Things seldom turned out well for the various nymphs these kinds of gods pursued, regardless of whether they were willing. They were turned into trees or spirited off to Hades for months at a time.
In Eden’s case, she’d been quite willing. And she’d wound up knocked up.
And yet it had taken her a split second to recognize Jasper Townes, because he was literally the last person she expected to see in her shop, though maybe that shouldn’t have been true. She now thought she understood what it truly meant to have the living daylights shocked out of her.
She froze in place behind the counter, three-quarters of her turned toward the door, one hand reaching for a shelf, as she’d turned herself into a tree, already out of self-defense. Which would not look out of place in her shop.
Jasper Townes was Sexy. Capital “S,” landhardon the “X,” sexy. But it was more a result of some aura, something he was born with, rather than the net effect of a series of qualities, such as reliability and foresight and protectiveness or those other Boy Scout (or navy SEAL, if she was getting specific) type things that got her motor running these days.
Being lead singer of a now very popular band called Blue Room was all part and parcel of Jasper’s sexiness.
“Eden?” His low, raspy voice was sure familiar.
“Yes?” she said pleasantly in her shopkeeper voice, although thanks to nerves she’d acquired kind of a dry-mouth click. “And you are?”
He actually laughed at that, quite genuinely.
Because, ha ha ha, wasn’t it funny that everybody in the whole freaking world knew who he was.
He had a pleasant laugh, he really did. It was just that suddenly the world was an echo chamber, and everything, even the poor baby roses in the courtyard, looked sinister in light of the moment she’d been sort of dreading for the last decade.
His band had a drummer who played a double bass drum.
It had nothing on the beat of her heart right now, though.
“Wow, you look pretty much the same as I remember,” he said. Admiringly.
She didn’t say anything. She just stared. Was that... was that a feather dangling from his hair? Did a bird crash into him or did he deliberately install a feather into his hair? Maybe it was a remnant from a down pillow.
“From the front, anyway,” he added excruciatingly.
And very, very wickedly.
Oh, God.
He’d been like a freaking Chinese acrobat that night. She’d been wheelbarrowed and scissored and flipped like a pancake inside of an hour. For a laconic poet type, he’d sure had a lot to prove about his prowess.
She’d been more bemused than anything about the whole thing, though it had been interesting the way trying all the rides in the carnival was interesting. A one and done. That had been her plan, anyway.
She stared him down until the roguish, pleased-with-himself twinkle vanished from his eyes.
“I bet you get away with saying anything you want these days, huh, Jasper?”
“Sorry. Maybe that was a little, um, graceless.”
“Um, yeah. A little.” Tersely as a nun with a ruler about to smack his hand.
“I was trying to lighten the mood.”
“I was unaware we had established a mood.”
A little silence.
Became a long silence.
“I never forgot that night with you, you know. Thought about it quite a bit over the years,” he tried carefully.
“I always think it’s funny when men say things like that. Like they should get a medal for bothering to remember boinking someone.”