Steal the Day (Thieves #2)(26)

Chad looked horrified. Neil looked hurt and Daniel…well, Daniel looked curious.

“I have no idea why I did that.” Chad’s eyes shifted between me and Neil. “She’s not my type. I don’t like girls. I’m one hundred percent gay. I have been my whole life.” He looked Dev up and down. “God, you’re the boyfriend aren’t you? That’s my point here. I don’t want to do her. I want to be her doing you.”

“That’s not what it looked like from here,” Neil said bitterly as he turned with his coffeepot and stalked back into the house.

Chad sat back on the porch swing and let his head fall to his hands.

I tried to go after Neil. Dev stopped me. “He won’t want to talk right now, sweetheart. Don’t make it worse.”

“I didn’t do anything.” It wasn’t my fault the new guy decided to be bi-curious.

Dev rubbed a hand on my shoulder. “I know you didn’t. I wasn’t accusing you. You would never do anything to hurt Neil. Now, that one over there obviously has control issues.”

“Yes, he does.” Daniel’s eyes hadn’t left Chad since the whole incident had begun. “Zoey, Dev needs to talk to you, and I think you should go with him. I can handle things here. Don’t worry about Neil.”

“You want me to go with Dev?” Daniel never wanted me to go with Dev. Daniel would come up with a thousand excuses for me to not be alone with Dev.

“Absolutely,” he replied. “Dev said he has a line on a paying job.”

“And you don’t want in on the conversation?”

Daniel smiled, but it was a distracted thing. “Hey, we’re working on trust, right? I trust you to make the right decision. So go, spend the night in the city and get us a job. Those hookers aren’t getting any cheaper.”

I let Dev lead me away while Chad tried to figure out what had gone wrong and Daniel…I think Daniel was trying to figure out Chad.





Chapter Eight





I glanced around Ether, trying to figure out which of the women was my potential client. Dev had chosen to be difficult during the drive from my house to his club. He’d evaded my questions about the client, saying only that he thought she was legit. Dev dealt with enough people who weren’t legit to know what he was talking about. The nightclub industry isn’t known for its upstanding business practices in the human world, and it’s probably worse in the supernatural world. Dev’s staff dealt with numerous incidents on a nightly basis.

The bartender shook my Cosmo into a cocktail glass, and I accepted it with a grateful sigh. No one stood out as I surveyed the club.

Dev came up behind me and placed a possessive hand on the small of my back. “Relax. She’ll be here.”

“I wish you had found out more about this mysterious client. I don’t like going into things blind.” Blind had nearly gotten Daniel killed just a few days before.

He settled in close to me, his lips against my ear. “Hey, it’s not like last time. You’re here. There’s a whole staff ready to watch your back, and I promise I won’t let anything nasty happen to you. Well, not anything I am not directly involved in.”

“Could you be serious for two seconds?” He hadn’t been there last time. No well-trained staff could have handled the angels.

“Look, you said you wanted a job. I found you a job.” Dev let his hands make soothing circles across my back. “You’ll have to forgive me if I didn’t have her fill out a questionnaire when she called. Next time, I’ll know better. Now let’s talk about my payment, sweetheart, because I didn’t do this out of the kindness of my heart.”

He whispered something truly filthy in my ear that made me want to forget about the client and Neil and Chad and everything that was going on and head straight up to the grotto. Since Dev had come into my life, I’d started to rely on mind-blowing sex as a distraction from everyday woes.

“She called you?” I asked, his words finally penetrating through a haze of lust. “Not the other way around? I thought you heard something through the grapevine and made a call to her.”

“No, she called me out of the blue.” He bent down and laid a proprietary kiss on my neck. “She said she needed a mediator. That was the word she used.”

“What was her name, Dev?” I asked, even though I was pretty sure I knew what her name was. She’d told me she would try again. I was just a little shocked at how fast she’d come back.

He thought about it for a moment. “I don’t remember. I should remember her name, shouldn’t I? I’m sorry, I might not be as cautious as you but I should remember her freaking name. Did I write it down somewhere?”

I turned and reached out, taking his hand. “It’s not your fault, Dev. It’s what she does. I bet she called you right before you left to come and get me.”

He shook his head in confusion. “I remember telling her I couldn’t help out until tomorrow. I had a meeting with some vendors tonight. I must have canceled. I don’t remember doing it though. Why would I do that? I need to renegotiate my liquor contracts. I wouldn’t just cancel.”

Angelic influence made vampire persuasion look like child’s play.

I looked around the club and, sure enough, there she was. She sat at a table watching Dev and me with a hopeful look on her face. Felicity Day was wearing an approximation of club clothes, but even with a short skirt and flouncy top she looked out of place—like a brilliant shaft of light on an otherwise cloudy day. I had to suspect the effect was for me and Dev alone, as everyone else completely ignored her.