them to; otherwise, why would he walk around in tight leather pants and a shirt open almost to his navel, showing off a half acre of smoothly tanned muscle?

If he’d offered her a trip upstairs, she might have taken him up on it. It was why she was here, after all. And it had been a long time since she’d had great sex—or any sex, really—and he looked like he could deliver. But he wasn’t her type. She preferred her men more clean-cut. The bartender—Dion?—was a bit intimidating. And now that she knew Brita was out there, wanting him—and Ari sounded like there might be a bit of history there, too—Annie definitely wouldn’t touch him with that proverbial ten-foot pole. Even if he was the best-looking man in the place tonight.

“So what are we going to do, Ari?” Brita asked.

“We’re not going to do anything. He’s a big boy. When he’s ready, he’ll move on,” she replied firmly.

“But shouldn’t we introduce him to someone? Try to help him out?”

“He doesn’t need help,” Ari said. “If there’s one thing he knows how to do, it’s meet women. Get real, Brita. He’s a god. And not a jackass like Dion.”

Brita muttered something Annie didn’t catch, and then Ari spoke again. “Honestly, I don’t care if he gets laid tonight or not. I just want him to pay attention to work. It’s been tough, trying to keep the agency running on my own all this time.”

“You’ve done a great job,” Brita said.

“Thanks, but I’ve just barely managed to keep us afloat. Ross is the one with the gift. It’s not the same when he doesn’t run things. I want him back.”

“I still say he needs to get laid,” Brita said.

“If you can get him laid, be my guest. It won’t hurt, and it might help. Me, I just want to shake him up enough that he stops brooding and moves on. It’s been long enough.”

Annie heard the clicking of heels and saw a flash of navy blue pass the crack in the door. “Coming?” Ari asked.

“Hang on a second. If we’re not here to make sure he gets laid, what are we here to do?”

“We’re here to have fun. He needs to loosen up and remember that life isn’t over just because he got dumped. And if he finds someone to give his confidence a boost while he’s at it, so much the better.” Ari’s voice became a bit less brisk. “But you just worry about keeping Dion company, okay, Brita? I’ll take care of Ross.”

“He’s not going to find a woman with you hanging on his arm,” Brita pointed out. “People will think you’re involved.”

“Any idiot can see we’re not,” Ari retorted. “But fine. I’ll find someone else to talk to.”

“I think I saw Silenus out there when we walked in.”

“I’m sure you did. Randy old goat.” But Ari sounded fondly amused rather than judgmental. “Don’t worry, Brita. It’ll be all right. Just focus on Dion.”

“I’ll be happy to,” Brita said, with a smile in her voice.

As the door opened and closed behind the two of them, Annie sat up straight. She’d always been told that eavesdropping was wrong, but you sure did learn some interesting things sometimes.

Sounded like somebody was in need of a little no-strings recreational sex. Somebody else, that was. Someone other than Annie.

Ross?

Maybe they could have no-strings recreational sex together? She wasn’t looking for Mr. Right tonight. It was more like she was looking for Mr. Right Tonight. And a recently divorced “Greek God” in need of a confidence boost sounded like just what the doctor ordered. All she had to do was go out there, find Ari and Brita—navy blue with black pumps or hot pink dress—and then deduce from there who the “Greek God” might be.

And then pick him up.

All right, so that part might be a bit more difficult. It wasn’t like she had much experience. But it wasn’t impossible.

She could do this.

Determined, she opened the stall door and headed out into the restroom. A quick look in the mirror, a fluff of her hair—boring brown, but nice and clean after that drenching with rainwater earlier—a last check that her dress covered her butt the way it was intended and that there was no toilet paper stuck to her kick-ass shoe, and she headed out the door into the bar.

Operation Greek God was officially launched.

Chapter Three

Damn, the place was loud.

Eros looked around the inside of Dionysus’s bar and wondered what had possessed him to agree to come here tonight. All he wanted was to go home, put his feet up, and drink in peace.

And then he remembered. Ariadne. Brita. And the fact that there was nothing to drink at home.

Right.

That wasn’t the case here. Ever since he’d walked in, Dion had kept his glass filled. Every time Eros took a drink, the glass magically filled itself up again. He had no idea how Dion did it, because he’d swear the other man’s hand was nowhere near the glass, but every time he looked, there it was: full to the brim.

Oh, well. Wasn’t like he’d get drunk, after all. It took a lot more than a few glasses of mortal wine for that, even ones liberally laced with ambrosia.

So he just lifted the glass, toasted Dion, and tossed back the entire contents. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.” Dion swiped at the bar with a wet rag. “If you want shots, I’ve got tequila.”

“This is fine.” Eros put the wine glass back down on the counter and kept his eye on it. “I like wine.”

“Sure.” Dion nodded. “Another?”

“Not right now.” The glass was still empty.

“Been a while,” Dion said.

“Sorry.”

Dion shrugged. “No problem. I imagine you haven’t felt much like company.”

Eros lifted his gaze from the—empty—glass to give Dion a
no shit
glare. “You get that insight from watching Oprah?”

Dion laughed and leaned an elbow on the bar. “You sure you don’t just miss a warm body in your bed at night, Ross? Plenty of those to be had.”

Sure. The bar was full of them. But it was more than that. He’d loved Psyche. She had completed him, or he’d thought she did. Right until she walked out the door. And now that she was gone, Eros felt lost. What good was a god of love who couldn’t keep his own wife satisfied?

“I think you oughta get back on the horse,” Dion said, and brought him back to earth.

“Horse?”

“Saddle. You know what I mean. Find a woman and remind yourself what you’ve been missing.”

Eros shook his head. “I’m never getting involved with a mortal again.”

“I’m not saying you get involved with her,” Dion said. “You tried that. It didn’t work.” He shook his head. “We’re gods, man. We’re not meant to stay with just one woman.”

Right.

“You gotta spread the gift around, know what I mean? Every woman deserves a night in the sack with a god.”

“Sure.” Whatever. “But I’m the fucking god of love, Dion. What’s the world coming to, if the fucking god of love just wants to get fucked?”

“Seems to me you already did,” Dion said.

“You know what I mean.”

“Sure. And you know what I mean.” He leaned both elbows on the bar and faced Eros squarely. “You need to crawl outta that pit you’ve dug yourself into and start living again. And you don’t feel much more alive than when you’ve got a woman under you, with her legs wrapped around your waist and—”

“Enough,” Eros growled, lacing his voice with just a bit of that
I am a god and you will obey now
tone he’d learned when the world was a lot younger than it was now. He’d never met a mortal who could resist obeying, but Dion, being Dion, just grinned.

“Been a while, hasn’t it?”

Eros shrugged. “Time is relative.”

“Right.” Dion shook his head. “I’m telling you, man. Find a woman and use her to forget the bitch. She never was worthy of you.”

There was something in Dion’s voice, something that caused Eros’s eyes to narrow reflexively. He could hear the threat lacing through Dion’s words, even without him consciously putting it there. “Tell me you didn’t fuck my wife.”

Dion hesitated, and Eros clenched his fist on the counter, hard enough that his knuckles showed white. If he’d been holding the glass, it would have shattered into pieces. If he’d been holding any piece of Dion, he might have shattered bone, as well. “Damn you, Dionysus. Tell me you didn’t fuck my wife!”

“I didn’t fuck your wife,” Dion said, then added, “But she wanted me to.”

Eros didn’t—couldn’t—speak, and after a few seconds, Dion continued. “It wasn’t too long before she left. But like you said, time’s relative.”

Sure.

“She came in one night. Sat at the bar. Drank wine. Told me how you were never home anymore, and she was lonely.”

Dion grabbed the same rag and wiped the same nonexistent spot on the bar again. Avoiding Eros’s eyes. “She didn’t come right out and ask me to take her upstairs, but it was pretty clear what she wanted. Not like I haven’t had it happen before.”

No. Women came around with boring regularity to throw themselves at Dion. They’d been doing it for millennia. Eros just hadn’t thought his own wife had been one of them.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Nothing to tell,” Dion said.

Maybe. And maybe, if Dion had told him, Eros wouldn’t have believed it anyway. He was the fucking god of love. His wife wouldn’t go to someone else for sex.

Except it seemed she had. Twice. He picked up the wineglass and tossed back the contents, realizing only after he did it that the damn glass was full again. Or had been.

“It doesn’t have to be a mortal, you know,” Dion added, back to telling Eros he needed to get laid. In Dion’s world, there wasn’t a problem created that couldn’t be solved by drinking and wenching.

“Sure.”

“We do have a few other types coming in here, too. Like those two.”

Dion watched appreciatively as Ari and Brita emerged from the hallway that led to the restrooms in the back. They’d disappeared back there as soon as he and Ari arrived earlier; Eros figured they wanted to fix their makeup and talk about him.

Ari was still wearing the navy blue suit she’d had on at work all day, with her hair pulled into the same no-nonsense knot at the back of her head. Brita had changed into a hot pink dress barely bigger than a bathing suit, with strappy sandals on those long, tanned legs. With her masses of blond hair falling over her shoulders, the Cretan goddess of hunting looked like every mortal’s wet dream, and Eros wasn’t surprised to see most of the men in the room were watching her with glassy eyes. Harry Mitchell was back in the corner, he noticed, a familiar face in a group of other men, all of them staring.

Even Dion, damn him, was looking at the two with more than his usual amused attitude.

“Leave my girls alone,” Eros growled.

Dion glanced at him, and after a moment, the dark look in his eyes faded. He smiled faintly. “Your girls are safe from me.”

“No one’s safe from you.”

“They are,” Dion said, with a nod that made his hair escape from behind his ear and fall across his face. Maybe that’s what Psyche had liked about him. His hair. Erik the Norse godling had long hair, too. Eros glanced in the mirror. His own black curls never grew longer than two inches. It was one of the benefits—and drawbacks—of being a god. No barber bills. Never getting older. Never changing.

Dion added, “Ariadne won’t let me within five feet of her, and Brita isn’t my type.”

“You have a type?” Eros asked.

Dion laughed, but said, “Fuck you.”

“No, thanks. I have a type, too, and you aren’t it.”

“No,” Dion agreed, “we all know what your type is.” Movement in the hallway to the restrooms caught his attention, and he added, “Here it comes now.”

Eros looked over in time to see another young woman slip into the bar. Shorter than his girls by a bit, she had soft brown hair in a halo around her head, and she was dressed in a black dress that plunged low over a pair of rather attractive breasts. She was pretty, but in an average, human sort of way. Sweet face. Big eyes, soft lips, pert little nose. Decent figure inside the black dress. And a pair of bright red shoes on her feet that immediately put any man—mortal or immortal—in mind of fucking.

“Wonder if I could talk her into keeping those on?” Dion mused.

It wasn’t until she’d taken a couple steps into the room that Eros recognized her. Too busy looking at her shoes, probably. Or maybe it was just that she didn’t look like herself. Usually when he saw her, she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, with her short brown hair neatly combed, not tousled as if some man had had his hands in it. And she always moved quickly on comfortable shoes; she didn’t undulate across the floor, hips swaying.