The Devil Gets His Due (The Devils #4)(18)

And she was always right. So I don’t know what the hell Graham wants, but I wish he’d just texted his request from New York so I could have said, “no,” and also, “fuck you,” without this performative dinner.

I find him waiting in the bar, reading something on his phone. His jacket is off, his tie loosened, his five o’clock shadow looking more like ten o’clock—and the effect is devastating. While I have a thousand regrets about the way my life is currently unfolding, I’ve got to say that simply from a genetics standpoint, I didn’t do so bad. If Graham was anyone else, someone I didn’t know to be a cheap, judgmental asshole, I’d say that he was appallingly hot, the kind of hot that probably had women doing double takes all the way through the airport this afternoon.

He looks up suddenly, catching me staring, and awkwardness descends; I’ve never had a guy fly across the country to see me without sex being the entire purpose. I’m not sure how to proceed. Hug? Parisian almost-kiss to the cheek? In the end, we opt simply for a nod—two business colleagues who hate each other but have accepted the position they’re in.

“No offense,” I tell him, “but I was kind of hoping you’d no-show.”

He frowns. “For Christ’s sake, Keeley, this isn’t a dispute in small claims court. It’s a child. Of course I wasn’t going to no-show.”

I’m wondering, again, if I should have just lied through my teeth the night he came to my apartment. My mother’s life would have been so much easier had she just quietly slunk off to raise me without ever involving my father. Instead, she spent the last fifteen years of her life being told, “no” to every single thing she wanted. “No” to a summer in Morocco, “no” to letting me audition for a Disney show, and “no” to letting us tour with her boyfriend’s band.

Have I just signed up for the exact same future? One in which not a single decision is mine?

Graham walks over to the supermodels moonlighting as hostesses to tell them we’re here. They’re the kind of women who act bored regardless of circumstance, but even they brighten a bit as he approaches. Sure, they do—he’s big and broad-shouldered and disgustingly handsome, and they haven’t been forced to endure a ten-minute speech from him yet entitled: Just Because I Can Afford to Pay For a Tequila Luge Doesn’t Mean I Should.

He motions me in front of him as we’re led to the table, his hand briefly on the small of my back. When he holds my chair, the stupid fucking hostess has stars in her eyes.

“Your waiter is a little busy right now,” she says only to Graham. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Water, thanks,” he says.

“I’ll have the same,” I reply, not that she seemed to be asking me. She walks away, and I roll my eyes. “You could have gotten a drink. I’m not so tempted by alcohol I won’t be able to resist if I see yours.”

“I stopped drinking. Our night in Vegas was a wake-up call.”

Well, that’s flattering. Marrying me was so horrifying that it made him stop drinking. Of course, it made me stop drinking, too, but I’m a treasure.

“Ditto.”

His mouth tilts into a smug smile. “I assumed that weekend was par for the course for you.”

“You’re awfully judgy for a guy who got so drunk you don’t even remember marrying me. To be honest, it implies you might have some issues with alcohol.”

His jaw falls open. “You don’t remember either.”

“And now you’re deflecting blame, which is also a sign of alcoholism.”

He laughs quietly. “Will murdering you be a third sign?”

I hold the menu in front of my face. “Well, it certainly wouldn’t be an argument against it.”

The waiter returns with our water. Graham and I both order the New York Strip, served in a red-wine reduction, except he asks for spinach in lieu of fries. It feels like a criticism, and I bet I’m in for more. I bet I’m in for a whole lifetime of him silently but obviously doing things better than I do and gloating about it.

“You seem tense,” Graham says.

“I came here straight from work. It takes me a minute to unwind.”

“It’s seven-thirty.” His brow furrows. “I hope your boss realizes you won’t be able to work this late going forward.”

Oh, here we go. The inevitable discussion where he points out all the ways I’m not cut out for this. Where he produces a graph showing me how badly I’m about to fail.

“Don’t,” I warn. “This is all new to me and I’m figuring it out. But this is a kid, not something you can plug into an actuarial table and—”

He makes a noise—it’s a laugh or a growl, I’m not sure which. “For the last time, I do not use actuarial tables. What is it, exactly, that you think I do?”

“Something with money? Taxes? I think I just tend to lump all the boring professions into one.”

He takes a sip of his water. “I tell people what to do with their money.”

A basket of bread is delivered to the table, and I tear into it, trying not to groan volubly. “That still sounds like taxes to me.”

“You need a CPA to do taxes,” he says.

“So, what I hear you saying is that you’re not smart enough to do taxes.”