Accidentally Aphrodite - Dakota Cassidy Page 0,32
keep from crying out an apology to them. “What do you mean by the second time?”
“Bart and Alice knew each other a long time ago. They were almost married straight out of high school, but Bart was drafted and her father didn’t approve of him anyway. Alice’s father made that very clear to Bart. He told Bart he’d kick her out of the house and she’d have to fend for herself while Bart was serving in the military overseas.”
Parents, they could really suck. No one got that better than she did. “How awful.”
“So instead of proposing the way he’d planned, he let her go rather than ask her to choose between him and her family. He feared her father really meant what he said and she’d be left with nothing.”
Her heart ached for them. “Wow. Talk about a painful sacrifice.”
“The sacrifice of real love.”
“What happened to them all that time in between?” All that lost time.
“In the interim, of course, each moved on and married and had families. They hadn’t seen or heard from each other since their high school graduation. Until their fifty-third high school reunion just this past year, where they reunited and fell in love all over again.”
The romantic in her was all ears—ears and floaty hearts and bouquets filled with colorful flowers. “So what’s that got to do with chickening out again?”
Khristos’s face softened, the hard lines easing. “Bart’s dying, Quinn. He has another year, maybe two to live, but he was afraid to burden Alice with the news. Her health is fragile, too. Both families are against them marrying, and Bart almost let his children’s wishes run roughshod over the last bit of happiness he’ll have before he leaves this earth. Today, he was going to break off their relationship. If Cupid hadn’t hit him with that arrow, he might have missed a second opportunity to say to hell with the naysayers and propose to the woman he’s loved for more than fifty years who doesn’t give a fig, as she says, that they only have a little time left—Alice just wants them to spend it together. Bart just needed a nudge in the right direction, and you’ll learn to feel that over time. It’ll become instinct.”
A rush of warmth stung her heart—one she desperately wanted to fight, but Bart and Alice were living proof that, at least for them, true love did exist. They’d proven real love could weather fifty years.
“What would have happened if Bart hadn’t proposed today?”
“They both would have died brokenhearted.”
Quinn gulped, hard, loosening the scarf around her neck. She needed to understand the dynamics of this, the repercussions if she mistakenly did something wrong. Knowing she could muck this up made her all the more determined to get it right in the future. So there’d be no Bart and Alice’s left in her clumsy wake.
“So the earth won’t stop revolving if a match isn’t successfully made, yet, I feel like there’s a ‘but’ attached to that.”
He rolled his wide shoulders, but his eyes were shadowed. “Most times not, but sometimes, one match sets off a chain reaction that can reverberate for lifetimes to come. This time, it was just two people who want to finish out their lives as partners. And sometimes, Quinn, that’s just as important as procreation of future world leaders.”
Quinn swallowed hard again, her chest so tight she almost couldn’t speak at the near disaster Khristos had saved them from. “Thank you,” she whispered at him.
He looked down at her and smiled, that warm, easygoing, “don’t worry about me having my liver eaten straight from my gut night after night while I’m tied down to a boulder” smile and squeezed her shoulders. “That’s why I’m here, Quinn. To help you learn when the timing is right.”
She fought another rush of tears—for Bart and Alice and the time wasted apart all those years due to a disapproving parent, and for the sacrifice Bart was willing to make to be with the woman he loved no matter what anyone else said.
Khristos cupped her jaw, and lifted her chin. “C’mon. We’ve been out here for hours. Let’s go back to your place and have some dinner, and then we’ll give it another try. You just have to loosen up and interpret the varying vibes of matchmaking.”
She moved a step back, because having him so close made her lungs scream for air. “If I get any looser, I’ll end up matching armed robbers to bank tellers. You’re not wrong when you