Eros (12 page)

The next morning, Skye sat in the kitchen waiting for Coop.
Judging by the empty bottles that stood on the side, it would probably be some time before he emerged.
She’d been shaking with anger after his ‘lesson’ the day before, and it had taken her a long time to calm down.
But she was feeling better now, and prepared to meet him.
Just because she was quiet didn’t mean she didn’t have opinions of her own, she fumed.
And just because she was quiet didn’t give people like him carte-blanche to walk all over her.

Unfortunately for Coop, she’d also realised something else in the middle of the night.
Suddenly everything was starting to slot into place and Skye was far from a happy girl.

It was almost midday when she heard a thud. She looked up from the article she’d been reading and saw one of the kitchen stools move slightly as Coop sat down on it.

‘Get me a drink, would you, Skye?’ he groaned.

She ignored his request.
‘So you finally managed to get out of bed, did you?
Exactly how much did you drink last night?’

Good grief, she sounded like his mother.
‘I’m a big boy.
If I want to drink, I’ll drink.’

‘Well, bully for you,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Because clearly your godly powers don’t include being able to avoid hangovers.’

‘Skye, this really isn’t the time.’

‘Oh, I think it’s the perfect time.
Because you’re going to tell me all about a certain man, or should I say god, called Apollo.’

Coop felt his heart sink.
‘Oh.’

‘Did you really think I wouldn’t put two and two together?
You did that to him, didn’t you?
He hated me then all of a sudden decided I was his one true love.
It was because of him I took this job!
You screwed with him and you screwed with me!’

Coop sighed.
‘It wasn’t about you.
He just needed taking down a peg or two.’

‘Listen to yourself!’ Skye snarled.
‘All high and mighty about how you hate your job because you’re forcing people to fall in love with each other.
And then you go and force him to fall in love with me.
To take him down a fucking peg or two.’

He blinked.
‘You’re angry.’

‘You’re goddamn right I’m angry.
I had a good thing going.
I had friends and a job and I was starting to have fun.
By shooting your mate Apollo, you messed all that up for me.
Why couldn’t you pick on someone else?’

‘You were,’ Coop swallowed, ‘convenient.’

‘And you’re a prick.’

He rubbed his forehead.
‘I deserved that.
But you didn’t really have a good thing going, Skye.
You shouldn’t be working in a nightclub and serving drinks.
You’re better than that.’

‘It wasn’t your decision to make!’

‘Which is my point about shooting people to make them fall in love,’ he said tiredly.

‘You do realise that makes it worse, not better?
You hate forcing people into love and yet you did it to Apollo.
You hate making life decisions for other people and yet you did it to me.’

‘I didn’t force you to take this job.’

‘You didn’t leave me with many other options.’

Coop felt as if the layers of his soul were being peeled away.
Suddenly contrite, he looked up at Skye, wishing she could see his face and recognise the truth there. ‘I’m sorry.
I’m really sorry.
It seemed like a good idea at the time and obviously it wasn’t.’

‘Obviously,’ said Skye sarcastically.

He looked down, spotted her suitcase and looked back up again, alarmed.

‘You’re leaving?’

‘Do you really expect me to stay?’

Coop stared at her, his eyes raking her face.
‘I don’t want you to go.’

‘For once, this isn’t about what you want.
I’ve barely known you for twenty-four hours and all I’ve seen is someone completely self-centred.
You treat people like garbage.
You’ve treated
me
like garbage!
I’m not your prisoner, Coop.’

‘If this is about the kis
s―
’ he began.

‘It’s about the lies,’ she interrupted.
‘All you’ve done is lie to me.’

‘I won’t do it again,’ he said quietly.
‘And I’ll put things right with Apollo.
I just need to get the two of you in a room together, that’s all.’

‘Oh, you’ll put things right with Apollo,’ Skye hissed.
‘But I’m still leaving.’

Coop thought quickly.
There had to be a way out of this.
At the very least, he could buy himself some time to make her stay longer.
He liked having her around and wasn’t ready for her to go just yet.

‘It will take me a few days to get Apollo to where I need him to be.
I already said I need the two of you together to make things right.’

‘So invite him here today and let’s be done with it.
I assume he has the same godly powers that you do and can transport himself here straightaway.’

‘You remember the part I said yesterday about Zeus not letting anyone from Olympus come here?
Apollo is Zeus’s son.
And, yes, he’s a god with many godly powers.
That means he’s not allowed to come here.
We need to arrange somewhere neutral and that may take time.’

‘There is no “we” in this equation, Coop.
There’s only you.
Arrange a time and a place and arrange it now.’

‘Okay,’ he said.
‘There is just one thing though.’

‘What?’ she snapped.

‘The girl I saw at Nemesis, the one I chose Apollo to fall in love with?’

‘You mean me?’

‘Yes, I mean you.
That girl – that you – would never have stood up for yourself like this.
So maybe being here is a good thing, Skye.
For you and for me.’

Skye stared at him, suddenly without any answer.

He sighed heavily.
‘I’ll sort it out.
Just give me a day or two, okay?’

‘You’ve got forty-eight hours,’ she snapped.

‘Well, I’d better get a move on then, hadn’t I?’

Skye sniffed in agreement, stood up, picked up her suitcase handle and trundled it back through to her bedroom.
As soon as she was out of earshot, Coop reached inside his pocket and pulled out his phone.

‘Herm?’ he said, when his friend finally answered.
‘I need some help.’

Hermes exhaled loudly.
‘Why am I not surprised?’

***

Having agreed with Hermes that his natural charm was the best way to win over Skye (at least, Coop had decided his natural charm would be the best way, Hermes had been less inclined to agree), he began with lunch.
His head was still pounding from the wine he had drunk the night before but he managed to pull himself together enough to zip down to the nearest village and pick up a sumptuous lunch of olives, creamy soft cheese, crunchy bread and taramasalata.
He laid everything out carefully on the kitchen table, adding a bunch of wild daisies and hyacinths as a centrepiece.
Once he was satisfied with his efforts, he strode along the long corridor and knocked on Skye’s bedroom door.

‘What do you want?’ she called out from where she lay on her bed, bemoaning the fact that she’d moved countries to avoid one male idiot and had ended up with an even bigger one.

Coop cleared his throat.
‘I made lunch,’ he shouted back.

There was a moment of silence.

‘I’m not hungry,’ Skye replied eventually.

‘Come on, you need to eat.’ Coop crossed his fingers tightly.
‘I promise I’ll be good.’

For a moment, he thought she was going to ignore him but then he heard her padding in his direction.
She flung open the door with a surprising amount of force and stared out at him.
She still looked pretty pissed off.

‘How many times?’ she snapped.

Not quite sure what she was referring to, Coop did his best to smile charmingly, hoping his tone of voice would reflect his expression.
‘What do you mean?’

‘How many times have you sneaked into my room?
Have you been watching me all the time?’

Her eyes were narrowed in his direction, although she had slightly misjudged where his face was and was looking at his chest, which Coop found oddly off-putting.
Nonetheless, the suspicion making the green flecks in her eyes more vivid was abundantly clear.

Coop blinked.
‘I’ve not been watching you all the time, Skye.
And I’ve not sneaked into your room.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Okay,’ he demurred. ‘I came in when you first arrived.
But only to make sure you had everything you needed.
I stayed for no longer than a minute or two.
And I came in once when you had a nightmare.
I tried to wake you up because you were crying out in your sleep.’

Shifting uncomfortably at the thought of him watching her sleep, Skye focused on her verbal attack.
‘Those were the only times?’ she demanded.

‘Well, there was one other occasion when I didn’t know where you’d gone so I came in to look for you.
You weren’t here.’
He shrugged.
‘So I left.’

She put her hands on her hips.
‘When was this?’

Without thinking, Coop answered,
‘Tuesday.’

Skye’s face suffused with red.
‘Tuesday?
When…’ she paused, ‘when I was swimming?’

Uh-oh.
Coop watched her carefully, trying to judge what the best answer here would be.
‘Swimming?’ he asked cautiously.

‘Tell me the truth, Coop.
You owe me that.’

He sighed.
‘Maybe I walked out to the balcony to see if I could find you and I spotted you in the pool.’

Her face went even redder.

‘Skye,’ Coop began, ‘I wasn’t spying on you.
I tried to give you as much privacy as I could and respect your space…’

The door slammed in his face.
Shit.
He remained there for a moment staring at it then walked back to the kitchen, a muscle throbbing in his cheek.
That hadn’t gone quite as well as he’d hoped.

Skye turned round and leaned with her back against the door.
She couldn’t believe he’d seen her swimming naked.
She put her hands up to her hot cheeks and closed her eyes.
She’d not thought things could get any worse.
Now she’d have to spend the next two days with a man who’d seen every inch of her skin – and then some.
She should have demanded he arrange to meet Apollo straightaway.
Come to think of it, why didn’t she just book into a hotel and get out of this place where she never knew whether she was being watched or not?

She sank down to the floor and hugged her knees.
She didn’t have an answer for that one.
Skye wondered whether living with a genuine Greek god was attacking her subconscious and telling her to stay.

‘A Greek god,’ she whispered to herself.
It sounded bloody ridiculous when she said it out loud.
Of course that kiss would have meant nothing to him.
Given the muscles she’d felt when his body was next to hers, he probably looked just like a Greek god was supposed to and could have his pick of women.
She bit her lip.
Hell, he’d probably been the inspiration for all those perfectly sculpted marble statues...

Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she’d not eaten for several hours.
Skye thought quickly.
Perhaps it would be better to have lunch now when she knew where he was, rather than sneak into the kitchen later when she’d have no idea whether he was watching her or not.
The thought of him hovering around, his eyes following her every move, was too creepy to think about.
She wondered what else he might have seen her do, and the flush on her cheeks spread down to her neck and arms.
Get a grip, Skye, she told herself.
You can’t let this man intimidate you, whether he’s a god or not.
Deciding that she wasn’t going to spend the next two days cowering in her room – after all, she hadn’t done anything wrong – she stood up, straightened her shoulders and went into the bathroom to splash cold water on her face.
Then she went out to the kitchen to face him.