by Holley Trent
He was too broody, too cynical.
He eased back into the shadows at the side of the restaurant and watched Marion kick the gravel near yet another deflated tire.
Her fists were clenched at her sides in rage.
He couldn’t blame her. She’d been going through tires at quite a clip in the past month. They were probably all due to be changed, given the aggressive driving schedule she kept.
When she’d arrived at the station, she hadn’t seemed to have noticed the first flat. She’d parked, nimbly hopped from her rig like some sort of long-haul trucking sprite, and hiked across the icy lot into the restaurant. She’d picked a table next to the window, much to Charles’s viewing pleasure, and shrugged off her puffy coat to reveal a delicate frame and a plaid flannel shirt buttoned all the way up to her clavicle.
She’d sat there for an hour, nursing the only hot meal she’d had all day: a chili cheeseburger and fries drizzled with mayo, not ketchup.
He’d watched her with a quiet curiosity from his shadowy station. How odd his fated match was.
For most of his many years, he’d successfully suppressed the part of him that impelled him to play matchmaker. He knew instantly upon meeting a person if they had a love match and knew precisely where to direct that person to find him or her. It was a gift he couldn’t turn off, but he could quiet it. He’d done that with alcohol for much of the last century, but recently he’d had to sober up.
Pop had made him dry out. He wanted to groom Charles to become one of hell’s lieutenants, but the funny thing about sobriety was that it made real life pop in painful clarity.
Human beings weren’t playthings. They may not have had magic or any other supernatural leanings, but they had agency and free will. At times, they were infuriatingly destructive, but they were also were capable of creating objects of breathtaking beauty. Humanity was a complicated endeavor, and Charles wanted to live in the world with it again the way he had as a boy.
He didn’t want to lord over them like some tyrant king.
Marion lifted her mesh trucker hat, rousing him from his reverie. She raked her short brown hair back from her eyes.
He shifted for a better view. He’d yet to see her head-on in the light. She’d always had her head down or he’d been in a bad position. In his head, he’d seen her time and time again, but visions weren’t real. He wanted confirmation that she really was that beautiful.
He exhaled as she turned her face toward the shadow where he waited.
Even with the aggressively shorn hair and no makeup, she was stunningly pretty. She had the same pale brown eyes as her sister, though the shapes of them were slightly upturned like their grandmother’s. Same pixie nose. There was no mistaking their relation.
“Fuck,” came her surprisingly husky voice. She propped her fists onto her hips and paced. “Flat tire in the goddamned frozen hinterlands. Just my luck.”
He clamped his teeth to suppress the chuckle bubbling up from his gut. Oh, yes. She was descended from Clarissa, all right. With a mouth like that, Marion would fit right in with the Morton bunch…not that Clarissa ever, ever swore. But the spunk was the same.
Learn more about Cupid in Love.
COPYRIGHT AND CREDITS
DAUGHTER ON THE RUN
Copyright © 2020 by Holley Trent
A shorter version of this work entitled “A Demoness Matched” was published by Crimson Romance in 2014 in the Melt My Heart anthology.
Excerpt of CUPID IN LOVE copyright © 2020 by Holley Trent
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
Cover stock:
© Nadezda Korobkova via 123RF.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.