Was that bitterness she was hearing? Or boredom? She couldn’t read his tone well enough to know just yet. “You’re being very vague. Why is that, Khristos with a K? C’mon, you can tell me. Do you organize orgies? Iron togas? Make head wreaths out of olive leaves? Sip ouzo while beautiful women pop juicy olives into your mouth all day long as you bask in the glow of Mt. Olympus?”
He cocked a dark eyebrow at her and wiggled it. “I handed over orgy organization to a lowly serf years ago. After a while, when you’ve seen one orgy, you’ve seen them all. Togas get all tangled up around your feet if you’re not careful, not to mention a stiff breeze can present a problem. I hate olives and I prefer whiskey. Jack, to be specific, just in case you pick my name out of the hat for the white elephant this Christmas.”
“So you don’t have a job?”
“My job is to guard the apple.”
“And that’s it? Who pays your bills? Wait, do descendants of Greek gods have bills?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I have bills. How do you suppose we keep the Parthenon up and running? You don’t think sweeping off all those steps just happens, do you? It’s a collective god effort.”
He was mocking her, and the edge to his tone was growing harder by the second—which meant back off. What difference did it make what he did with his days anyway? It was none of her business.
She sat back in the booth and slammed her flappy lips shut. Keeping her distance from Khristos was the smartest thing to do. The less personal they became, the less trouble she could find herself in. She wasn’t going to let his classically handsome face and incredibly hot body, with abs that rippled beneath his stupid sweater that also accented his eyes, sway her either.
They could just sit in silence for the duration as far as she was concerned. Rooting around in her purse, she felt for the current book she was reading, soothed by the cover and the cool feel of it beneath her fingertips.
As she was about to pull it out and bury herself in it, Khristos surprised her.
“So can I ask you a question?”
“I refuse to take over the organization of orgies. I have to have boundaries. Togas are out. I’m too pale to wear white successfully. But I love olives, and while ouzo isn’t really my thing, I’m all for making head wreaths from olive leaves. I was hell on wheels in my last craft class.”
Khristos snorted. “No orgies. Noted. But my question is a little more personal.”
Oh, so now the hunky god wanted something from her that he, himself, wasn’t willing to provide? Huh. She folded her hands on the tabletop, watching the play of the neon signs flash over his face. “And that question is?”
“Igor. How did the two of you end up together? You both seem a pretty unlikely pair.”
How did he know anything about Igor other than what she’d shared out loud at the Parthenon? “How do you know what Igor is or isn’t like?”
“Because I do my homework, and you became my homework when you bit the apple. I needed to understand your state of mind, and how it came to be, in order to understand how to proceed. Being as you’re freshly broken up, it sometimes creates havoc with oversensitivity. No slight to you, it’s just how the heart and mind work.”
Her cheeks grew hot at the memory of all she’d confessed to that stupid apple. “He came into the bookstore where I work a lot.” Like every day for two solid weeks, watching her, flirting with her, asking for suggestions about books she liked.
“And?”
And she thought her daydreaming days had ended when she’d found Igor. He read Shelley and Keats to her while he peered at her over horn-rimmed glasses and she rested her feet in his lap, sipping Bordeaux.
They’d watched Wuthering Heights and Gone With the Wind together on Saturday nights, rebuffing loud nightclubs and crowded restaurants for crackers with Brie and strawberries dipped in chocolate while the strains of Chopin or Beethoven could be heard from her CD player.
They drank wine and talked classic literature while Rachmaninoff and Paganini dusted her cloud of love with the magical arrows of Cupid.
She rolled her shoulders. “And I dunno. He was smart and funny and well versed in all sorts of things I’m interested in, I guess.”
“So you had a lot in common?”
Had they? Looking back now, she wasn’t sure if he’d just pretended to have a lot in common with her because he wanted in her drawers. If Shawna was who he’d turned to, a woman she had absolutely nothing in common with aside from gender, how much did Igor really enjoy Wuthering Heights and listening to Paganini?
“I thought we did. Maybe in hindsight we didn’t.” This was uncomfortable and embarrassing, but it wasn’t as if he didn’t know the whole story anyway.
Khristos nodded, sipping his milkshake. “Nope. You didn’t. But he let you believe you did and you went along for the ride.”