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  Books. Change. Lives.

  Copyright © 2019 by Amanda Heger

  Cover and internal design © 2019 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Caroline Teagle

  Cover images © mash3r/Getty Images, Smika/Shutterstock

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

  Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  Fax: (630) 961-2168

  sourcebooks.com

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 6.5

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 8.5

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 10.5

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 13.5

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 15.5

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 25.5

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  In memory of Kyle,

  creator of the jiggle, jiggle, tap.

  Chapter 1

  California Code of Cupid Regulations (CCR) § 100.01. (a) For purposes of this Act, the term “love” shall mean the sufferance by one person of affection for and attachment to another person or persons for any period, however brief.

  For more than twenty years, Eliza had been working on a list of things she hated more than Valentine’s Day. And finally, after decades of hard work and dedication, she’d narrowed it to the following:

  1. ?

  2. ??

  3. ???

  Okay, so it was still a work in progress. But to be fair, she had yet to encounter anything she despised as much as the onslaught of pink and red hearts that appeared each February. Not to mention, if your birthday happened to fall on Valentine’s Day, avoiding the slew of cutesy cards and pictures of diapered, armed babies was nearly impossible. And if you were a Descendant of Eros with the misfortune of being born on February fourteenth? Forget it. Everyone everywhere commented on how cute and coincidental it was that a “Cupid” had been born on love’s holiest of holidays.

  Eliza ducked her head as she made her way through Red Clover. Leaving her apartment always made her anxiety flare, but walking through the seasonal aisle of the grocery store on Valentine’s Day felt like lumbering through a library with a bullhorn. Make way! World’s worst Cupid coming through!

  This all could have been avoided if the watch she’d ordered for her twin had simply arrived on time. Instead, she had to face the offensive barrage of red roses and chocolates to reach the tiny display of birthday cards in the center of the aisle. Elijah better appreciate this, she thought. Otherwise, I may have to strangle him with a string of paper hearts.

  But Eros himself must have been smiling down on her today because the store was eerily empty. She slid past the picked-over bags of candy and the last of the mushy Valentine’s Day fare. Her gaze landed on a brightly colored card with balloons across the front. Basic, simple, and able to hold a gift card. Exactly what she needed. Eliza pulled it from the shelf and opened the front. Birthday Boy, You’re Ten Today!

  She shoved the card back into its slot and surveyed the other options. A flowery card with hard-to-read script and enough gold edging to make a leprechaun jealous? No. Two kittens batting a ball of yarn? Not her brother’s style. A frog with googly eyes proclaiming You Aren’t a Tadpole Anymore? In the running.

  “Excuse me. Miss?” An elderly man’s voice came from behind her, wobbling a bit on the end.

  Eliza’s shoulders tensed. Here we go. Yes, I’m her. The infamous Eliza Herman. She turned. The little old man looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t quite place him. His ears were nearly as big as his head, and just a few gray hairs swooped over his shiny dome. Calling it a comb-over would be generous. “Yes?” she asked, braced for the worst.

  “Can you hand me that card right there?” He pointed with a liver-spotted finger. “The one with the wiener dog?”

  Eliza’s breath whooshed out all at once, and in its place, sweet relief filled her chest. Valentine’s Day was making her paranoid. This little old man wanted help reaching something on the top shelf, not to badger her with questions about her past. She rose to her tiptoes and grabbed the card. Bright-blue letters across the bottom read, I Hope Your Birthday is a Real Wiener. “Here you go.”

  “Thank you.” He inched the card open and proceeded to read the inside. It was as if Eliza had ceased to exist.

  She grinned and gave herself a mental pat on the back. Look at you. Being totally normal. She’d even helped an elderly man and, in the process, found a perfectly acceptable card for her brother. All she had to do was reach up, grab another wiener dog, and—

  “Oh no.”

  She wobbled on her tiptoes, only for a second, but it was enough to throw her balance to the left. Which was enough to bump her shoulder into the shelf of Valentine candy beside her. Which was enough to send the giant two-pound bar of chocolate tumbling straight onto—

  “Ooof.” The old man leaned down to rub the top of his foot, where the chocolate had landed. Green and gold sparkles shot from the site of his injury, filling the aisle with enough Love Luster to momentarily obliterate the pink and red decor. And when the Luster began to fade, the scent of seawater and sun hit Eliza hard.

  She threw her hands over her mouth in panic. On the one hand, she needed to make sure the man was okay. But she also needed to get away from him before he could look up and—

  “Well, hello.” He bent into a sweeping bow.

  Too late. Eliza closed her eyes and dragged in a deep breath. Of course it was too much to ask to make it through Red Clover w
ithout incident. Of course. “Sir, I’m very sorry—”

  The old man straightened up as if the infatuation running through his ancient veins had taken fifty years off his age. He handed her the candy bar. A crack ran straight through the center of the chocolate. “Stu Vannerson,” he said. “And it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  Eliza’s brain screeched to a halt. Stu Vannerson. Old Man Vannerson. He’d lived on their block years ago. Elijah used to cut his lawn. Eliza sold him Girl Scout cookies every year. Then he’d sold his house and moved to the Gold Lea Assisted Living Villas across town.

  And now he was enchanted with her.

  Eliza forced herself to smile. This whole adoration-by-Hershey thing wasn’t good, but it wasn’t the end of the world either. She’d explain what had happened and then go about her not-so-merry way. Plus, once she left the store, the old man’s hormones would settle back to near normal. In approximately twenty-nine and a half days, it would be like nothing had happened at all.

  Maybe Eros wasn’t smiling down on her today, but he wasn’t smiting her either. Crisis averted. “Mr. Vannerson, I’m Eliza Herman. I don’t know if you remember, but you used to live down the street from me.”

  His eyes sparkled. “The Cupid girl?”

  “Erosian.” Maybe the rest of America—including the other Descendants—had finally given up on explaining the difference between Cupid and Eros, but she still cringed every time. Great marketing strategy or not, she hated being associated with a chubby baby with wings.

  Of course, that probably had more to do with her personal issues than anything else. “When I dropped that chocolate bar on your foot—” she started.

  “Well then, I’m pleased to make your acquaintance again after all these years. Please”—he pulled off his jacket and spread it out on the floor in front of her—“allow me to show you around my favorite store in Gold Lea. We have an excellent yogurt selection.”

  Eliza stared at the jacket—covering a nonexistent puddle—and debated her options. If she was late for her family’s annual birthday extravaganza, her mother would never let her live it down. But Eliza had accidentally enchanted enough people to know this would be less painful for everyone if she simply let nature take its course.

  She looped her arm through the crook of his elbow and did her best to smile. “I can’t wait to hear all about it.”

  For the next twenty minutes, Eliza let Stu walk her through Red Clover. She feigned interest when he talked about the rising cost of bread. She let him make a grand production of walking on the “outside” as they passed the butcher counter, just in case there were any spills. She even let him con an unsuspecting worker into acting as their chaperone when the tour took them through the pharmaceuticals.

  Finally, they reached the long bay of cash registers at the front of the store.

  Stu laid a bony hand on hers with stars—or maybe that was remnants of Love Luster—in his eyes. “I had a wonderful time, Eliza.”

  “Thank you, Stu. I did too.”

  “Next time, I’ll pick you up at your house. I’m sure your parents would like the opportunity to approve of your callers.”

  She ignored the cashier’s horrified look. “That sounds great, Stu. But I’m just not sure I’m ready for a second date.”

  His face fell. “Did I come on too strong? I knew I shouldn’t have made that quip about the cuts of prime beef.”

  Time to let him down easy. “No, no. You were the perfect date.” She patted his arm and channeled her best Sandra Dee. “But I’ve just come out of a terrible heartbreak, and I don’t know if I’m ready to fall in love again so soon. Maybe in another month or two?” Once the enchantment has worn off.

  “Of course. I look forward to calling on you then,” he said, taking the broken candy and birthday card from her before handing them to the cashier. “Allow me.”

  “You really don’t have to—”

  “A gentleman always pays on the first date.”

  Eliza forced a grateful smile. “Thank you, Stu.”

  And as she crossed the parking lot—with Stu waving to her from the front window—the horrific truth slammed Eliza straight in the gut: that was the best date she’d been on in years.

  * * *

  Two hours later, Eliza sat at her parents’ dining room table, groaning along with an off-key version of “Happy Birthday.” Nothing about their house had changed in years. The stark-white walls and starker white cabinets still reflected their mother’s aesthetic, while the assortment of clutter—a file folder here, a pen cap there, three mugs on the corner of the table—made their father’s presence known. And the kitchen still smelled like his famous chocolate cake: the one thing about her birthday she’d always loved.

  “Are you going to blow out the candles?” her mother asked.

  “Go ahead.” Elijah leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “You need the wish more than I do.”

  Apparently, this wasn’t the year her brother would get a grasp on the whole tact thing. Not that he was wrong. She definitely needed the wish—all the wishes—more than he did. Her brother led a charmed life. As a kid, he’d been the first one picked for kickball. Hell, he’d been the kid picking the teams. Eliza’d had to bribe her way into games of duck, duck, goose.

  Fast-forward several years, and Elijah faithfully worked at the family business, Herman & Herman. He even ate dinner at their parents’ house each Sunday. Basically, he was the dream child. Eliza, on the other hand, had never even gotten her Cupid’s license, and in the past decade, she’d been fired from more jobs than most people held in their whole lives.

  Shoe salesperson? Fired after she tried to help a customer get a pair of leopard flats over a painful bunion, causing the woman to fall for the store’s deliveryman—much to the chagrin of her husband.

  Administrative assistant? Fired. To be fair, the law firm’s junior partner had tried to keep her around, but the risk of additional paper cuts was simply too great.

  And most recently, IT help desk assistant. A job she could perform over the phone and from a cube. It required almost no in-person interactions…except when it did. Yesterday, when her boss’s boss had made an unexpected visit to tour the office, Eliza had rolled right over his foot with her chair and unveiled her Cupid status. Fired.

  She wasn’t about to tell the rest of her family that news today, though.

  “Fine. I do deserve the wish more than you.” Eliza screwed her eyes up tight. Let Stu Vannerson forget all about me. Also, a job would be great.

  “Must be a good one this year,” Elijah said. “Let me guess. You’re wishing for a new cardigan to complete your cat-lady aesthetic?”

  She pulled in a deep breath, opened her eyes, and flipped her brother the bird. Then she blew.

  Every flame on the cake flared higher.

  “Tim, I told you not to get the trick candles.” A clank rang out as her mother set a stack of dessert plates in front of Eliza’s father. “Eliza is sensitive about birthdays,” she whispered.

  “I can hear you, you know.”

  “Sorry, honey,” her mother said before turning back to Eliza’s father. “I told you she’s been traumatized.”

  “Mom. I can still hear you.”

  “Eliza doesn’t mind the trick candles, right?” Her dad broke into the same mischievous grin as her brother. It was the first time he had smiled since she’d walked in the door. “You used to love those when you were little.”

  All her frustration and self-consciousness melted. Usually, her father hung around the kitchen, darting from place to place as her mother cooked. But tonight, he’d sat in the living room with a magazine until the table was set. When Eliza had asked if everything was okay, he’d simply waved her off with a half-hearted explanation of the article he’d been reading. She hadn’t bought it for one second. But now, looking b
etween the trick candles and her father’s face, Eliza started to believe he really had just been engrossed in a story about the uses of turtle shells.

  “I did love these,” Eliza said. She also loved the trick for blowing them out—one he’d taught her on her fourth birthday. It involved hacking low and loud enough for everyone around to fear she was going to drop a wet, mucus-filled loogie on the cake.

  “Either they rush in and help you blow them out,” he’d said, “or you spit on the cake and get the whole thing to yourself. It’s a win-win, Liza.”

  She hadn’t been old enough to understand the concept of win-win back then, but now she thought of her father every time she heard the phrase.

  Eliza gave him a quick nod and cleared her throat—way deep down like a fifty-year smoker who’d recently caught pneumonia—then thumped on her chest.

  “Okay, okay. That’s good.” Her mother swooped in and grabbed the cake.

  Eliza and her father shared a knowing look. “Win-win,” they said at the same time.

  Her mother shook her head as she plucked out the still-flaming candles and dunked the tips into a glass of water. Each made a satisfying hiss as it went out, filling the air with the familiar scent of burnt wax and buttercream.

  While her mother cut the cake, her dad pulled identical wrapped boxes from beneath the table. “Here. Open them at the same time so we don’t have any spoilers,” he said.

  Eliza glanced at her brother. In true Elijah fashion, he already had the box in his hands. He gave it hard shake. Then another.

  “Hope it’s not fragile,” Eliza said.

  “It is,” her mother said with a frown. “Go on, open it.”

  Eliza turned the present over in her hands. The red wrapping paper caught the light as she slipped a finger under the seam of the brick-sized box. A handful of rips and tugs later, she stared down at the framed photo in her hands.

  “This was at the lake house?” Eliza pulled the photo closer to her face, then held it out again. She ran her finger along the edge of the frame and tried to parse through the tornado of emotions swirling in her chest. In the photo, Eliza and Elijah were four, maybe five. They both wore oversize sunglasses and bathing suits, and a much younger version of their parents sat on the sand behind them, looking content and happy.