It even rivaled some of the ballads and sonnets my father had penned—or helped others pen. Shakespeare. Irving Berlin. Billy Joel . . . You didn’t think he won over Christie Brinkley on his own, did you? But its being good made it worse.
I shook my head, trying to banish the beautiful words. But then I heard myself think:Sing them. Unleash them. Let her hear.
I ignored the pleas.
Instead, I stared at the darkened cabin. Only the porch light glowed. No movement. No shadows. Clearly, no one was awake. No surprise there considering it was past midnight. Yet there I stood, like an infatuated idiot with a rogue Cupid side composing ballads in my brain.
This had to be Zeus.
Could he tamper with that part of myself?
I’dthoughtthere were immortal laws preventing that sort of thing.
But Zeus was a bastard who thought he was above even his own laws. After all, the guy had sent his own great-granddaughter on a quest. It doesn’t get much lower than that.
Or perhaps this was all stemming from my Cupid’s relentless desire to read Demi’s heart. The only heart he’d never been able to decipher, though it was clearly full of pain. Maybe it was a challenge for him that he just needed to get out of his system. But he had to have known that it was a vain desire. I didn’t hold the key to unlocking Demi’s heart.
I turned to head back to my cabin, berating myself for even coming. I was putting my show—and my crew—at risk with this asinine behavior.
But my inner self stopped me.
Go to her!
“She’s asleep,” I muttered to no one but myself.
Forget the slow spiral into insanity. I was sprinting toward it in designer loafers. But I wasn’t going down without a fight.
I marched off, convinced I was in control—only to trip over a pile of tiny pebbles that hadn’t been there a minute ago.
You know what to do with these,I heard inside my head.
I was beginning to think my Cupid side was in league with Zeus. And they were scripting a cheesy rom-com.
Except they forgot one thing: I wasn’t the leading man. I was here to find Demi’s costar.
So why did the gods keep pushing us together? What was the purpose? I supposed I’d better find out or I wasn’t getting any sleep tonight. Reluctantly, I gathered the pebbles, hardly believing I was about to toss them at Demi’s window like some wannabe Romeo.
But that’s exactly what I found myself doing—standing outside the window I somehow knew belonged to Demi. At least I hoped so. I just prayed it wasn’t Cassie’s, or that she wasn’t sharing a bedroom with Demi. No telling what she would do if I woke her up. Truth be told, it surprised me I hadn’t been hexed into oblivion as soon as I’d neared the cabin. I’d seen the murderous look in Cassie’s eyes aimed directly at me during the photo shoot.
If my show and I survived this season, it was going to be a miracle.
I stared at the handful of pebbles I held, hardly believing I was actually doing this. I’d never done anything even remotely this cheesy—not even when I was dating my ex-wife. Maybe if I had, things would have turned out differently. But for whatever reason, the Cupid part of me had never connected with Carmen.
Now I had to hold him back—he was drunk on inspiration, ready to compose a songbook’s worth of ballads for a woman not meant to be mine.
Feeling foolish, tired, and ready to get this humiliation over with, I tossed the first one. Gently. Not enough to break the glass, just enough to clink against it. It gave a soft,deliberate sound. Like knocking on the edge of a dream—or a cabin—I wasn’t supposed to enter.
I waited a moment, and no sign of life appeared, so I tossed a few more. Nothing. I decided one more and I was done. I pulled back my arm and let it fly, only to connect with Demi’s gorgeous head and not the pane. In what was the worst timing ever, Demi had finally thrown open her window.
“Ouch!” She rubbed her head. “What’s wrong with you?” Her sleepy voice was groggy but furious. “Humiliating me and trying to make the entire cast hate me wasn’t enough for you? Now you have to wake me up and throw rocks at my face?”
I rushed forward ready to apologize and make sure she was okay, only to be stopped in my tracks when I noticed the clingy pink nightshirt she was wearing that was slipping off one shoulder, her fiery hair pulled up sexily, a few strands framing her heart-shaped face. She was, in a word, breathtaking.
And I?
I was toast.
“Uh, you’re not wearing black,” I said. Not smoothly or charmingly. Just—tragically. Who had I become? I was a god of love, but I sounded more like a simpering idiot going through puberty.
