Page 13 of Competing Against Thor

"Danny isn't my boyfriend," I responded. "He's just a friend."

"Just a friend orjust a friend?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Does it matter?"

He shrugged. "I suppose not."

"He's really just a friend. You'd be more his type than me."

He looked over to where Danny was still talking to Brandon. From the animated way my best friend was talking, I had to guess that they really were talking about forging.

"We'd make a good couple," Thor mused.

"You might need to worry about him outpacing you in the forge though," I warned him. "He also knows what he's doing with a hammer."

Thor shot me an amused look and without meaning to, I burst into laughter.

"I didn't mean that like it sounded," I said.

Thor merely smiled in response and took a sip of his drink. "So, not your boyfriend. Does that mean you're single?"

"I haven't had much luck dating," I admitted. "When I was younger, I was spending as much time as possible in the studio so I could work on my art, and then after that, guys started being a bit intimidated by the fact I have more muscles than they do."

"More fool them," Thor said.

"Indeed." I took a sip of my drink, grateful that it wasn't laced with whatever my competitor had put in it. I didn't know whether he was just trying to make it more difficult for me tocompete, or if he had a worse motive in mind, but it was best not to dwell on it too much.

"Oh, there's Mel," Thor said, nodding to a woman with dark brown hair and olive skin. I recognised her vaguely from around the studio.

"The Muse?"

He nodded. "I actually need to talk to her. Would you give me a minute?"

"Erm, sure." I didn't really know what to do with myself, especially as his wording implied that he wanted to come back and talk to me more, but that didn't really make sense. Not when he had a guest here himself, and I was sure there were lots of other people who would want to spend time with him.

He smiled and headed over to talk to the Muse, leaving me to stand by the bar and wonder how I'd gotten myself into this position. I knew gods existed, but I certainly never expected to find myself at a party with a load of them. It never even crossed my mind that enteringThe Great Sculpting Competitioncould mean rubbing shoulders with them. Even with the prize being a sculpture in Jinx's lobby. I thought they'd get a mortal worker to come and judge or something like that.

But apparently, that wasn't how things had been arranged, and now I was in what had to be one of the strangest situations of my life.

Chapter 7

DAISY

The studio had a different atmosphere when I walked in this time. Maybe the mixer had made more of a difference than I first thought.

"Hey, Daisy," Carlos said as I made my way over to the drinks stand.

"Hey." I pushed the button to make myself a coffee, already looking forward to it. I'd have drunk some at home, but when there was a fancy machine here, I didn't see the reason to.

"Did you hear about Mike?"

"No, what happened?" I asked.

"He was disqualified. Told last night over the phone. Something to do with the mixer."

"Wait, what?" I looked over the stations, noticing that the one over from mine was in the dark, indicating that the person inside it had been knocked out. Except that I'd have remembered if that had happened. "Do you have any idea why?"

"No. He was taken off-guard by it. I asked him what could have caused it and he said he didn't know."