Bad Boys Over Easy

by Jen Nicholas; Jordan Summers Erin McCarthy

  She’d taken a small booth at the back on the bar side. Val felt hidden there, protected, and she didn’t have to look or speak to anyone unless she wanted to. Right now, she didn’t want to. And she was close to the bar, which tonight was a plus.

  Val paid the waitress and tipped generously, as her parents had taught her to do. You reward good service, and her past jobs as a waitress had left her with an instilled value of rewarding well.

  It wasn’t until she was licking the salt off the rim of her glass that she looked up into the mirror over the bar—and saw her nemesis.

  The salt made her choke, and she had to guzzle her drink like a seasoned pro to stop the hacking. The tequila hit her hard, but not nearly as hard as the brown eyes that were boring into hers through the mirror’s reflection.

  How dare he enter her private space? This night was for her, damn it, not him. She didn’t want to see him. Didn’t want to talk to him. Didn’t want to look in his eyes and feel her stomach doing the jitterbug dance that she knew it would do.

  Fate wasn’t cooperating with her. Then again, in the last month, when had fate done anything but sit back on its haunches and laugh its fool head off at her?

  Gideon sat down in the booth across from her, and she didn’t say a word. She couldn’t. Her mind was frozen, her tongue a useless object taking up space in her mouth. God, she hoped this sudden paralysis was temporary.

  “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

  It was the last thing she’d expected him to say, and it was her undoing. Tears leaked out from under her lids, and she further humiliated herself by choking out a sob.

  Stress. She was under too much stress and she’d finally snapped. That had to be it. Val Lewis, of the February birthday and romantic name, did not burst into tears at the insane ramblings of a good-looking man.

  No matter how many margaritas she’d had to drink.

  By magic it seemed, he produced a handkerchief from the pocket of his burgundy-colored leather jacket, and passed it across the table to her.

  “You are the craziest person I’ve ever met,” she told him around the hankie. Val wiped her eyes and blew her nose, then simply sat and stared at him.

  Falling in love with her. He was certifiably insane. He didn’t even know her. He’d only met her three days ago. Oh, and not to mention he was a Cupid!

  Tears threatened to spill again, but she gathered her strength and held them back. There would be no more crying or feeling sorry for herself. She had a psycho Cupid on her hands, and it was going to take everything she had to rid herself of him.

  “You need to go away and leave me alone.” There. That had sounded forceful, and almost like she had meant it.

  “I can’t.”

  Val grit her teeth and tore her napkin into strips as she glared at him. “You know, for a Cupid, there sure seems to be a whole hell of a lot you can’t do. Like aim, for instance.”

  Pain crossed Gideon’s face, and a sharp poke of something jabbed her in the gut. She was never mean. Oh, she was sarcastic, and mouthy, but she was never downright mean. Her conscience was giving her grief over hurting this man, and Val knew that her conscience had every reason to do it.

  “I’m sorry.” And she was. No matter how angry she was, or how angry she was going to be, hurting Gideon wasn’t an option. At least not one she could live with. “I’m letting my temper get the best of me, and it’s making me nasty. I’m not usually nasty, Gideon, and I apologize.”

  “I can’t say that it’s not well deserved.”

  “Maybe not. But there’s still no reason for it. Since you’re here, I’m guessing that we still have things to discuss, and it would benefit both of us if I forget the sarcastic barbs and act like a decent human being while we’re doing it.”

  “I appreciate it. Both the fact that you’re thinking of my feelings, and that you’re willing to listen to what I have to say.”

  Val glanced around for the waitress, needing more fortification for the task ahead. “I don’t really know that I have a choice,” she said to him.

  His sigh was either one of frustration or regret, but he kept his cool. “No, Val, I guess there are a lot of things that aren’t really in our hands anymore.”

  What did that mean? Oh God, she didn’t even want to know what that meant.

  The drink arrived, the transaction was made, and Val was left alone in the company of a Cupid. The jury was still out on how she felt about that.

  “Maybe you could just say whatever it is you still need to say. Then we can both just go our separate ways and this can be done.”

  Gideon’s smile this time was gentle. “There’s the kicker, luv. No matter what I say, no matter how we both feel, we can’t just go our separate ways.”

  Margarita-induced buzz be damned. She had to stand up, had to get away, and she had to do it now.

  Frustration was wearing his nerves thin. No matter what he said to Val, no matter how he tried to say it, everything freaked her out. He couldn’t comprehend it, and maybe that was part of the problem.

  The woman had, after all, written a plea to Cupid asking for help. That showed that she at least had an inkling that there were things out there that science couldn’t define. Some things not of this world, things greater than she could see. But now that it was here, staring her in the face, poor Val was having a hard time accepting it.

  A large part of him felt sorry for her, sorry for the situation he’d gotten them both into. Another part, though, felt giddy and joyous knowing that, although it was an accident, he was now in love with Valentine. And soon, whether she wanted to admit it or not, she’d be in love with him.

  Gideon hadn’t known how things would work out. He’d gone to Eros two days ago, admitting his already well-known transgression and seeking his leader’s advice. It had worried him that Eros hadn’t had that much advice to give. Seems that no other Cupid—ever—had shot himself with an arrow in the midst of an assignment.

  This was new territory, for him, for Val, for the god of love.

  Not really the way he’d planned on starting his career, but he could deal with it. He had no choice. That arrow had changed his life’s course, had changed Val’s, and now all they could do was work with what they had.

  He wanted a beer. It was an urge that was totally unexpected and slightly scary. Gideon had never tasted alcoholic beverages; he’d never had the urge to try one. Sitting in the back of Trinity’s, with Val in the rest room and nothing to do but listen to the voices around him, the thirst for a beer was so strong that it was like a physical ache in his chest.

  Sort of like the ache he’d had for Val ever since he’d seen her three nights ago.

  Gideon went to the bar and ordered a beer, then drank half of it leaning against the counter. Cold, refreshing. It went down quite well, and he took the bottle back to the booth with him. Now he knew why humans drank so much of it.

  Back to Val…and that ache. Since the first moment he’d laid eyes on her, he’d wanted to touch her, kiss her. Her hair was a long fall of black down across her shoulders almost to her waist. Her eyes, the prettiest, clearest blue he’d ever seen, showed so much of her feelings and emotions each time he looked into them.

  And her lips were to die for. He’d gladly give up, well, something, to taste those lips with his own. If nothing else came of this night, if nothing else got settled, he promised himself that he’d at least get one sip of what she tasted like.

  Sensing movement beside him, he turned to see her slide back into the booth. She looked a little calmer now, though she was pale. He wondered briefly if she’d been sick.

  “Are you okay?”

  Those clear blue eyes met his dark brown ones and she managed a lopsided grin. “Okay? No, not really. But I’m guessing that I’ll survive.”

  “I surely hope so.”

  Val placed her hands palms down on the table and met his gaze. “Let’s just get this taken care of and we’ll decide where to go from there. You should pro
bably start.”

  It was batter up, and Gideon was next to the plate.

  Please don’t let me screw this up.

  He took another swallow of his beer and took her hand. He felt her pulse jump but she didn’t pull away, and he took that as a good sign.

  “I’ll start at the beginning the best that I can. There are so many things to say, to tell you, that I’m hoping I don’t get everything jumbled up. If you have any questions, just ask me. We’re in this together now, Val, you and I, so just ask me, all right?”

  At her nod of assent he continued.

  “You have to understand that we receive hundreds of requests a day. Sometimes it’s thousands. And no, we don’t honor them all.”

  Val cocked an eyebrow at him and he had to laugh.

  “There are still some things that people need to do for themselves. A lot of people ask us to find them a mate without having first done any work on their own. If you don’t try to find true love by yourself, how can you ask someone else to do it for you?”

  “Good point. Keep going.”

  “Okay. Anyway, the number of requests that we actually process varies day by day. It’s a long, tedious process that I won’t bore you with. Let’s just say that when it comes right down to it, we only actually take on about ten percent of the cases that we receive.”

  Val smiled at him. “You’re the last-ditch hope, just like I thought.”

  “In technical terms I guess that’s just about right. So when we received your request, everyone at Headquarters was very excited—and very anxious that it be done right.”

  “Why? What’s so important about me and my request?”

  Gideon frowned. He needed to step lightly here, or Val and her temper were going to take off like a rocket ship.

  “We have a list. A list of people who are the least likely to ever ask us for assistance. A list of five hundred people, throughout the world, that aren’t used to asking for help, especially from something as insane sounding as Cupid.”

  “But what does that have to do with me?”

  “Val, you’re number three on the list.”

  He watched as her mouth formed an “O” of surprise, or maybe outrage, and braced himself for the coming attack.

  Thankfully, it never came, but the solitary tear that leaked from the corner of her stormy blue eyes totally undid him.

  “Oh man, Val, don’t cry. Please, don’t cry.” Tears of outrage he could handle. A woman pissed off he could deal with. But Gideon had no clue how to handle the sadness of a woman like Val—a beautiful woman who did things to his libido that had never been done before.

  Val simply lowered her head until her ebony hair covered her face like a curtain. She didn’t make a sound, but he knew the tears continued to fall.

  He sat there, not knowing what to do, not knowing what to say, until he finally did the one thing he’d wanted to do since he first saw her. He reached across the table and lifted her chin with his hand. Tears were still wet on her cheeks, so he used the pads of his fingers to wipe them away.

  Then he simply leaned over and kissed her.

  Val didn’t know what had brought the tears on. She didn’t cry like this, not Val, woman warrior, defender of women everywhere. But somehow, knowing that she was third on a list of people that even the god of love thought pathetic was her undoing.

  The tears were forgotten when Gideon’s lips met her own.

  Her first thought was “wow.” Her second was that there was no way a Cupid should be able to kiss like that. Then there were no more thoughts as her brain went fuzzy and her stomach began doing somersaults.

  Gideon’s lips were light upon her own. A quick nip of his teeth on her bottom lip sent a streak of lightning all the way to her toes. Her hands gripped the edge of the table as emotions rushed through her—she wanted to grab him by the hair and force him closer, harder, more.

  But Gideon’s lips remained easy on her own, almost testing, as if he seemed to be waiting for her to push him away.

  Right now, pushing him away was the last thing she had in mind.

  Val felt his tongue teasing the seam of her lips and didn’t even hesitate to let him in. When her tongue met his, fire exploded somewhere in the vicinity of where her stomach used to be. He kept it slow, kept it light and easy, until the fire threatened to consume her.

  She was panting when he pulled away.

  “Wow.” It seemed to be the only thing she could say. Gideon had the same stunned expression on his face that she knew had to be on her own, and it made her happy. Guess she wasn’t the only one the kiss had affected.

  “Wow is right.” His voice was deep and husky, with a smoky timbre to it that Val had never heard before.

  She wanted to hear it again. Soon. Now. Right now.

  And then she remembered that he was a Cupid, that he’d messed up her entire life, and the anger threatened to come back in full force.

  “You didn’t tell me the rest of it.”

  Gideon cleared his throat and shook his head as if to clear it. But Val had to give him credit. He didn’t try to put off finishing the story. He laid it all out for her, from the time he’d found a match for her to the time the arrow had missed its mark and hit him instead.

  He didn’t even try to leave out the part that he was now in love with her, having suffered the effects of his own stray arrow.

  Val wasn’t quite sure how she felt about that. How could she now have a bond with a Cupid? It didn’t seem feasible. But that kiss. Woah. That kiss had rocked her, and if it was any indication of things to come, maybe being in love with a Cupid wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all.

  “So basically what you’re telling me is that, since you shot yourself with the arrow that was intended for the man I’m supposed to live my life with, you’ve taken his place instead?”

  “That’s the condensed version, yes.”

  “I see.” The thing was, she did see. Val could picture it all in her head, could see the way that it was going to work, whether she wanted it to happen this way or not. A large chain of events had been set into motion, all because of a gust of wind. But she’d asked for Cupid’s help, and he’d definitely given it to her.

  Not the way she’d expected, but beggars couldn’t really be choosers, now could they?

  “I need to think about this.” She stood up, grabbing her coat and purse while trying not to fall over. Maybe tequila hadn’t been a good idea after all.

  “Let me get you a cab.” Gideon’s voice was still a little husky. He helped her into her coat, and she swore that she could feel the heat of his hand through the fabric at the small of her back.

  “Thanks, but I think I’ll just walk. It’s only seven blocks.”

  She watched him look down at her and frown. “I think a cab might be safer. Or,” he added, as her mouth opened in an instant rebuttal, “if you don’t want a cab, at least let me walk you home. That way I can be sure you get there okay.”

  Val looked down at her hands, tightly clasped around her purse, and debated whether she should walk with him or not. It wasn’t a bad idea, exactly, since she was feeling a little light-headed. What worried her was what would happen when they got to her apartment. She was still reeling from his kiss, and she still wanted him to kiss her again. That, along with the margaritas, could be a really bad combination.

  But damn, she was destined to get closer to Gideon no matter which option she chose, wasn’t she? Val figured she might as well get all of the pleasantries out of the way now, since she was already fated to get a whole lot more familiar with him in the near future.

  “All right. You can walk me home, and we’ll talk about how we’re going to handle this whole mess on the way there. But no funny business. Cupid or not, destined to love or not, we’ll do this the way any ordinary couple would do it. You understand?”

  Gideon’s smile was full of mischief and sexy as hell. “Yes, ma’am. I understand, and actually,” he said, ushering her out the front door and o
nto the sidewalk, “I’m looking forward to it.”

  Six

  January 20, 2004

  Val’s Apartment

  The weekend was here, and for the first time in God knew how long, Val had a date.

  Gideon had been a perfect gentleman the other night, when he walked her home from Trinity’s. Part of her had hoped that he’d at least try to give her a good-night kiss at the door—even though she surely would have rebuffed him.

  “Who am I kidding?” she mumbled to herself, searching around in her closet for something suitable to wear. “You know you wouldn’t have turned him down. You wanted him to kiss you again. You still want him to kiss you again.”

  She had. She did.

  Grabbing a sapphire blue dress that she knew brought out the color of her eyes, she laid it across the bed. Then sat down beside it.

  For the past three days she’d done nothing but think of Gideon. Whatever he’d done, whatever type of spell he’d cast on her—on both of them—it was working. Even Mr. Allen’s harping and blatant sexual innuendoes couldn’t shake off her feeling that something great was going to happen.

  Her workload grew larger as her productivity went down the toilet. She couldn’t bring herself to be enthused over her customer’s portfolios as she pondered the state of her love life. Even Tasha, when Val had finally given in and talked to her yesterday, wasn’t able to shake Val’s weird sense of having an out of body experience.

  “Is this what it’s like to go crazy?”

  Since there was no one there to answer her, maybe she was going a little insane. The Cupid deal was beginning to work out a whole hell of a lot better than she’d planned, and she wasn’t sure she was ready for it.

  Val thought she’d been in love before. Years ago, there had been a man who she’d thought would be the one she’d spend the rest of her life with. But even Adam hadn’t given her these weird feelings, these vibes, that she felt spinning throughout her body even when Gideon wasn’t around.