The romantic in her was all ears—ears and floaty hearts and bouquets filled with colorful flowers. “So what’s that got to do with chickening out again?”
Khristos’s face softened, the hard lines easing. “Bart’s dying, Quinn. He has another year, maybe two to live, but he was afraid to burden Alice with the news. Her health is fragile, too. Both families are against them marrying, and Bart almost let his children’s wishes run roughshod over the last bit of happiness he’ll have before he leaves this earth. Today, he was going to break off their relationship. If Cupid hadn’t hit him with that arrow, he might have missed a second opportunity to say to hell with the naysayers and propose to the woman he’s loved for more than fifty years who doesn’t give a fig, as she says, that they only have a little time left—Alice just wants them to spend it together. Bart just needed a nudge in the right direction, and you’ll learn to feel that over time. It’ll become instinct.”
A rush of warmth stung her heart—one she desperately wanted to fight, but Bart and Alice were living proof that, at least for them, true love did exist. They’d proven real love could weather fifty years.
“What would have happened if Bart hadn’t proposed today?”
“They both would have died brokenhearted.”
Quinn gulped, hard, loosening the scarf around her neck. She needed to understand the dynamics of this, the repercussions if she mistakenly did something wrong. Knowing she could muck this up made her all the more determined to get it right in the future. So there’d be no Bart and Alice’s left in her clumsy wake.
“So the earth won’t stop revolving if a match isn’t successfully made, yet, I feel like there’s a ‘but’ attached to that.”
He rolled his wide shoulders, but his eyes were shadowed. “Most times not, but sometimes, one match sets off a chain reaction that can reverberate for lifetimes to come. This time, it was just two people who want to finish out their lives as partners. And sometimes, Quinn, that’s just as important as procreation of future world leaders.”
Quinn swallowed hard again, her chest so tight she almost couldn’t speak at the near disaster Khristos had saved them from. “Thank you,” she whispered at him.
He looked down at her and smiled, that warm, easygoing, “don’t worry about me having my liver eaten straight from my gut night after night while I’m tied down to a boulder” smile and squeezed her shoulders. “That’s why I’m here, Quinn. To help you learn when the timing is right.”
She fought another rush of tears—for Bart and Alice and the time wasted apart all those years due to a disapproving parent, and for the sacrifice Bart was willing to make to be with the woman he loved no matter what anyone else said.
Khristos cupped her jaw, and lifted her chin. “C’mon. We’ve been out here for hours. Let’s go back to your place and have some dinner, and then we’ll give it another try. You just have to loosen up and interpret the varying vibes of matchmaking.”
She moved a step back, because having him so close made her lungs scream for air. “If I get any looser, I’ll end up matching armed robbers to bank tellers. You’re not wrong when you say this feeling I’m supposed to get needs some honing. All I could hear was two heartbeats, and the crashing of them in my ears was so loud, I just figured…” She shrugged, still horrified by her near mishap.
Khristos grabbed her hand again and chuckled as he led her back to Nina and Ingrid. “You know when we really need to worry?”
She blanched. “When?”
“When you mistake some indigestion for true love. That’s always an epic disaster.”
As their hands swung between them, and they crested the small hill to see Nina and Ingrid chatting with Cupid, Quinn barked a laugh, her head falling back on her shoulders. “Note to self, no spicy food until my craft is perfected.”
Khristos chuckled, too, the vibration of it settling in her ears, warm and easy.
And that was just a little nice.
Chapter 7
“Are you ready, Quinn?”
Content from one of the best meals she’d had in a long time, Quinn nodded and hid a burp. Though the warmth of the beef stew Darnell the demon had made had since dissipated in her stomach, the sentiment behind it hadn’t.
When they’d arrive back at her house, it was full of people. A man named Archibald, dressed formally in a black suit, silver vest, white shirt and ascot, had waved them to a long table wedged into her tiny living room that had magically appeared in her absence.