He’d used a fake email address to send the card? [email protected]. It certainly looked fake. That wasn’t even a real domain. Was this a sick joke?
No. The fluttering hope in her chest refused to believe it. Second later she was seated at her desk, laptop open, and typing in the domain name, www.cupidinc.luv. The screen flickered, and a generic message popped up. It looked like a search engine box, but it said, We’ll help you find what you’re looking for. Just answer our question to get started. What do you wish for more than anything else?
Josh’s words from the night before echoed in her head. A cupid…until I find the life I was supposed to have…I make people happy.
Confusion pounded in her skull. This was another part of the joke, right? Logic whispered back this was an awfully long way to go to prove an off-hand comment made in an empty restaurant. But there was no other alternative.
She typed into the box, I want answers.
Again, the screen flickered, and when it refreshed, she was looking at a Page Not Found error.
No, that wasn’t right. She clicked back, but no matter what she tried in her web browser, she couldn’t get the strange website to load again.
Her head throbbed with more questions than answers. Was the message actually from Josh? Would he even be there next week, or was this a bizarre prank?
And why did it feel like the answers were right in front of her, and she still couldn’t see them? Last night, she’d just hoped for the chance to see Josh again. Now, even though New Year’s Eve was only a week away, she didn’t know if she could hold out that long for answers to this bizarre riddle.
Chapter Four
Josh sank into the battered sofa near the front window of the coffee shop. He flopped his head back, and stared at the ceiling for a moment, before focusing again on the woman across from him. “It’s just for one night, and I’m not asking for anything extravagant. Just be vague, if anyone asks how I’m spending the evening.”
Amanda took a long sip from her cup of coffee. “Don’t make me say it. You know you don’t want to hear it.”
He did know. Irritation crept through him, not at her, but at the entire situation. She was talking about the rules. The same guidelines he’d always adhered to without complaint in the past. There were two very good reasons cupids weren’t supposed to hook up with assignments. He waved a hand in irritation. “Yeah, yeah. Emotional connections formed in times of grief are unstable and frequently harmful, and blah, blah, blah.”
It wasn’t that he disagreed, but right now it was the last thing he wanted to hear. It had only been a week since he met Ella, and they hadn’t done more than share dinner…and an incredible kiss. But he hadn’t been able to get her out of his head since. It wasn’t true love or anything as dramatic, but it might be at some point. Even if it never went further, he knew he’d regret it, if he didn’t at least see how things played out with her.
Amanda set her cup down on the low table between them, leaned forward, and clasped her hands. “I notice you didn’t mention reason number two.”
Because he was trying to pretend it wasn’t an issue. The reminder gnawed at him from the inside. It was a bizarre contradiction in the system. A lot of people had a specific fate—were even destined to be with someone—but it didn’t mean things turned out that way. They were still allowed to make their own choices and decisions, and could end up completely side-stepping that future.
If he got attached to Ella, he ran the risk of interfering with her fate, assuming she had one.
He pushed back the doubt broiling in his skull. It didn’t matter, because he wasn’t looking to get attached. “I’m not ignoring any of the reasons.”
“But you’re going to do this anyway.”
He raked his fingers through his hair, and focused a narrowed gaze on Amanda. Why did she have to be the voice of logic here? It was true, that was why he was talking to her, but she wasn’t supposed to be so good at it. “It’s not like we’re hooking up,” he said. “And she’s not some grief stricken individual who’s going to cling to the first guy she meets.”
Amanda’s brows rose.
He tapped his toes inside his shoes as he waited for a witty retort—or something. Anything. Finally, impatience won out. “I have the night off anyway. I’m just going to spend the free time with a friend. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“All right.” Amanda leaned back in her seat, expression blank and giving away nothing. “Then you’re asking me to cover for you because…?”
Josh opened his mouth to reply, but couldn’t find the words. Damn it. This should be an easy answer. Sometimes he appreciated how well Amanda knew him. She’d been his one friend since he’d arrived, and as two of the only cupids who had been in the job for so long, they frequently found confidences in each other.
But just this once, he needed her not peering inside his head. “Devin hooked up with an assignment.”
She smiled, but the corners of her eyes still tugged down. “Devin was one of the lucky few who got to go back to his old life. Are you thinking you want to go back to yours?”
He didn’t. It had been a miserable existence filled with venom and hatred. “Please. Do this one thing for me, and I’ll owe you anything”
She sighed, stood, and crossed the few short feet to sit next to him. “With Devin, I knew what his fate was. It sucked to push him in that direction and watch it eat at him before he had the answers himself, but I knew the payoff was worth it. With you, I don’t have that information.”
Of course she wouldn’t. She’d been Devin’s supervisor. Josh didn’t report to her. “I’m not asking you to know.”
Amanda rested a hand on his knee. “I don’t know this Ella girl, but I’m sure she’s nice enough.” She’d have to be a good person to earn a cupid companion. “It’s you I care about. Don’t throw your own future away, because of a little misplaced lust. Don’t play this wrong, because you’re not thinking straight.”
He clenched his jaw until it ached. He wasn’t worried about his own fate. This was his decision. But could he live with himself, if this was the moment that stole her future from her, just because he wanted to see her one more time?
Chapter Five
Ella smoothed out her skirt for the millionth time since she’d put on the evening gown. She’d purchased the ankle-length sleeveless dress, when her best friend insisted every woman needed a black dress. But this was the first time she had an excuse to wear it.
Her insides fluttered, as she wove her way through waiting people and toward the front of the restaurant. No familiar faces stared back. Josh wasn’t among them. She was early, though. Or maybe he’d already been seated.
She checked in with the maître de, who confirmed they had a reservation but Josh hadn’t arrived yet.
“Thank you.” She gave the man her friendliest smile, and moved back into the crowd. She needed a spot that would let her see the door, but keep her out of peoples’ way.
After the bounced email and bizarre website incident, she’d dug some more into cupidinc.luv. A basic search yielded dozens of results, almost all of them pointing to conspiracy sites, or urban legend fact-checking pages.
People seemed pretty evenly split on the matter of whether or not cupids were a real thing. At the root of the rumors, whether people believed them or not, was always a story similar to the one Josh had told her.
As the minutes ticked away, she drummed her fingers against the small purse dangling from her wrist, gaze flitting to the entrance every few seconds. A glance at her phone told her it was almost twenty minutes past the hour. She dropped the phone back in her wristlet.
Doubt grew inside, pushing out the elation she’d let propel her here at the start of the night. Why had she thought this was a good idea?
Her phone vibrated against her leg, and she jumped, startled. A nervous giggle slipped out, and she glanced at the other waiting faces. Had anyone seen that? No, everyone was busy doing their own thing and involve
d in their own conversations. . Their dates hadn’t bailed on them.
The bitter thought welled inside, as she checked the text message that had just come in.
“Shit,” she muttered under her breath. The servers were down in the office. Her foul mood grew, as she shoved back through the crowd and toward her car. Shooting the restaurant one last glance, she headed toward work.
At least Josh hadn’t shown and then left her with the bill. Even the couple of times that had happened to her in the past were enough to make her wary. If he was going to flake, it was better he not show at all, right?
Except the gnawing ache in her chest didn’t like the reassurance. She’d only spent a few hours with him—the stranger she met in the parking lot, of all places. So why did it hurt so much that he stood her up?
The questions repeated in her head, circling and taunting and mingling with her rationale that it didn’t matter that he hadn’t shown. It wasn’t a big deal. She was better off working tonight anyway.
She let herself into the building. The dim after-hours lighting cast long shadows around her, as she made her way to the elevator, rode up, and crossed the lobby to the server room. If she couldn’t bring things back online from here, she’d have to go to the data center, but odds were good she could fix everything from the office.
The process of rebooting the servers was simple. Which should have been nice, but it meant her mind was still free to wander over her failed evening, and try and make sense of her disappointment.
Not that she was reaching any new conclusions. It wasn’t like she wanted to marry the guy, but if she had to be honest, another evening of his company, and maybe seeing where things went from there, would have been wonderful.
She slipped her heels off, and tucked them neatly under the desk. Thank God. Those were killing me. One thing to be grateful for tonight.
A loud ringing filled the building, a hundred phones vying for attention simultaneously, and for the second time that night she almost jumped out of her skin.
She took a couple of deep breaths to calm her hammering heart. It was just the front door. There was an intercom hooked up to the phone system, for after-hours deliveries, but no one should be delivering anything now.
Her racing pulse insisted she ignore the caller and pretend no one was around. Her curiosity had to know who it was, though. She pulled up the security feed on a different machine than the one she was working on.
A rainbow of emotions rushed through her, when she saw Josh standing at the front door. Hurt, longing, and on top of it all, irritation. Her annoyance smothered any other reaction. She snarled at the screen, and hit the speakerphone button. “Is this fun for you?”
Satisfaction sparked inside when he startled and then spun back toward the intercom near the door.
“Ella, I’m so glad you’re here. I mean I’m not, but I was hoping I’d find you.” His voice was the same smooth, confident baritone that sent fingers of tantalizing desire down her spine just a few days earlier.
She swallowed back the response and buried it in the sick pit of confusion growing in her gut. “Creepiness aside, I don’t put up with bullshit like this…whatever you’re doing. If your real date stood you up—if you’re just screwing with my head—I’m not interested.”
On screen he searched the lobby around him, until he looked directly at the camera. “You gave me your business card, your car is in the parking lot, and you said you were on call.”
It was a good explanation, but it didn’t sound at all like an apology or any sort of reason for not showing at dinner. Her frustration flowed. “If you really wanted to find me, I was sitting alone in a restaurant about forty-five minutes ago, feeling like the biggest idiot in the universe for thinking you were going to be there.”
He ducked his head, and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I tried to stay away. I’m sorry, but I thought I was doing what was best for you. Except I couldn’t leave things that way.”
“Wow.” Her laugh barked back at her in the empty room. “What was best for me? Turns out that line sounds even worse, when someone is feeding it to me directly. Way to twist the knife.” She was letting more of her hurt show than she wanted, but she couldn’t dial it back.
“Let me explain?” Pleading carried in his voice even over the crappy speaker phone, and tugged at the part of her that wanted this to be more than some kind of twisted… She didn’t even know. No. She wasn’t getting sucked into his stories, as much as they spoke to her sense of whimsy. “Is this like your bullshit cupid story? Because I’m not in as good a mood as I was that night.”
His shoulders slumped. “You’re right. I’ll leave. Just remember what I said before. Regardless of anything else that happened or will happen, I wanted to see you tonight. I still want to see you.”
Was he actually wounded?
Served him right.
She wanted to be furious. An emotional gash still sliced her heart, but he looked sincere.
“Wait.” The word pushed past her lips before she could swallow it back. What was she doing?
Chapter Six
Ella walked toward the front door, even as her thoughts spiraled out of control. He wasn’t begging, or making up excuses, or cajoling, or any of the things she expected to accompany someone trying too hard to make their lies believable. And if he meant what he said, he was exposing his heart. Opening up in a way she wasn’t used to.
She still couldn’t get past his bizarre story—everything he’d said about being a cupid, what she’d found online. Part of her wanted to believe in that magic as much as she wanted his words to be genuine.
He was pacing in front of the entrance, when the glass doors came into her view seconds later. She wasn’t sure why she was doing this. Logic said she needed to avoid everything about the situation, and still she was compelled to talk to him face to face. To hear him out.
When she pushed one door open wide enough for him to step through, he looked up. Some of the stress vanished from his face.
“I’m still pissed off about being stood up.” She crossed her arms to keep herself from fidgeting. Now that he was actually in front of her again, that tempting scent of leather and soap teasing her, images of their dinner on Christmas Eve rushed back more vividly than she thought possible.
He looked even better than her memory gave him credit for. He wore a suit jacket under his coat, and his white shirt was pressed, top button undone. His tie hung unknotted around his neck.
She’d been too furious to notice when she was watching him on the security camera, but he looked like he’d dressed for dinner too.
He kept his distance, toe tapping to a rhythm she couldn’t hear. “You should be. It was an asinine thing to do. I had my reasons, but they weren’t good. I’m sorry.”
Each time he apologized, it kicked more of her irritation aside. A tiny voice asked, What if you’re reading his sincerity completely wrong? You stay single to keep from getting hurt. Not completely true, but she knew the people around her saw it that way, and it was such a simple explanation, sometimes it was easier to believe it herself. “You said you wanted to explain.”
His fidgeting stopped. “I do. But I don’t think you’re going to believe me.”
So he was going to fall back on the ridiculous story. A spark of hope ignited inside. Part of her wanted him to make her believe. “I’ll start for you. All that stuff you told me at dinner about being a cupid and dying twenty years ago—you’re going to tell me it’s true, right?” She tried to keep a skeptical tone in her voice, but the desire for something magical won out, and her optimism shone through instead.
“I am, and it is. According to my birth certificate, I’m almost fifty. But really, I was in my late twenties when I died, and I haven’t aged since they brought me back. I won’t until my contract with the company ends, for whatever reason.”
“That sounds kind of final.” She’d meant to keep the comment to herself, along with the concern it summoned inside.
&
nbsp; “It’s not as bad as all that. Like I said before, my job is to make people smile. It might be that they don’t need me anymore, and I’ll be free to live my own life. Or I’ll figure out what I’m supposed to be doing with myself, and set off on my own. Or—” His brow furrowed. “There are a lot of reasons, but none of them is bad, depending on your perspective. I’m basically in this kind of holding pattern, until that happens. I don’t age. I don’t get sick. I can’t die.”
As much as she wanted to believe, this was all a bit much to swallow. “It’s a good story. Why would that make it better to leave me alone in a restaurant, when you made the date?” She hadn’t meant her question to sound so bitter, but she struggled to contain all the emotions swirling inside.
“Because if you have a different future ahead of you—and I’m not saying you do or don’t; I don’t get to know that kind of information—meeting up with me might have spoiled that.”
“So you took it upon yourself to decide my fate?” She didn’t know which bothered her more. That she had something like a fate, or that he thought it was his right to interfere.
“No. I mean, yes, kind of, but no.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “No one’s future is set in stone. There’s just a more likely possible outcome for everyone. The thing is, knowing that, if someone starts second guessing all their decisions, it tends to screw with their head.”
It was screwing with hers, and she still wasn’t sure she believed it. “So you were going to stay away, and you changed your mind because of magic and fate and resurrection, and I still have a say in the matter.”
He raised an eyebrow, and his mouth twisted into a smile. “Basically, yes. But on a not-so-basic level, the more I thought about it, the more I realized spinning my thoughts in knots, trying to figure out the right thing was the wrong way to go. You made the decision to have dinner with me, you chose to show up again tonight, and I asked both times because I wanted to see you. I figured that was really all that mattered. We were both here because that was what we picked.”
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