Accidentally Aphrodite - Dakota Cassidy Page 0,73
taught you well. I trusted you’d teach that adorable Quinn everything she needed to know. And you did. Just look at her, making matches faster than Match .”
His gut stung. He didn’t want to hear about matches or love. He just wanted this ache in his chest to damn well go away.
Khristos sucked in the sea air and clenched his jaw. “Okay. That aside, I need you to make it stop. Make it stop now.”
His mother’s beautiful face, like creamy porcelain and peaches, looked astonished. “Make what stop, darling?”
“That overbearing, controlling, give-me-grandchildren-or-I’ll-make-you-miserable love spell you put on the apple. You know, I almost forgot about it until today, when I was having my ass handed to me by my never-gonna-believe-in-fairytales-again Quinn. And then I remembered that argument we had, and it all made sense.”
Her look of bewilderment almost had him. Almost. Damn, she was good. “A love spell on the apple? Argument? I didn’t do anything to it but leave it in your care, Khristos.”
“That’s crap, and you damn well know it, Mom!” he thundered, glowering down at her, his jaw tight. “You’ve used that apple to keep me in check for centuries. You said so yourself.”
She made a pouty face, crossing her arms over her chest. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. You just watch your tone there, son. How dare you come storming in here and yell accusations at me. Just who do you think you are?”
He tried to remember his father’s words—to be patient with his mother. To love her for who she was, not who he wanted her to be. But goddamn it, this loving someone who didn’t love you back was pretty shitty.
Knock it off, good man, next you’ll be playing Air Supply and wandering around sniffing Quinn’s frilly pillows. Fight for your man-card.
He had to fight not to seethe his next words. “You’re joking, right? How can you stand there and tell me you had nothing to do with what’s happening to me?”
“What is happening to you, honey?”
“Have you already forgotten what you said to me?”
Aphrodite yanked her glasses off and set her book on a nearby table littered with pictures of them, happy, laughing, playing badminton with Zeus and his brood. “What exactly did I say to you?”
“You told me if a woman ever got her hands on the apple—which the stats favored; I mean, how many men do you know who’d be kooky enough to confess their love woes to an apple in the Parthenon?—you said I’d fall helplessly in love with her. Yes, you did. Which to me meant, better hang on to that damn apple, Khristos, or possibly end up in love with a serial killer. It was your controlling way of demanding I get busy and make you some grandchildren.”
Aphrodite appeared to pause in thought before she said, “Was your grandmother on that damn tour bus to the Parthenon again?”
“Bingo, Mom! She fed Quinn that crazy story about talking to the apple about her breakup with the man she wanted to marry to purge her soul of strife or whatever the story was. Quinn, being the mythology addict she is, and still pretty sore from the end of the relationship she thought would lead to marriage, believed her.”
“Does she still smell like a goat?”
“Who?” he all but shouted.
“Grams, of course.”
“Rumor has it, yes.”
Aphrodite grinned. “So she’s still selling that story to the tourists? Gods, she’s good. She cracks me up.”
“Is that the point? No. The point is, Quinn is now Aphrodite, and I’m in love with her because you couldn’t keep your nose out of my life! If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times—let me find the love of my immortal life. But no, you just couldn’t let it be.”
“I’m still missing something here…”
He ran a hand over his jaw with an exasperated sigh. “How convenient you’ve forgotten that argument. I almost did, too. But then I remembered, it was like World War III. We didn’t speak to each other for almost a decade. And I remember that threat—clearly. So make it go away. Now!”
Aphrodite laughed, a bubbling chuckle of casual abandon. “Oh, honey, no, no. no. I would never actually put a love spell on the apple. I said I should put a spell on the apple so you’d stop chasing women. Your memory’s slipping, son. Try some ginko biloba. I hear it helps. I was just keeping you on your toes to teach you about consequences, give you responsibilities to tend. You know how I feel