Cupid's Contract

BLTs and Bitterness

Nice to meeting you?!

After that idiotic excuse for a sentence, she almost welcomed seeing Cupid lurking outside the conference room. Not that she'd let him know that.

"What are you doing here?" she hissed, her embarrassment making her all the more fierce. "You can't just come to my place of work!" Even at a whisper her anger was palpable.

And ineffective.

Cupid just smiled gallantly down at her, and offered her the flowers. "Thought I'd take you to lunch. I've missed you."

Unlike Eve, he made no effort to lower his voice, and she could feel eyes on her back as she scowled at him. "I'm not really sure I have time." She tried to match his light tone, for the sake of the audience, though there was a distinct tremble that betrayed her emotions.

"Nonsense, even important career-women like yourself have to eat. Shall we?" He extended his arm and Eve, secretly grateful for the escape from Andrew's presence, accepted it, though she made sure to pinch the cherub's forearm as she did so. She wasn't fully Stockholm Syndrome'd just yet, she still had some rebellion left in her.

Once they were safely out of view from the conference room, she discontinued her physical contact with Cupid, all playful gestures now uncomfortable without the audience.

"Why are you really here?" She kept her voice low, reluctant to attract anymore attention.

Cupid looked confused. "To take you to lunch. I already said that, didn'tI?"

"Why?"

"Why what?"

She glared pointedly at him, and he sighed laboriously in response.

"Why am I taking you to lunch? Why not?"

His obtuse nature earned him another glare, the pair having already made it to the street. Eve was considering hitting him with the dense bushel of flowers. Were the rules against assaulting angels?

"All right, all right! Hold your horses. I am taking you to lunch because we have business to discuss. Business we should have discussed before you started matchmaking."

She opened her mouth to interrupt, but it was his turn to glare at her. "Business that I do not discuss on crowded sidewalks in public. Normally I impart my knowledge on new Makers after the contract is instigated, but since you refused to let me into your house, I've had to shake things up a bit."

Eve snorted at that. "Do people usually let you into their houses after you trick them into slavery?"

He threw a wry look at her, pausing to hold open the door of a little restaurant she had never noticed before, his hand resting momentarily on her lower back as he ushered her inside. "You'd be surprised how many places I can get into with a face like this."

The inside of the restaurant was just as nondescript as the outside, and she was not surprised that she had overlooked the establishment for so long. The elegant decor was all marble and black wood, classic and unremarkable. Before she could comment on it's forgettable nature, they were being whisked away by a silent maitre d' who hid them behind a long silk curtain, the quiet atmosphere made all the more mute by the clack fabric.

"What is this place? Oh! Is it magic?" She swivelled her head erratically, as if expecting a coven of witches to appear.

Cupid snorted derisively. "This, my dear simpleton, is a restaurant. The only magic here is their BLT. It is simply heavenly... And I can say that with good authority."