Love Stinks, Inc., an Uncollected Anthology story (3 page)

His expression was cautiously hopeful. She almost said no, but what the hell. She hadn’t made a new friend in a long time. Even when you were Cupid’s daughter, not everything had to be about romance.

“Sure,” she said, forcing a grin. “I’d love to.”

5

They spent the rest of the day together.

He bought them both mint chocolate chip waffle cones, and she bought two bags of popcorn, which tasted much better than it smelled. They strolled the length of the waterfront, from the pier that housed the Ferris wheel down to the Moretown Bay Aquarium and back again.

She learned that he was a construction worker employed by one of the companies working on a new portion of the seawall north of the tourist district, and that his boss was a blustery but fair-minded dwarf who believed in working hard and drinking harder. They always started work before the sun came up and finished early enough that the boss could hit a few bars before he headed home. She told him that she owned a manufacturing company (she carefully avoided mentioning what, exactly, her company manufactured) and had decided to play hooky for the afternoon.

She didn’t tell him that she was an immortal about to be promoted to goddess.

“So you’re the boss,” he said. “I bet you’re a good one.”

“How can you tell?”

He shrugged. “It’s a gift.”

He’d said it with a straight face, but then he laughed, which ruined the effect. She laughed along with him.

By the time they made it back to the Ferris wheel, the sun had dipped below the horizon. The Ferris wheel was a blazing white monolith turning slowly against the dark water.

“I suppose I should use my ticket,” she said. “It’s only good for today.”

He produced a ticket of his own from the back pocket of his jeans.

She shook her head. “Where have you been all my life?”

“Well, for the last six months, I’ve been building a seawall.”

The line for the Ferris wheel was practically non-existent. Luke let her get in the gondola first, presumably so she couldn’t see him tip the attendant so they’d have the gondola to themselves.

The slow, interrupted ascent up along the back of the wheel as it took on new passengers didn’t prepare Dyte for the spectacular view of her city as the wheel carried their gondola forward out over the dark water, the wheel picking up speed now that all the passengers were on board.

“Wow!” she said, clutching her stuffed cat tightly. She’d never put it back in her carryall, and Luke had never made fun of her for holding it during their walk.

It didn’t escape her that Luke spent more time watching her enjoy the ride than taking in the view himself. When they reached the top of the wheel for the third time and he took her free hand in his, she wasn’t surprised.

When the wheel slowed, their ride almost over, he leaned in close and kissed her.

The kiss was gentle and his lips were soft and he smelled like clean air and sunshine, but she still felt no spark. It was just nice.

With Christopher there’d always been a spark, from the very first.

Luke held her hand until they got off the gondola, and he hailed a taxi for her, but when he asked for her number, she said no. He looked confused and disappointed, but he nodded his acceptance and told her he’d had a wonderful afternoon, and he wished her good luck with her business.

She clutched the stuffed cat all the way home. She thought about how Luke had been the first man who’d noticed her, who’d spent time with her because of who she was since her dad had scared Christopher away, and she wondered if she’d just made the biggest mistake of her life.

6

Dyte called her assistant into her office first thing the next morning. “Tell me about your parents,” she said.

“Ma’am?”

“Are they still married?” That assumed Stewart’s parents had been married in the first place, which was a pretty big assumption where mortals were concerned. Or gods, for that matter.

Stewart stood in front of her desk clutching his notepad like it might run away, which was probably what he wanted to do. A light sheen of sweat covered his forehead, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the next and back again.

She was aware she was being wildly inappropriate. She’d never had a conversation with poor Stewart that was more personal than what brand of coffee he preferred. Neither, as it turned out. He had a caffeine intolerance, and limited himself to herbal teas.

Dyte knew she could be a temperamental boss at the best of times. When she’d started Love Stinks, she’d hired Stewart away from Eros International with the promise that she would never fire him unless he did something truly egregious, like divulge company secrets to her dad. She’d also doubled his pay as soon as she could reasonably afford it, and given him regular raises ever since. None of that, however, made up for the kind of digging into his personal life she was about to do, but she needed to talk to
someone
. Preferably someone mortal, and Stewart was the only person she knew who fit the bill.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “They’re still married.”

“To each other?”

“Yes.” He swallowed hard. “Is that important?”

“Bear with me for a moment. And relax. Nothing you say for the next ten minutes or so is going to cost you your job.”

That didn’t appear to reassure him.

“I just need some advice,” she said. “Okay?”

Both his eyebrows climbed his sweaty forehead. “From me?” His voice practically squeaked on the last word.

“Yes, from you.” She plopped her head down on her desk. “Did your parents ever tell you how they knew they were right for each other?”

“Not really.”

She turned her head to stare at her stuffed cat, now back in its place on her desk. The Don’t-Fall-In-Love red heart with her company’s logo seemed to mock her.

“No great love affair?” she asked. “No love at first sight?”

He didn’t answer, and that was so unlike him, it made her sit up and really look at him.

Stewart was in his middle thirties, single like a lot of her employees, and an almost stereotypical nerd, right down to the thick, dark-rimmed glasses, unfashionable short-sleeved shirt that hung in baggy folds off his too-thin frame, and rumpled trousers. He was, however, a wiz at keeping her organized and her meetings running on time, and she couldn’t have asked for a better person to act as liaison with all her department heads, even if he was the most nervous mortal man she’d ever met.

By his expression, he had something to say but wasn’t sure if he should say it.

“Spit it out,” she told him.

He sighed. “Real life isn’t like the movies, ma’am. Or those cards everyone gives their sweethearts on days like today. I’m pretty sure my parents love each other, but they go days without saying it.” He shrugged, and his gaze dropped to the floor. “I know they were friends for a long time before they got married. I grew up thinking that’s pretty much how love happened, you know?”

Dyte considered that. Friendship leading to love. She supposed it could happen. That wasn’t the company line, of course, as drilled into her from a young age by her dad. Then again, her dad had a vested interest in promoting the notion of love at first sight.

Stewart cleared his throat and glanced out the window before he apparently worked up the courage to look at her. He was practically thrumming with nervous energy. “That’s one of the reasons I left your dad’s company when you asked me to come work for you. All those things we did at Eros—nobody can live up to an ideal like Valentine’s Day. The perfect diamond, like just anyone can afford that. Or the perfect rose, or the perfect date. That’s a lot of pressure for people to live up to, you know?”

She didn’t think she’d ever heard him say so much all at once. “But what we do here doesn’t exactly celebrate togetherness.”

He nodded. “Sure. That’s one way to look at it. But I like to think that what we do, the products we sell… we reassure people that Valentine’s Day isn’t such a big deal. It’s just another day. Don’t buy into the hype. If you don’t put so much pressure on yourself to make just that one day perfect…” He shrugged again. “Sometimes love needs time to happen, you know?”

She looked at the stuffed cat. She’d always seen the heart it held as an anti-love symbol, but now she tried looking at it from Stewart’s point of view. Not anti-love, but more a sign of independence. A rejection of the need to prove how great love was on just one day of the year. A willingness to wait for the right person to come along.

The chronically single who bought her products weren’t doomed to a life alone, and they certainly didn’t need to be pitied or made fun of for their patience. They just might be some of the bravest, strongest, and most patient people out there.

And Zeus wanted to make her their goddess.

Imagine that.

She’d been angry and brokenhearted when she’d founded Love Stinks. She wasn’t brokenhearted anymore, and she really wasn’t really angry at her dad, either. If Christopher couldn’t stand up to him, he wasn’t the right man for her, no matter now much she’d loved him at the time. Her dad might not have gone about testing Christopher’s love for her in the best way possible, but he had been looking out for her.

Maybe he wasn’t such a bad dad after all.

Not that she’d ever tell him that.

She smiled at Stewart, which made him blush to the roots of his thin, curly hair. “Thank you,” she said. “You’ve helped more than you can imagine.”

She gave the stuffed cat a quick pat on its head, then turned toward her computer. She had about a bazillion emails in her inbox, and back-to-back meetings starting in an hour.

She’d get as much done as she could, then things would have to be put on hold. She had something special she had to do. A very special type of meeting she couldn’t afford to miss.

“Stewart,” she said in her let’s-get-down-to-business voice. “Here’s what I need you to do.”

7

February 16th saw the return of the typical chilly morning fog.

The tops of the tall office buildings in City Center were shrouded in thick grayish-white mist, but Dyte could still see the faint outline of the white-spoked Ferris wheel from her office. It was one of the reasons she’d chosen an office on the tenth floor instead of taking the twenty-second floor penthouse suite, which she’d subdivided into offices for her managers.

Dyte liked to keep her people happy, which was also why she’d given everyone except a skeleton crew the rest of the week off—with pay—and the skeleton crew were each getting a hefty bonus.

Love Stinks, Inc., had had a record holiday season, not in the least due to the last-minute advertising Dyte had managed to set up before she left the office on the 14th. She’d changed the focus of her company’s advertising from “love is for wimps” to “love happens more than one day a year.” She’d had to buy a few spells—a few very expensive spells—and curry favors from the God of Cable Advertising (yes, there was a god for that, too) in order to get it done on time, but she’d managed, and the results had shown clearly in her company’s bottom line.

She did, after all, have the best head for business in her family, outside of maybe her dad.

Zeus had been impressed. Apparently he got real-time sales numbers from all businesses any of the old gods or their families had an interest in.

Dyte chewed slowly on a piece of dark chocolate, savoring the rich, slightly bitter flavor, as she stood next to her office window. The lights had come on on the Ferris wheel, and as she watched, it slowly began to turn, starting and stopping as passengers were loaded into the gondolas.

Today was a work day for most people in Moretown Bay. The Ferris wheel probably wouldn’t be busy if she wanted to take a ride by herself as she’d originally planned. She could make it happen even if she didn’t over tip the attendant. After all, she was a full-fledged goddess now.

The naming ceremony had been elaborate and lasted far too long, with too many speeches and posturing by Zeus and Apollo and even her dad, but the after party had been epic. Dionysus had given her a cure for hangovers as her naming day gift, which she’d needed after the God of Tequila had convinced her to try each and every new brand his company would be putting on the market for Cinco de Mayo.

Funny. She didn’t feel any different. Even though she was now known—at least among the old gods and goddesses—as the Goddess of the Chronically Single, she was still just Dyte, immortal daughter of Cupid…err, Eros…and Psyche, granddaughter of Aphrodite, etc., etc. She still had her own company. She’d apparently adopted one of her own stuffed cats as her personal pet.

And she was still a romantic at heart.

She’d given Stewart the day off, so she was able to slip out of the building almost unobserved. She dressed in casual Friday jeans and Doc Martens and a navy blue hoodie that was thick and soft and kept out the damp chill. She walked downhill toward the waterfront, but instead of heading toward the Ferris wheel, she turned north toward where the seawall was under construction.

She was the official goddess of some very savvy and patient people. People who were willing to wait for the right person to come along, and who were willing to take a chance that friendship might turn into something more. It was about time she quit acting like her dad, expecting love to strike with a sudden spark like a bolt from one of his arrows. Her arrows, the ones she’d never used, were more on the more pragmatic side, and she’d surprised herself to discover she was okay with that.

As she walked, she chucked the black stuffed Love Stinks skunk in the pocket of her hoodie beneath its fuzzy chin. Like the cat, it held a red satin heart in its front paws with the
Don’t Do This
symbol stamped on the fabric, but unlike the cat, it had hot pink stripes down its back.

Dyte was pretty sure Luke was confident enough in his masculinity to accept the skunk as a gift, and she hoped he was understanding enough to accept her apology and maybe let her buy him an ice cream cone. She was looking forward to finding out if they could build their friendship into something more long-lasting even after she told him who she really was.