“Like?”
“Like, sometimes someone is so hell bent and focused on what they think they want in a partner, they don’t really know what they need to be fulfilled in a relationship—even when it’s right under their noses. It’s your job to show them what’s all wrong by allowing them to stumble.”
Oh, she was good at that. Queen Stumbler, at your service.
Taking a step back from him, mostly to ease the warmth he created in her belly, she waved an ironic finger. “Now that I can do. I know heartache and a bag or ten of Lay’s Sour Cream & Onion potato chips. After all my failed attempts, I have some skill in the what’s-all-wrong-in-a-relationship area.”
“The best way I can describe what happens, and these are my mother’s words, is this: You know the feeling you get right in your chest when you see the person you love? Or hear their voice, or know it’s them calling you on your cell? That’s love, Quinn. You’ll feel that and much more, but that’s the Reader’s Digest version of it.”
In her chest? Her chest was many things these days, but it had never had any special feeling. Yet, he naturally assumed she was familiar with this feeling. Probably because of Igor and her confession of love. But maybe she really had no clue what falling in love truly felt like.
Maybe how distraught she’d been over her breakup with Igor had nothing to do with love and everything to do with pride.
“I promise to remember to check for that feeling in my chest.”
He chuckled, silky and low, his hand lifting to stroke Spike’s spine. “That’s the spirit.”
A loud bang on the door made her jump. “Hey, Ta-Tas! Would you get the hell in the shower and get this damn show on the road? I should GD well be sleeping right now. But instead, I’m playing bodyguard to you, whiny pants. Now make haste, Chariots of Fire—your ride leaves in twenty, and if you’re not in it, I’ll find your scrawny as…er, butt, and run you over with it!”
Gathering her clothes, she slipped past Khristos and headed for the door. “Coming!” she shouted as she popped open the door to find Nina, pale, beautiful, a heavy stripe of zinc oxide over her nose, her brow furrowed. “Sorry. I’ll hurry. Swear it.”
Nina flashed her fangs and snapped her teeth as Quinn zipped past her to the bathroom and shut the door behind her with a heavy sigh, closing her eyes.
“I don’t hear the water running, Glow Stick! Lickety-split!”
Nina’s voice from behind the door made her push herself forward, dropping her clothes on the back of the toilet and tearing off her nightgown.
She looked down at her breasts.
Yep. Still like cantaloupes.
Jesus, they were ridiculous—too big for her body, and a complete distraction. Were they always going to be like this? How was she ever going to explain them to everyone at the bookstore? Her mother? Her father?
Her gynecologist?
But there was one saving grace—she could still breathe when she lay down.
Which meant Shawna Sutter wasn’t going to suffocate herself to death right next to Igor on the fuchsia sheets he and Quinn had bought together at Bed Bath & Beyond.
More’s the pity.
Chapter 6
“Christ, you blow slimy chunks at this,” Nina said on a yawn, leaning back and crossing her long legs on the bench they sat on in Central Park. She made the most beautiful portrait, sitting under the harvest colors of the trees with her long, dark hair and pale skin.
“It’s a good thing validation isn’t something I need today,” Quinn said, tightening her scarf around her neck.
Nina tilted her sunglasses forward. “Just keepin’ shiz real, Love Maker. We’ve been here six damn hours and nothing. Maybe your Aphrodite radar is on the clink.”
Quinn blew warm air into her fists and shook her head with a firm back and forth. “No. Khristos said I’d feel it, and I felt something and that something led me here.” She just couldn’t be sure if it was what she was supposed to feel.
This feeling, this gut instinct, happened shortly after they’d left her apartment. It was warm, imminent, and tinged with urgency, and like nothing she’d ever felt before. But the feeling, rather like an odd homing device, had demanded she sit here.
Right here. With Nina, while Ingrid and Khristos went off to find some coffee with the strict instructions that she act on nothing.
“It’s probably all that hot air you got keepin’ those hooters of yours inflated.”
“Or the sting of your sharp tongue, perhaps?”
She rolled her eyes at the vampire and once more tried to zip up her faux leather jacket. She hoped being Aphrodite came with a clothing expense account, because if this kept up, she was going to have to go shirtless.