with her huge new knockers in the way. “You’re absolutely right. I was just trying to be fair, but my regret is real.”
Ingrid peered at her, rolling her hand for her to continue. “So the old lady on the tour bus. Before or after Igor called?”
Grabbing the length of her long braid, Quinn wound it around a finger and tried to remember. “I think it was after. It had to be after, because then she heard you give me hell for even answering the phone, knowing he was on the other end of the line. So of course, she heard my pathetic story about how I’d saved a lifetime for this trip and thought Igor should be the one to take it with me because…well, you know the rest…”
The rest being Quinn’s intention to propose to Igor in the place she considered one of the most romantic on earth.
Ingrid’s head fell back on her shoulders, her pale throat exposed to the glaring ball of buttery Grecian sun. “Oh, you did not fall for that story she fed you, did you? She must’ve heard you going on about how Igor was a total jerk, and how you’d had it with romance and love for good.”
“Well, I have,” she defended. She had, too. All her life, her mother had told her to knock off the daydreaming about her Prince Charming and find a man who was real—if she had to find one at all.
If real meant finding a man who scratched his love sac and burped while watching the Playboy Channel, she’d rather keep daydreaming about her Mr. Darcy.
Until her ugly breakup with Igor, that is. Since the night she’d found out he’d been sleeping with a leggy redheaded waitress who worked at the Spotted Pig, two doors down from the bookstore where she worked, she’d thrown in the towel.
Ingrid’s ringed fingers flashed in the sun in protest. “Stop. Even with everything that’s gone down with that cheating slug, you still listened to that crazy woman on the bus. Which means you, in all your unicorns and cinnamon sticks, could manage to find romance at the urologist’s. You’re a diehard, Quinn. Your soul-mate take on life alone could feed a buffet of the love-starved. It’ll come back. Right now, you’re just butthurt. That aside, she was probably just trying to make you feel better. And you, an expert on all things Greek and mythological, fell for it? I don’t get it.”
She bit the inside of her cheek. She had fallen for it. Which meant her romantic bone still needed work if she was going to be more of a realist about love. “To be fair, it was a really compelling story.”
She loved a good story. Almost any story, in fact. As long as it was about love—tragic, happy, or anything in between. Until she’d decided no more romance. She’d promised herself from here on out it was sci-fi and cookbooks only.
“Quinn Morris, you know the ins and outs of Greece and all its rich history almost better than you know your own home country. You did not believe her, did you?”
Quinn crossed her arms over her chest in exasperation. Well, she almost crossed them. Her big, big balloons really prevented a lot of extracurricular activity. “Blame, blame, blame. How could I not investigate what she told us, Ingrid? I mean, you have to admit, even you were a little curious about a mysterious golden apple no one’s ever heard about. It was pretty spectacular. How could I not at least take a peek? Seriously, I actually thought she’d probably go home and wet clear through her Depends laughing after feeding me such gibberish, but…”
Ingrid’s eyes rolled upward. “You did it anyway. Now, if you tell me that you actually confessed your heartbreak to a damn produce item in some marble column like she told you to do because she claims the gods can hear your love woes, I’m going to deflate your new cans one at a time. Ping-ping,” she said, making a gun with her forefinger and thumb
Quinn gave her a sheepish look. “But I did find the column with the apple. It looked just like it had been stamped there. So I thought, what the heck? Who better than Aphrodite’s shoulder to cry on, right? Goddess of Love, blah, blah, blah. And before you say another word—I was just talking out my grief over my breakup, Ingrid. You know, kind of like one big, ugly purge, never really-really expecting anything