“No. Lie to me. All the best messes in history come from a well thought out lie.”
“Fair enough. Because you’re rusty and very unclear about what makes a good match. You need to experience a few before I hand over the reins completely.”
“So you have the reins right now? Like this second?”
“Even as we speak. Look at me, no hands,” he joked.
“Then why can’t you be Aphrodite and I’ll just go back to being boring Quinn Morris from the bookstore?”
“Because you bit the apple, and my reign can’t last forever if I’m doin’ time.”
“I swear I’m going to do everything in my power to prevent that.”
“Then hustle, Aphrodite.”
Instead of lingering, she squeezed around his big body. As she did, she remembered the disembodied voice of his mother from the night before and swallowed hard. “Have you heard from your mother?”
He knelt and scooped up Spike, setting him on his shoulder and scratching his ears. “Not a peep.”
“Which means she’s really, really mad. I know when my mother’s beyond angry and well into homicidal, she gets eerily quiet.”
He rose again and shrugged his shoulders. “Homicidal’s probably a kind adjective where my mother’s concerned. But I don’t want you to trouble yourself with any of that right now, Quinn. She’s mad at me, not you. Right now we need to teach you how to make solid matches that will last a lifetime.”
“Because those happen so often.” She winced the moment the words shot out of her mouth. Bitter Spice had arrived at the party.
He cocked his deliciously dark head and smiled. “You’re just sore from an ugly breakup right now, Quinn. But you won’t always be. Trust me.”
When he said the words “trust me” her knees trembled a little. Then she shook it off. She was all out of trust at this point. Igor had taken the last ounce of trust she had in her judgment and smeared it all over like finger-paint on her broken heart.
She felt foolish now for all the times she’d berated her mother for man hating, for all the times she’d defended Team Soul Mate. Her mother really was right. Soul mates didn’t exist. Real, deep, abiding love and forever were enormous jokes.
“Trust you? Here’s a thought. If the whole soul mate thing is real, why haven’t you found yours then?” Yeah. Why hadn’t the matchmaker’s son made a match? She looked up at him, searching his amber-brown eyes. Damn, he was amazing to look at. Even in the bright light of early morning.
He winked when he looked down at her. “I guess it’s like the shoemaker’s son. Everyone in the village has shoes but him?”
“FYI, the village has DSW now. I think you haven’t found your soul mate because you’re too fond of leggy blondes. Not that I blame you because honestly, who isn’t?”
“Not everyone likes leggy blondes, Quinn. Your scorn for Igor’s rearing its ugly head. Besides, I thought Shawna was a redhead?”
Quinn bobbed her head as she dug a pair of jeans out of her dresser. “That she is. A redhead with all the trimmings.”
And if that sounded bitter—tough titties.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t see the appeal to leggy and gorgeous. On the contrary. She totally understood how Igor might find the jeans Shawna spray-painted on and the navel ring that lay against her lean abdomen just beneath her belly shirts appealing.
If she were to push that sex-bomb theory to the limits of the anger it brought, she could even see how thirty-six double-Ds might appear more exciting than her mere thirty-four Bs
Without question, Shawna was young, supple and beautiful. Young, supple, beautiful, and dumb as any inanimate object you could buy at The Dollar Store.
To be left for someone who pronounced the goddess Persephone’s name “Per-sef-phone” or who mispronounced the word disoriented, twisting it to “disorien-tay-ted”, was like a slap in the face. A hard one.
Khristos put his warm hands on her shoulders as she looked through her closet for a scarf. “Slow down.”
A warm heat traveled up her spine and stopped right in her chest. “Pick a speed. First we have to seize the day, and now you want me to slow my roll. Which is it?”
He turned her to face him, Spike still perched contentedly on his shoulder, his face buried in Khristos’s neck. “You’re frazzled. When you’re frazzled, it means you’re overwhelmed, and if you’re overwhelmed, you’ll be too focused on your anxiety to open up your heart and make proper matches.”
Her shoulders slumped. “How am I supposed to know who’s a good match and who isn’t, anyway? Is it a feeling? A vibe of some kind?”
“There are all sorts of things on the checklist for a successful match, and sometimes, you’ll match people knowing they won’t be together forever. You just have to know when to make a match like that for the greater good.”
Her fist tightened on the comforter still wrapped around her. “You’re a bundle of contradictions. Am I making matches for life or just for temporary flings?”
“Sometimes you’ll make a match to teach a lesson.”