Hope's Wish

by Lexxie Couper

  He gazed at each woman, driving his hands into his pockets and rocking back on the heels of his casual loafers. “Alas, she broke the skin of the apple with her teeth when we struggled for control.”

  Ingrid’s eyes narrowed and her stance widened. “And that means what, Hard Body?”

  Oh, damn. Now he was making that frowny face. That meant bad—so, so bad.

  “The explanation’s simple. Your friend now has the powers of Aphrodite.”

  “The Goddess of Love and Beauty?” Quinn managed to squeak.

  Khristos winked an arrogant eye. “And all that entails. Clearly, that entails a healthy glow. Know what else it means?”

  Ingrid rounded on him, skirting his body in dodgy circles. “Okay, spit it out. What does it mean, Khristos with a K, descendant of Aphrodite?” she asked with a tone of defiant skepticism, leading Quinn to think Ingrid didn’t entirely believe him.

  But was there any denying what had happened to her?

  He planted a deliciously tanned hand on Ingrid’s shoulder to prevent her from continuing her dizzying circles. “It means Quinn and I are going to be spending a lot of time together. Do you know why that is, quick-footed one?” he asked, sarcasm lacing his words.

  Quinn watched while Ingrid tried to hide her alarm behind the Nina technique. The show-no-fear, take-no-prisoners technique. Ingrid jutted her chin upward and sneered, “Why is that?”

  “Because that apple is my curse, and now, because your friend not only refused to return it, but she bit into it, it’s hers, too. So that means wherever she goes, I go. I am the keeper of the apple and all its power.”

  Quinn’s mouth fell open.

  This big hunk of a Greek man, with all his ripples of muscle and silky hair straight out of a shampoo commercial, had to go everywhere she went?

  Shut up.

  It was like hitting the romance Powerball.

  If she were still a believer in romance, that is.

  Which she was not.

  Not, not, not.

  But the old Quinn?

  She’d find that totally swoon-worthy.

  Chapter 2

  Quinn squinted at this man—this delicious, gorgeous man named Khristos with a K—and shook off the notion of anything romance related. No romance, even if he was a descendant of a Greek goddess.

  Logic. That was all that was allowed right now. She might be a dreamer when it came to romance, but almost everything else about her was practical, from her money management right down to how she organized her spice rack.

  She used to like to think her practicality came close to outweighing her romantic dreaming, that she’d somehow created a nice balance of the two. But after Igor, she decided romantic was losing and it was time she buck the hell up.

  Use your logic and caution, Quinn.

  Swallowing hard, she approached him carefully. “Why is the apple your curse?”

  Khristos assessed her with a critical eye, crossing his forearms over his chest. “Let me rephrase that. It’s not really a curse. Though it sure as hell feels like it sometimes. I’m in charge of keeping watch over the apple. I’m rather more a guardian of sorts.”

  Quinn bit her knuckle but her eyes were wide as her mind swirled with about a million dreamy scenarios, totally forgetting she was supposed to keep her practical self front and center.

  But there was one scenario in particular that stood out. “Oh my God! You mentioned Greek ancestors? Is your ancestor really…” She paused. It was almost too amazing to believe. “Really Aphrodite?” The word slipped from her mouth in a hiss before she could prevent it.

  He held his hands out, palms up in a gesture of resignation. “Ya caught me. She’s my mother.”

  “Like the Aphrodite? Mistress-to-Ares Aphrodite?”

  “Now, now,” he scolded, his eyes suddenly teasing. “We don’t like to talk about that anymore. It’s called moving forward and letting go of the past. But yes. That’s the Aphrodite I mean.”

  Quinn almost squealed with joy. It was like a Greek mythology dream come true. Yet, her next words defied her excitement. Especially in light of the fact that the very idea was flat-out crazier than a bedbug.

  “She is not. There’s no record of a Khristos listed as her son.”

  He shrugged his wide shoulders and smiled. “Well, if you know my mother’s history, you know she…er, wasn’t above some bedroom shenanigans from time to time. I cringe talking about it, because really, who wants to visualize their mother doing that? But I’m a result of her shenanigans. Anyway, it looks like she wins this round.” He looked skyward. “Way to show me who’s the boss, Mom.”

  Her son? No. This was nuts. He was no more Aphrodite’s son than she was…

  Are what, Quinn? This from a woman who saw an apple literally plop from a column, shredded a bra like she was practicing for a gig to play The Incredible Hulk and whose skin sparkles?

  Quinn licked her dry lips. “Okay, so taking into account this is a little on par with the second coming—”

  Khristos clucked his tongue, interrupting her. “I feel like maybe that’s a little over the top. Though, knowing my megalomaniacal mother, she’d preen about the comparison. But how about we don’t give her that much weight to throw around?”

  Quinn shook her head, still trying to process. “Fine. So skipping the comparisons and moving right along past my disbelief, why did she make you the guardian of the apple? For that matter, why would she leave something so valuable at a tourist attraction?”

  Because who just leaves the entirety of their power out in the open? It was like leaving an atom bomb at a playground.

  “Oh, she didn’t just leave it there. Make no mistake. My mother’s many things, but careless about her powers isn’t one of them. I was a little distracted today. I just set it down for a damn minute, too.”

  “And how is she going to feel about you slacking off on your guard duties?”

  He winced. Beautifully—perfectly, if such a thing were possible. “Well, I’m sure there’ll be a conversation.”

  She almost smiled at the idea of this big man in trouble with someone like Aphrodite. “You think she’ll take away your X-box privileges?”

  The sun grazed his cheekbone as he hitched his strong jaw. “At the very least, my dessert.”

  Damn, he was making it hard to keep her focus. “So any special reason why she put you in charge of her powers?”

  “Because my mother loves a good joke, and the joke was, let’s keep Khristos from ever having a moment’s peace.”

  But wait. The magnitude of what she’d allegedly done began to sink in. Really sink in. Her stomach lurched. “Hold the phone. If the apple has the power of Aphrodite and I broke the skin, which technically means I’m now Aphrodite, isn’t your mother going to be really incensed that she’s lost her powers because you’re a crappy babysitter?”

  “That’s fair, and I imagine there might be some discontent involved on her part. Maybe even a plague or some locusts, but don’t worry. I got this.”

  “Plague…”

  Khristos waved his hand in the air, the long fingers attached to it dismissing the obvious concern in her voice. “Bah. It never lasts long. She’s not as good at holding steady as she is one big burst of fury, but it passes quickly.” He winked as reassurance.

  “I find I’m taking no comfort in this.”

  “Quinn! What the hell are you doing? Quit talking to him, Miss Stockholm Syndrome!” Ingrid ordered, grabbing her arm, her phone in her other hand.

  But Quinn waved her off. “Oh, please, Ingrid. I’m not his hostage, for heaven’s sake. Now, shhh. I’m just trying to find out what happens next.” She turned back to Khristos with an eager ear. “So what happens next, Khristos?”

  Ingrid hopped around as though her mere motion would ward off any evil Khristos harbored. “What happens next is you stop consorting with the enemy, Quinn! I can’t believe you’re all chatting it up over here with him like he’s some guy you met at a damn bar. For the love
of crackers, he claims he’s a descendent of Aphrodite. Have you lost your mind?”

  “I don’t go to bars and you know it.”

  But Khristos just chuckled at Ingrid’s assessment. “I find I’m a little insulted by that, Light of Foot. I have no desire to hurt either of you. I’m only doing my job.”

  Quinn’s eyes narrowed, her breathing going shallow again. “Your job in correlation to guarding the apple—define that, would you?”

  “Well, where the apple goes, I go. Now that you have the power of Aphrodite, you have to be taught how to use it, and I’m your teacher.”

  Him? Mr. Long, Tall and Made Out of Granite?

  Stop.

  Quinn blinked, the heat of the day beginning to sap her energy and what was left of her critical-thinking skills. “You’re not serious. You’re going to teach me how to be Aphrodite? The Goddess of Love? How does one teach someone to be a goddess? How does a man teach a woman to be a goddess? Don’t goddesses wear togas and sit around all day, eating grapes while handing down orders? I can’t wear a toga. I work in a secondhand bookstore, for heaven’s sake. And while casual Friday is pretty casual at Baby Got Book, I think it at least demands pants.”

  Before Khristos had the chance to rebut, Ingrid hopped between them, her face red. “Don’t you say another word, Quinn. And you stay away from her, got it, Khristos, descendant of Aphrodite? I’ll handle this from here on out, pal. You just go back to wherever it is you came from.”

  Khristos closed his eyes as though he were silently asking for divine intervention before he opened them and smiled pleasantly. “I believe I’ve explained myself. I can’t go away. But you handle this however you see fit…Ingrid, is it? I’ll wait. The end result will still be the same.”

  Ingrid glared at him, grabbing Quinn by the arm and smacking into her new boobs as she moved her out of Khristos’s earshot. “Put those things away, would you? They’re everywhere, for Christ’s sake.”

  Quinn let her hands drop to her sides, slapping them against her thighs in exasperation. “Where would you like me to put them, Ingrid? There’s nowhere to put them but in a bigger bra. I mean, look at the size of them. Do you think I’m going to be able to breathe when I’m lying on my back? I’m going to suffocate myself with my own lady lumps. Wait. Maybe Shawna knows. I’d bet she’s an expert.”

  Khristos stuck his face between the two of them, smiling. “Ooo, gossip. Who’s Shawna?”

  “She’s the leggy redhead my ex cheated on me with, and her boobs are enormous. Just like these. Maybe she could offer me some tips?” Quinn said out loud before she was able to stop the words from falling off her tongue.

  Ingrid rolled her eyes before giving Khristos a shove with a flat palm to his chest. “I told you to go away! Now do it before I sic my freaky-deaky, very violent friend on you. I swear, if you harm one hair on either of our heads, my friend will eat her way through your colon!”

  Khristos made a comically funny sad face. “Already with the threats? Sad panda here. And we’ve just met, too. I was hoping we could be friends, because we’re going to be together for a while—a long while. Plus, I like my colon.”

  Quinn fought a hysterical giggle when Ingrid hollered up at him, “Go!”

  Ingrid grabbed Quinn by the arm and pulled her in. “Look, forget your boobs and focus,” she whispered. “I’ve been down a similar road before with my bosses. There are things I haven’t told you yet, Quinn. Things you’re going to have a hard time digesting. Things about Nina, Marty, and Wanda you need to know…”

  “Cryptic,” Quinn muttered, totally missing what Ingrid was hinting at. But it did bring to mind the CIA covert ops secrecy surrounding her job and begged the question: Why wouldn’t Ingrid ever let her anywhere near where she worked for their study dates?

  They met three times a week outside of a nighttime art history class they took together, and had found, over lattes and scones or tuna subs and green tea, that despite their age difference of ten or so years, and though they had little in common but their mutual love of animals, they enjoyed each other’s company. Quinn had witnessed the struggle Ingrid was having in art history, so she’d offered to tutor her.

  It would definitely be more convenient for her to meet Ingrid than the other way around. She was done with work by five o’ clock, but Ingrid was only just then taking her dinner break. For her to travel all the way to the bookstore was crazy, and Quinn had told her that on several occasions.

  But Ingrid always kept her as far away from her place of work as possible.

  And that didn’t explain how Nina could help now. Unless she was tight with Aphrodite—which of course was ludicrous.

  Quinn brushed Ingrid off and squared her shoulders. Maybe it was hysteria or shock or the heat, but she didn’t hesitate to wonder out loud what was next. “But Nina’s not here right now, is she? I am. Me and my gigunda boobs and sparkly skin—here with you and the man who claims he’s got an apple keeping him on a leash. We need to figure out if this guy is for real, right? Because my boobs aren’t kidding around. I really, literally grew boobs. So the natural question is, what’s next, right?”

  Khristos sighed and rolled his head on his neck before answering. “We go back to wherever you live, Quinn. I move in with you, and I teach you the ways of Aphrodite.”

  Oh.

  Simple enough.

  Wait. Move in with her? “Move into my apartment with me?”

  “You’re not moving anywhere, pal!” Ingrid exploded, her face redder than ever. “You’re staying right there until I get someone here to help me. Now go over there, and do it now.”

  Khristos lifted his wide shoulders in an easy gesture of defeat. “Okay, but I’m telling you—”

  “Now!” Ingrid bellowed, pointing her finger to the steps leading up to the Parthenon, her chest rising and falling with the obvious effort it took for her to yell.

  Quinn cocked her head in Ingrid’s direction as the dust of crushed rock swirled around their feet. “Why are you yelling?”

  “Why the hell aren’t you?”

  She paused a moment. Yeah. Why wasn’t she yelling? Or freaking out, for that matter? For that matter, why wasn’t Ingrid freaking out?

  Sure, she was yelling and ordering this man around as if she knew what she was doing, but she didn’t appear any more freaked out than Quinn.

  Quinn scratched her forehead. “You know, I don’t know. I should be pretty traumatized right now, shouldn’t I? I mean, a total stranger appears out of nowhere and tells me I now have the powers of Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, shortly after my boobs inflate like someone used a bicycle pump on them, to name just one ailment. I should be trussed up in a straitjacket right now, but…”

  “It’s shock. You’re in shock. When something like this goes down, it happens to every…um. It happens.”

  Every what? Everyone? “So the last time you saw a friend’s dirty pillows grow right before your very eyes, they went into shock? Does this kind of thing happen often with you? Because remind me to leave you home if I ever take another post-breakup trip. I mean, what’s next? Nicki Minaj’s ass?” Quinn teased with a snort.

  But wait…

  Ingrid took Quinn’s hand in hers and gave her a grave look. It was just like the look Ingrid had when she’d found out the One Direction tickets she’d paid three hundred dollars for online were total fakes.

  When Quinn had squawked at the amount of money Ingrid had lost, her friend reminded her, with just such a face, that Harry was priceless.

  “Look, while we wait for Nina to get in touch with me, there are some things I have to tell you—about my bosses. And I’m just going to say it. You’re probably going to freak out, but we need Nina here like now, so I don’t have a choice but to explain. How she gets here to Greece alone is going to leave you in the fetal position, shitting chickens, but I have to prepare you.”

  She was hot and tired and this I-know-something-you-don’t-know business was old. Quinn threw her hands up in the air
, blowing her hair from her face in an exasperated huff. “Okay, you win. Prepare me.”

  Chapter 3

  Well, if nothing else, she now completely understood why Ingrid never wanted her to see where she worked.

  Because vampires, and werewolves, and demons, and zombies, oh my.

  Quinn stared up at Ingrid while Ingrid stared back down at her, with Khristos still in the distance on the Parthenon steps, scrolling through his phone.

  She repositioned herself on Ingrid’s backpack, where she sat cross-legged, and held up a hand. Because Ingrid’s lips were moving, but the words coming out weren’t making any sense. “Stop. Let me process. Please.”

  Quinn licked her lips and took a sip from her last bottle of lukewarm water. “Okay so, you used to work for a veterinarian named Katie in upstate New York, aka Deliverance-Land—Nina’s words, not yours. And one dark and stormy night, while trying to save what you all thought was an injured, escaped cougar from the exotic animal farm down the road from her practice, your veterinarian boss was scratched by the injured kitty and that turned her into a cougar too? Am I getting that right?” Because who’d want to screw up that story?

  Ingrid bit her lip and winced. “Meow?”

  Quinn’s eyes narrowed up at her. “Still too soon.”

  Ingrid sucked in some air. “Sorry. I’m just learning how to prepare someone emotionally for finding out they’re paranormal. It’s a process. Nina was teaching me, but Marty and Wanda said she’s not allowed to help anymore because she’s an insensitive cur—Wanda’s words, not mine.”

  “Well, it was Nina who said it would be the eff-word stupid to cancel this trip—one I couldn’t get a refund for, by the way. Not even when I threatened to slit my wrists with a butter knife right in front of that unshakeable travel agent. Nina said to not go to effin’ Greece because I was acting like some kind of panty waste over a dick of a man who wasn’t any better than the shit on my shoe, was effed up. Imagine my surprise that ‘cur’ is used when describing her in a sentence.”

  Ingrid’s shoulders sagged. “Okay, forget Nina for a sec. Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Quinn? Really understand? My boss was a regular old human until she was accidentally scratched by the man who’s now her husband and she’s a cougar—forever. She shapeshifts from human form to cougar form. Nina, Marty, and Wanda were the ones who helped her get through the changes.”