Counterfeit Cupid (Mt. Olympus Employment Agency: Cupid #2)(13)

Oh, please, let that be true.

I pressed the unlock button on my keys, and the dull thud it made caused my stomach to drop. That was not the sound of a door unlocking. I’d left it unlocked. My stupidity and carelessness was appalling, even to myself.

I flung the door open and peered into the shadowed interior. A trickle of sweat dripped from my temple. The wings weren’t there. A frantic search of every inch of the car—under the seats, in the glove compartment, in the seat pouches and foot spaces—left no doubt that my wings were gone. The blowgun wasn’t there, either.

Ellen was going to kill me. Aphrodite was going to reassign me to the Underworld to be used as a test subject for new torture techniques. And that was if they let me live.

I dropped onto the seat on the driver’s side, facing out, and bent forward, scrubbing my face with my hands. What should I do? I couldn’t exactly file a police report. I couldn’t even ask at the front desk.

Even in my desperate state, Annie’s green eyes haunted me behind my closed lids. I took a deep breath and used her face to calm myself. Annie scowling at me at check-in. Annie holding her mug in her hands in the client’s kitchen. Annie appearing last night with a package in her hands that she told Stuart was women’s stuff. Annie smiling at me as if she hadn’t been angry anymore.

I dropped my hands and opened my eyes. Annie’s package of women’s stuff had been white and approximately the size of a hamburger. I’d actually seen her come inside with my wings, but my mind had glossed over what my eyes had caught. Now that I replayed the memory, there was no question. She’d been carrying my wings.

No wonder she’d been acting so oddly. Annie had broken into my car. I was sure I’d left the blowgun in my cargo shorts. Had she been in my room, too?

My breath caught in my chest. When I went to dinner, she’d waited for me to leave before going upstairs. She’d even suggested I order the soufflé so I’d be gone longer.

I groaned. I’d totally been played. She must’ve seen me at the house, and I’d fallen right into her hands.

Damn. Looked like I still had lousy taste in women.





6. Annie


I may have gone a little overboard. At first, all I wanted to do was fix the elastic on the broken wing. Sure, I could have fastened it with hot glue or duct tape, but sewing it would be more secure.

So, I did that. No problem.

But the silly things were so plain they were ugly. I only meant to use a little spray glue and dust the edges with silver glitter, but the nozzle on the glue was clogged and forced the spray sideways, leaving a streak of glue down the center of one wing.

So, I added a few scraps of lace I had laying around in order to cover the glue marks.

Now it was off balance. What kind of Cupid walked around with asymmetrical wings? More lace followed on the other wing to match. A few ribbons. A whole lot more glitter.

Hand-sewing the crystal beads in heart patterns everywhere was probably excessive.

When I tried them on, I was satisfied. They hung from my shoulders like airy clouds sparkling with raindrops. I spun around and did a little dance in front of the mirror, then spent the rest of the evening in front of the television in my pajamas and wings eating ice cream and watching Meg Ryan movies. By the end of You’ve Got Mail, my back hurt from leaning forward the whole time to keep the wings from getting crushed against the back of the couch.

That didn’t stop me from watching Kate and Leopold before I took the wings off and went to bed.

I dozed off smiling, thinking how confused someone might be if they’d walked in and saw nobody in the room while the remote kept moving around on the coffee table.

Since I had the next two days off, I was going to spread as much love in the world as I could.

*

I worried at first that I wouldn’t be able to figure out the blowgun. Turns out, it had its own sort of magic. Either that or I was a natural at it.

After a quick breakfast, I put on my shiny new wings and took a walk around the apartment complex. To my surprise, the invisibility thing came with a bonus ability to walk through walls and doors. My first stop was down the hall at the corner apartment on my floor. I poked my head inside to make sure nobody was naked, then glided through to the living room.

Daisy, a pretty, chatty blonde, sat at the kitchen table eating a bowl of cereal. She was dressed in her pink Pancake Factory uniform and reading a book. A moment later, her roommate Dwight walked into the room, crossed in front of me, and poured himself a cup of coffee. He grunted a good morning at her, and she grunted back without looking up from her book.

Rather than join her at the table, he dropped onto the couch and checked out his phone while he sipped his coffee.

The two had been roommates since I’d moved in two years ago. I’d always thought they’d be perfect together, but nothing had happened in all the time I’d known them. All traditional matchmaking attempts had failed.

“Hold still, big guy. I’m about to shake up your world.” I took aim at the eagle tattooed on Dwight’s dark brown, muscled bicep and blew out my first dart.

To my surprise, he jumped and slapped at his arm. “Ow.”

Daisy looked up from her book. “What’s wrong?”

He shrugged and rubbed his arm. “Dunno. I thought a bug bit me or something.”

“Oh.” She glanced back at her book, then looked at him again. “Are you working the night shift at the factory tonight?”