Crazy Cupid Love

by Amanda Heger

She ripped off the afghan midsentence.

  Clang.

  Crash.

  Glimmer.

  “Ooof.” Jake leaned down and rubbed his toe. An overturned candy dish lay on the floor, and dozens of red and pink Hershey Kisses were scattered around his feet. Their eyes met.

  No. She froze. For a few blissful seconds, Eliza had forgotten that she could cause a catastrophe anytime, anyplace, with anyone.

  Including the incredibly gorgeous guy who was supposed to be her mentor.

  Chapter 6

  Calif. CCR § 981.04. (b) Affection service providers shall report any unintentional enchantments or adverse love incidents that are both serious and unexpected within thirty days, and within five days after any amputation, loss of eye, or fatal attraction.

  Eliza stepped into the Herman & Herman offices without a word. Her fingers grasped the edge of the receptionist’s desk, and everything around her felt slightly hazy around the edges. She sat, putting the wide girth of the desk between herself and Jake.

  Jake, her mentor.

  Jake, her childhood best friend.

  Jake, the cute teenager who’d grown into a two-shades-too-gorgeous-to-be-real man.

  A man who wasn’t the least bit attracted to her.

  Jake hadn’t been affected by his injury at all. Instead, he’d packed up his messenger bag and given a cursory wave to the Johansens before asking if Eliza was ready to go. Then he’d driven her straight back to the office, where they’d flicked on the neon OPEN sign in the front window and flipped on the lights. The smell of toasted almonds—her dad’s favorite snack—still hung in the air, and testimonials from happy customers adorned the wood-paneled walls.

  “I told you. It’s fine, Eliza. I promise.” He leaned against the office door—staying far enough away that she couldn’t injure him with her clumsiness again. Apparently, he’d learned his lesson the first time.

  “I knew I’d screw something up.” She put her head down and leaned her cheek against the cool desk.

  “You’re being too hard on yourself. And if you were going to screw something up, this seems like no big deal in the grand scheme of things.”

  He was right, of course. Once she’d picked up that dish and stuffed all the chocolate back inside, it was like nothing had ever happened. She could still report this case as a success to the Department, and if anyone asked how things had gone, she could honestly say there’d been no problems.

  So why did she feel so twisted up inside?

  “I probably need to get going. I’ve got a few deliveries to make this afternoon.” Jake looked down at his feet as he spoke. He’d barely looked at her since they’d left the Johansens’ house.

  He looked so uncomfortable that she had to let him off the hook. “Jake, I’m not offended.”

  “Offended?” Finally, he spared her a glance, one eyebrow raised.

  “We’re basically like siblings. Obviously, there’s no attraction between us. You knew me when I matched the color of the bands on my braces to the holidays.” She forced out a fake laugh and an even faker shudder. “Please, don’t worry about it.”

  “Yeah, okay. Thanks.” He ran a hand through his hair, giving him the sexiest case of bedhead in existence. Like a brother, indeed. But his shoulders had relaxed the smallest amount, and the tension between them had faded. Hopefully, her big, fat lie would result in a little less awkwardness over the next three weeks.

  “I need to fill out the reporting log for the Department,” she said. “Between the prep work, the explanations, the actual enchantment, and the drive time, I think we got almost three hours today. We only need two more this week.”

  “Great.” He already had a hand on the doorknob. “Text me when you get something else.”

  “Yeah, sure.” She masked her disappointment by rifling around in the desk. For what, she had no idea.

  “And, Eliza?”

  She stopped fussing with the plethora of dead pens in the drawer. “Yeah?”

  “Don’t mention the whole thing with the candy dish in your log. You know how the Department is. They’d make it into a big deal for no reason.”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  “No problem. See you later.”

  She let out a sigh of relief as soon as the door closed behind him. Or was it a sigh of something else? Did she want there to be a reason? No, definitely not. Having a mentor who thought he was in love with her would really get in the way of her learning. Not to mention how awkward it would be every time they had to work together. He’d probably bring her overpriced flowers or some other stupid cliché that would embarrass everyone—including Jake, once the enchantment wore off and he realized what he’d done.

  Worst of all, she would fall for it. Because somewhere down deep in her gut, Eliza knew she’d never be able to resist. And at the end of the lunar cycle, when Jake’s hormones went back to normal, she’d end up alone and heartbroken.

  Which was a major problem for someone who didn’t believe in love. Or, at least, the Capital L, happily-ever-after kind.

  Eliza took a deep breath, shook all thoughts of Love from her mind, and booted up the computer. Then she flipped on all the lights and waited for customer phone calls and walk-ins. When nothing but the dull buzz of the overhead lights came, she got to work on the forms.

  With a little time and space, Eliza quit dwelling on Jake and the candy dish incident. Yes, there’d been a few hiccups and a handful of surprises, but she’d done it. For the first time in her life, she’d successfully managed a deliberate enchantment.

  Well, technically it had been the second time. The first time, she’d been eighteen, and the enchantment had been an act of desperation. Even now she hated thinking about it. Hated how that day made her feel so vulnerable and raw all these years later.

  And she wasn’t about to think about it now. Not when the very people she’d enchanted were waiting for her at home.

  * * *

  “You’re home!” Eliza wrapped her arms around her father’s shoulders. He was still pale, and gauze covered the backs of his hands and the crook of his right elbow—leftovers from the needle sticks and IVs.

  Her father leaned back in his recliner. If it weren’t for the bandages, this could have been a scene from Eliza’s childhood memories. “How are you doing, Liza?”

  “Better now that I’ve been to Tokyo,” she teased.

  Pure confusion spread across his features. “What?”

  She considered telling him all about his drugged ramblings but decided against it. There was far too much else to cover. “Nothing. Just a stupid joke. How are you feeling?”

  “Good as new,” he said, though the half smile, half grimace on his face said otherwise. “I’ll be back to the grind in no time.”

  “Oh, no you won’t, Tim.” Her mother stepped into the living room with a glass of water in one hand and a palm full of pills in the other. “The doctor said absolutely no stress and no work for the next month. Your only job is to eat salads, watch old episodes of Supermarket Sweep, and go to cardiac rehab. Doctor’s orders.”

  “The doctor told him to watch Supermarket Sweep?” Eliza asked. “Dad, I think you need to find a new provider—”

  “Eliza, please,” her mother said.

  But the admonishment was worth it, because her dad gave Eliza one of his signature winks, followed by a wide grin. “The last guy I saw told me to watch Shop ’Til You Drop. I walked right out of there and never came back.”

  Footfalls came pounding up the back steps, and soon Elijah stepped into the living room. He enveloped their father in a bear hug. “What did I miss?”

  “Dad only sees cardiologists who prescribe nineties game shows about shopping.”

  “But not Shop ’Til You Drop, obviously.” Elijah didn’t miss a beat.

  Their mother sighed. “Your father is under stric
t orders not to stress himself out. Which is why, Tim”—she turned to their father—“Elijah is going to stay home and handle your cases while you’re recovering.”

  “Now, wait—” their father said.

  “Actually…” Elijah took a step toward Eliza and pushed her front and center in the room. “Eliza has come up with a plan.”

  Eliza shot her brother a glare that contained a hundred poisoned darts. “You said you’d handled this,” she whispered.

  “Correction, I said I would handle it. This is me handling it. Just trust me,” he whispered back. “Eliza is going to handle the phones and Dad’s cases while he’s recovering. Actually, she already did one of his enchantments.”

  “You did?” her dad asked.

  She nodded.

  “What?” Her mother squawked like a hen whose nest had been raided. “Elijah Michael Herman, you told me you were going to take care of the Johansen family. They’re some of our oldest customers, and we can’t afford to lose them.”

  Eliza had fully expected her mother to doubt her abilities and willingness—no one doubted Eliza as much as she doubted herself—but hearing her mother so openly admit that she expected her daughter to fail hurt more than she’d imagined. “You didn’t lose them,” she whispered. “Everything went fine.”

  Silence descended on the Herman living room.

  “You went out and got your provisional license again?” her father asked.

  She nodded. “Jake Sanders is going to supervise me. Elijah said you only had a few appointments scheduled for the next month, and I already did one of them. I’ll stay out of trouble and just answer the phones, I promise.” Somehow, she’d been sucked into a wormhole and come out in the past. Once upon a time, she’d begged her father to let her tag around the office just like this.

  “And you handled the Johansen appointment on your own?” Her father’s face broke into a grin.

  “Jake helped, but yeah, mostly on my own.”

  His smile grew so wide Eliza thought her father might secretly be possessed by the ghost of the Cheshire cat. “That’s my girl.”

  “See?” Elijah whispered in her ear. “Handled.”

  Her mother began pacing around the living room, ticking off a litany of tasks on her fingers. “You have to add Eliza to our malpractice insurance, Elijah. We can’t—”

  “Already did it, Mom,” he said.

  “What about taking the written exam? She has to take the written exam.”

  “There’s no written exam anymore,” Eliza added. “Just the supervised hours.”

  “What about the waiver forms? Did you get the Johansens—”

  “Mom,” Elijah and Eliza said in unison.

  She finally stopped moving and stared at the three of them.

  Something about the look in her eyes—Was it betrayal? Terror? Eliza couldn’t be sure—solidified the little ball of resolve in Eliza’s chest. For the next few weeks, she was going to be a Cupid, and she was going to do a damn good job of it. “Mom, I promise—”

  But her mother turned and headed toward the kitchen. Just before the door to the back stairwell creaked open, she called out, “I’m just going to call the Johansens and make sure they know about the money-back guarantee.”

  An awkward silence crept into the room, and Eliza swallowed back all the things she wanted to say. Screaming at her mother right now wouldn’t do anyone any good, especially her invalid father.

  Finally, he grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze. “She’ll come around.”

  She nodded, but only because she didn’t want to upset her father. They’d already broken the no-stress rule, and he’d only been home for twenty minutes. “I know.”

  He patted the arm of the recliner. “Now sit down here and tell me all about the Johansens. Aren’t they the sweetest couple?”

  Eliza might have been approaching thirty, but she hoped she never felt too old to snuggle in next to her father. “Very. Lily made me tea and showed me pictures of her grandkids.”

  “She did?”

  “She did. And it was my first-ever enchantment using a wooden spoon as a weapon. Write that one down in the history books, Dad.”

  “I have a feeling all your enchantments are going down in the history books, kiddo.”

  Eliza laughed and raised an eyebrow. “For all our sakes, I really hope that isn’t true.”

  Chapter 6.5

  “Members of the Corps shall not transport between countries any unregistered weapons, ambrosia reserves, vegetation, animals, or Cerberus offspring, including Cerberus-wolf hybrids.”

  —Cupid Corps Volunteer Manual, 3d, TR.

  Dunkaroos: public enemy number one.

  I stepped off the plane in Vancouver, saw the kangaroo mascot, and Eliza’s face popped into my head. It had been years since I’d thought of her, but there in the airport newsstand, she was all I could think about.

  Her laugh. The way her handwriting had always slanted upward. The time we’d got in trouble for ordering pizzas and having them sent to our fourth-grade teacher’s house. How she’d named all the squirrels in the neighborhood and we’d spent days creating off-the-wall backstories for them.

  We’d been inseparable.

  Then puberty hit. Suddenly, we didn’t know how to be ourselves anymore. We didn’t know how to be friends anymore. All the time we’d spent talking about squirrel exorcisms? Replaced by time spent thinking about what it would be like to kiss Eliza. Or, uh, do other stuff. I mean, I was a teenager for the gods’ sake.

  But the older we got, the less interested she seemed in being friends, much less anything more. Finally, I gave up.

  After graduation, I ran off to the Corps to forget—among other things—her.

  It worked too. For a while.

  Until that damn kangaroo hopped back into my life.

  I didn’t know for sure that she’d be at her parents’ house on her birthday, but I’d be lying if I said she wasn’t the reason I offered to make the delivery. I was just going to see her for a minute. She’d probably become someone completely different, and I could get the thought of her out of my system.

  But she was still Eliza.

  Fun, funny, kind Eliza. Only better. She’d grown up and into herself in a way I hadn’t expected. But I should have.

  Next thing I knew, I was asking her out and getting shot down. Some things never change, I guess.

  And as if my ego hadn’t taken enough of a hit, I practically begged her to let me be her mentor. I don’t know what it is about this girl—woman, now—that turns me into some kind of bumbling idiot, but there you have it, folks. Jake Sanders will do anything for a little attention from Eliza Herman. Put it in the headlines because soon everyone will know.

  Even her.

  It was hard enough to keep my unreciprocated crush hidden before. But then at the Johansens’, I had to stand a little too close and linger a little too long.

  One candy dish, one big toe, and suddenly good, old Jake was a goner. Done. Dunzo.

  For the first few minutes, I didn’t even realize what had happened. I mean, I’d been fighting the Battle of the Eliza Herman Crush for a while now. So spending a little extra time staring into her wide brown eyes wasn’t exactly news. Laughing too loudly at her jokes? Same old, same old. The newsworthy part was how I could barely keep from spouting her praises the entire way back to the office.

  How I had to knuckle the steering wheel until my fingers went numb to keep from reaching for her hand.

  How I had to count each of my breaths to keep from asking her to tell me about every moment of her life since I’d been away.

  And just when I got up the courage to explain that I’d been enchanted—that maybe this was the push we needed to give it a shot—she turned those deep, dark eyes on me and said, “Jake, I’m not offended.”

  “Offend
ed?” Maybe she’d seen me gawking at her at the last stoplight. Maybe I had drool on my chin. Things had to be even worse than I’d realized.

  “We’re basically like siblings,” she’d said.

  I don’t have little sisters. If I did, Eliza would definitely not be one of them. But there she was anyway, letting me off easy with her soft smile and pitying eyes. A big, old this-is-never-going-to-happen wrapped in a giant bow.

  So I nodded and drove away. I’m a guy that can take a hint.

  But I still have to spend a million hours with her over the next few weeks. Trying not to stand too close. Trying not to stare at her delicate cheekbones. Trying not to let her see that I’m dying a little inside every time she doesn’t return one of my lovesick stares.

  Talk about torture.

  Thanks a lot, Dunkaroos.

  Chapter 7

  “Enchantments always last one moon cycle; however, the knack of every Cupid has a distinct profile. Variations exist in the degree of wound required to produce enchantment, as well as the quality of resulting romance. For example, Eros himself was known to produce strong desire by drawing blood. Many less powerful Descendants are only able to cause a strong sense of kinship despite inflicting near-fatal wounds. Rarely, a Descendant’s knack is so powerful it enchants without even breaking the skin.”

  —Cupid 101: Everything You Need to Know about Enchantments

  After a few days, Eliza fell into a steady rhythm. Get up, shower, drive across town to her parents’ house. Load her dad into Ron Weasley when necessary—at least someone wasn’t ashamed to be seen with Ron—and ship him off to cardiac rehab. Come back to Herman & Herman to field phone calls (usually wrong numbers) and read library books or play solitaire behind the front desk until the office closed or it was time to drive back to the hospital to pick up her father.

  Essentially, she was completely alone.

  Elijah had landed in Greece two days ago and sent a text every now and again to check in—so far just photos of him with famous Erosians who’d long since peaked. Eliza’s favorites were the ones of him with Chuck Woolery and Boyz II Men.