Page 10 of The Perfect Matchmaking

“You’ll best them all. Love always wins. And you are Aphrodite. ”

Erato accompanied her little pep talk with a resounding wolf whistle, and Aphrodite straightened her shoulders further. Yes, she was the Goddess of Love and they had better remember that. She had better remember that herself. Since so much was riding on it.

The Opening Ceremonyheld at the MGM Convention Center’s massive amphitheater was going smooth as silk. Until it wasn’t. The gods were causing a ruckus, so what else was new? They needed to feed off the attention and the chaos their presence instilled in everyone. The cupids were a very fertile crowd foroohsandaahs. Apollo, of course, would know as much from teaching all of them at the Academy, and the rest of the Olympians followed his lead.

But it wasn’t the distraction of the audience or the constant interruptions by Zeus to either loudly congratulate, berate, or to force all the limelight on himself, that made Aphrodite feel anxious.

She cleared her throat. “Following the experience from the previous three years, we will extend the Perfect Match challenge. We will announce the winner at the Closing Ceremony. As you can see, the competition is very stiff this year.”

Feeling very exposed for some reason, Aphrodite gestured to the board that lit up behind her. Thousands of names moved across it. Far from all cupids had been invited to the Convention, and most of them were doing their jobs even as she spoke, assisting perfect matches to form. The enormity and the importance of her job, of their work, was overwhelming.

However, with all the big names present in the audience, the top ten on the board were firmly still. Maddison St. James was the frontrunner with 74% of perfect matches. However, the sheer number of arrows she’d shot was eye-wateringly high.Over ten thousand of them. Well, some were bound to hit their targets.

Conspicuously, one name was absent from the list. Aphrodite cast her eyes into the audience and quickly found Sabine sitting close to the front, with Abby’s hand between hers, paying very little attention to the event itself. Under Aphrodite’s watchful gaze, the younger cupid elbowed her wife sharply, and Sabine finally raised her face. And then she winked. The plastic of the microphone actually cracked in Aphrodite’s hands from the blatant gall.

She was trying to gather her thoughts enough to wrap up the welcome address when Zeus clambered onto the stage, glass in hand, and, ignoring said microphone, simply availed himself of his thundering voice.

“I can indeed see how stiff the competition is, to quote the gorgeous Goddess of Love. It’s giving me all sorts of uncomfortable feelings, if you all catch my drift.”

Some cupids snickered, some gagged.

“I would like to thank Aphrodite for organizing this wonderful little assembly. It’s just delightful to catch up with everyone here. Busy little bees that you are. But apparently not busy enough, since your fearless leader here, the Goddess of Love herself, is somehow single and not mingling at all. Slacking on the job, the lot of ya. So, in the spirit of the Week of Love, or whatever y’all are calling this shindig, let’s all find our dear Aphrodite a perfect match by the end of this gathering. Here’s to love! Ain’t it grand?”

He toasted with a glass that looked like pure vodka and had to be helped off the stage by Hermes, who threw Aphrodite a pitying look. She wanted to scream. Either from the horribly patronizing speech, the even more horrible task Zeus had given her cupids, or from the resounding cheer the aforementionedtask received from them. Hermes and his pity were just the cherry on top.

Torn between panic and anger,Aphrodite mustered the grace and presence of mind not to blow a gasket right then and there on the stage, but it was a rather close call. In the end, she clamped down on both fear and rage, smiled and clapped, and announced the Love Convention to be opened before welcoming everyone to the banquet. She wanted to escape the stuffy room full of people she had no desire to ever mingle with, and tried to ignore the compulsion. She had a job to do.

A job that implied actually talking to these very people. With Erato probably seducing some unsuspecting cupid and nowhere to be seen, Aphrodite made her way through the amphitheater as unobtrusively as the most beautiful woman in the world ever could. Which really meant she failed pretty much in the first five seconds of her carefully planned route from one end of the banquet hall to the exit.

“I think Zeus’s idea is wonderful! Just so unexpectedly wonderful!” Maddison St. James, in all her catty, smug glory, could not hide her glee. “After all, with the assembled gods and illustrious personages here in Vegas, a cupid is sure to succeed.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Maddison, I just don’t think Aphrodite will be an easy mark.” It was a pleasure to see St. James’ face fall at the sound of Sabine’s voice.

“Goddard, what the hell are you doing here? Didn’t you retire?”

“Wow, hello to you too, St. James. And I was invited. To shore up incompetence, I assume, am I right?” Unlike Erato’s, Sabine’s eyebrow rose gracefully in a gesture that was both artful and natural. Maddison, however, wasn’t having any of that.

“I haven’t seenyourname on the board. And in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m leading.”

“I noticed. The perfect match percentage was rather measly, though. Can’t help yourself, Maddison? You just have to shower the world with those arrows, consequences be damned. Don’t all those divorces weigh on your conscience?”

Maneuvering herself between the two squabbling cupids, Aphrodite raised her hands to effectively shut them up.

“My god, this is exactly why I do not miss these things.”

A growl and a male voice interrupted their almost cozy and certainly familiar back and forth.

“Which god is yours? And whom do you not miss?”

The difference in expressions on the warring cupids’ faces would have been amusing under different circumstances. Maddison’s, completely reverent and enraptured, and Sabine’s, almost disgusted at the decidedly unwelcome disruption. Ares, all 7 feet of him, towered over all of them.

“Interruptions, Ares. I do not missinterruptions.”

“Ah,” he said, fingers circling her wrist possessively as he raised her hand to his lips, still wet from the wine. Aphrodite heard Sabine gag behind her. “I’d forgotten how much you dislike that.”

“Forgotten or ignored?” The low voice from behind the massive God of War carried a decidedly warning undertone. Too bad Ares had never been particularly adept at picking up on such subtle things as subtext. Otherwise, he might have picked up on the glaring fact that Aphrodite had been forced to be with him by circumstance, never loved him, and would have swiftly ended their farcical relationship anyway.

Ares turned around, still holding Aphrodite’s slobbered-on hand in his meat-hook-like massive mitt.

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