Couching Serendipity
We
begin in a posh bar somewhere in lower Manhattan. Dark wood and butter
soft leather. Polished bronze and dusky amber lights. Soft industrial
pop plays, sultry and slightly discordant, highlighting the edge of
conversations and the looks thrown between complete strangers as they
prowl amongst Friday night’s fresher, less jaded clientele.
A
meat market, yes. The bar, a well-known hunting ground for both hopeful
and horny, lorn and libidinous, the room simmers with the potential for
lust and love.
But in one corner, a man and a woman sit, removed
from the game. Together, yet apart and uncannily separate from the
rest, their interest lies upon a couple secreted away in a booth, and
the wager they’ve made concerning them…
“Quite the match, aren’t
they?” Mira’s brow rose, her lips grazing the edge of her martini
glass. She averted her eyes from the couple’s canoodling and took a
small sip of her drink, gin and vermouth the barest whisper upon her
tongue.
“Mmm.” On the stool beside her, Kade was noncommittal.
He raised a tattooed hand. His heavy platinum watch slipped to the
sleeve of his bespoke Armani suit as he loosened his tie, its cornflower
silk the exact shade of his eyes. He glanced at her askance from
beneath a fall of raven wing hair. “This doesn’t prove anything, you
know.”
Mira’s laughter rang out. People turned, but she was used
to that and rather enjoyed it. She tsked, patting Kade’s arm with
crocodile conciliation, her tapered, crimson nails complimenting his
pinstripes. “Aww. Not quite the corner on the market you’d been led to
believe?” Her eyes sparked as brightly as the diamond on the observed
woman’s left hand…which was currently thrust as deep in her beau’s
thinning hair as his tongue was down her throat.
“What were the
limits to your power again…?” Kade drummed his fingers on the bar top,
pensive. “Ah, yes, no more than three wishes, no bringing people back
from the dead, and,” he paused, so smug she could just slap him, “no
wishes for love. That, my dear, falls solely into a cupid’s purview.”
“And
I’ll maintain that one doesn’t have to be the spawn of Aphrodite to
nudge two people together that obviously should be. You don’t need to
wish for love to find it.” Mira batted her lashes and teased an olive
from her drink pick with her teeth.
Kade’s hand flew to his
breast. “Spawn? Mira, you wound me.” He chuckled and threw back the last
of his bourbon. “Though you are right about one thing, those wishing
for love seldom find it. It’s the ones not looking for it that get hit
most often.” He cocked his brow and she rolled her eyes at the jab,
having given up on experiencing that fickle emotion long ago.
“But
regardless,” he continued, “ring or no, that is lust…on his part
anyway, and I’d venture it’s avarice on hers.” He eyed the couple still
going at it and set his glass down. “You, little jinn, exist to grant
desires, whereas I—” he grinned, and a mousy woman seated behind Mira
gasped. Kade’s eyes flicked to her, then back to Mira, his stupid smile
impossibly wider. “Am made for love.” He collected his phone from the
bar and shot off a quick text.
Mira rolled her eyes and swatted
his chest. Gah, cupids were intolerable—especially this cupid. “So
you’re telling me that’s not true love?”
“Hardly,” he said, re-pocketing the silly device and collecting his overcoat. “But please, do keep trying.”
Mira
made a concerted effort not to pout until he’d cleared the large
windows at the front of the restaurant and was halfway down the block.
Only then did she allow herself to slump, her gaze going back to the
couple in the booth. How could Kade not see how perfect those two were
for each other?
The woman, Mira’s former client, had wished for a
steady job, and with a slight twist of serendipity, there was the man.
He was in need of a nanny for his Pomeranian.
Her second wish had been for a rent-controlled apartment and fortuitously, he preferred live-in help.
And
her last wish had been to gain a skill to ensure her continued
employment; he was more than eager to pay for her canine reiki classes.
The
two of them were absolute kismet. A real life beauty and the—well, he
wasn’t quite rugged enough to be a beast, but still—And age gaps had
been a thing literally forever. His winter to her spring was both
classic and on trend. Mira took another sip of her martini as her former
client minced by on six-inch stilettos. How she walked the dog in
those…
Mira waved the thought away. Not her concern, aside from
the fact that Kade was wrong, and her most fervent wish was to prove it
to him if it were the last—
“Um, excuse me?”
Mira turned to the brunette behind her and cocked a brow. “Yes?”
The
mousy little thing bowed her shoulders as if chagrinned. As she should
be for leaving the house dressed like that. How did she even get in
here?
“I—was that your boyfriend?”
“Was that my…?” Was she mad?
The brunette’s cheeks flared crimson. “Sorry, it’s none of my business, I just—the way he grinned at me, I—never mind.”
Now,
wait a moment. Mira caught the woman’s arm as she went to turn, and she
started at Mira’s smile. It did have the tendency to dazzle, all part
of the onboarding process. “No, he’s not my boyfriend. In fact, he’s
completely unattached at the moment. Why do you ask?”
The
brunette glanced down at Mira’s fingers wrapped around her arm and
swallowed heavily. “No, I—” She shook her head, then buzzed her lips
with a little laugh. “It’s stupid, but when he smiled, I—Butterflies.”
She shrugged.
“Butterflies?” The woman nodded, and Mira’s grin
grew larger. More like cupid’s wings. She let go of the brunette’s arm
and held her hand out to shake. “I’m Mira Marid. And you are?”
“Becca
Hornsby.” She fumbled with a large canvas tote at her elbow, her
cuticles rimmed with the rainbow as she extended her hand.
Mira’s
brow rose. “You’re an artist.” A wisp of energy passed from her to
Becca, shackling the woman’s wrist to her own. Hello, new client.
“I—Oh!”
Becca’s gray-green eyes widened, as if she’d felt it. She hooked a
flyaway tendril of hair behind her ear and dipped her head. “N-no, not
like you’re probably thinking. I paint interiors. Walls,” she said, as
if that needed clarifying.
“Murals?”
“Um, kind of? Not
like pictures. I work in geometrics…” She glanced around the posh bar.
“I was supposed to be meeting a potential buyer here, but I don’t—” She
turned back to Mira and forced a smile. “I don’t think they’re going to
show.”
“Pity,” Mira slowly enunciated each syllable, running her
eyes over the woman and mentally swapping makeover options like fashion
plates. It would take some work, but…Mira smiled brightly. “Can I buy
you a drink?”
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