The Devil Gets His Due (The Devils #4)(13)

He squats to pick up my mail. His gaze catches on my legs as he rises, then rests on my face as he hands the mail to me. I feel a little…spellbound, looking up at him, noting the smug lilt of his upper lip, the curve of his cheek, and how blue his eyes are. How did I not notice just how lovely his face was the first time we met?

“Is it mine?” he asks, and the spell evaporates.

I fucked up by waiting. I know it now. But what am I going to do? How do I crawl out of this Keeley-sized hole I’ve created?

I could lie and tell him it’s absolutely not his, but when this kid turns out to be an oversized geek whose favorite toy is a graphing calculator, he’s going to demand a paternity test. He’s probably going to demand one anyway. He seems like the type who’d be a stickler about that kind of thing.

“Keeley, answer me.”

I fumble for my keys to avoid his gaze, and all the inevitable condemnation that will accompany it. “If I thought someone else might be the father, I’d be a lot more cheerful.”

He slumps against the door. “Jesus Christ,” he whispers. “Are you serious?”

Ugh. A brief, tiny wave of guilt sweeps over me, promptly chased away by resentment. “Right, Graham. You’re the one who’s inconvenienced here.”

“I’m not inconvenienced, Keeley!” His voice echoes through the hall, undercut by a note of panic, and he blinks, surprised by his own outburst. “I’m fucking stunned. I mean, I’m having a kid and…were you even going to tell me?”

I elbow him out of the way and push my key into the lock. “I know for a fact I wasn’t planning to tell everyone on my floor.”

I enter and he follows. My apartment is delightful—full of bright cozy furniture and splashes of color everywhere you look, but it’s seen better days. I haven’t had time to unpack my bags, and my luggage is now open and strewn over the surrounding areas. I also haven’t had time to tell my cleaning lady I’m back, nor recycle all the donut boxes I’ve brought home.

He’s too upset to even notice as he paces, doing his best to avoid the clothes on the floor.

“So what was your plan?” he asks. “Have the kid and demand half my stuff?”

I love how he’s assuming he has anything I’d want half of. “I’m a doctor and you’re you. What would we be dividing—some off-brand men’s shoes and a Turbo Tax coupon? Look, I only learned I was pregnant three weeks ago. This is all new to me too. I wasn’t even sure I was keeping it until recently.”

That muscle in his cheek twitches on overtime. Oh, that did not sit well with him.

He folds his arms across his chest—I’d forgotten how nice his arms are. And his shoulders, currently straining the seams of the fabric, like Superman about to burst from his clothes. “And you’d never even have included me in the decision?”

“Make up your mind,” I say with a weary sigh. “Am I a gold-digging whore, or a heartless bitch trying to deprive you of fatherhood? Because it can’t be both.”

“Well, it was initially number one, but clearly we’ve moved on to number two.”

I’m irritated, but he’s also not wrong. I kick off my shoes and flop on the couch. I barely have the energy right now to argue on my behalf, and I’m not sure I even have much of an argument. Yes, I fucked up. And yes, I’m probably not a great person. But what’s done is done.

“If I’d called you and said, ‘hey, Graham, based on the hickeys and the condoms on the floor, I assume we slept together in Vegas and you knocked me up’, you’d have doubted me, right? You’d have said prove it.”

“I still intend to make you prove it. I mean, to be perfectly honest, maybe I wasn’t even the only man you slept with that weekend.”

My fists clench. It’s mostly easy to ignore what Graham says—if the opinion of some uptight East Coast finance bro was going to mean anything to me, I’d start with one who’s actually successful—but that weekend and its culmination in Vegas is something I might never live down, not even with myself. “Believe me, nothing could thrill me more. The last guy who asked me out was an NFL quarterback. Can you imagine the genetic potential? All your kid will do is recite actuarial tables.”

“That isn’t actually what I—”

I hold up a hand. “Please stop. I’m already bored by this conversation.” It’s bad enough that I’m having his kid. I shouldn’t have to listen to him run through his job description too.

He glances around, looking for any clear surface to sit. I kick a bra off the chair across from me and he watches, appalled, before he finally sinks onto it and buries his head in his hands. “Jesus, Keeley.” His voice is hoarse. “Were you even going to tell me?”

There’s blame in that sentence, but what I hear most is how stunned he is by this entire thing. Which makes sense. Two hours ago, he was a single guy living his best life, and now he’s got a major, lifelong albatross around his neck.

I release a breath on a long sigh. “Probably. To paraphrase Churchill, I do the right thing eventually, after I’ve tried everything else first.” My aching body sinks deeper into the couch cushion, and I let my eyes close for a moment. God, I’m tired.

He sighs. “Fuck. At least we’re married.”