The Devil Gets His Due (The Devils #4)(29)

She frowns. “Is it going to be gross?”

“Would you consider anything that isn’t pizza or Lucky Charms gross?”

Her mouth curves. “Most likely.”

“Then yes,” I reply, “you’ll probably think it’s gross.”





“Fish,” she says flatly. “You made fish.”

I look over at her from the stove. “It’s nearly ready.”

She changes into that fucking sweatshirt and returns just as I’m placing the salad on the table. “No fries?” she asks weakly.

Living with Keeley is basically a trial run for raising a toddler.

She cuts up the fish and disconsolately mixes it with the salad, but nothing more.

“You’re supposed to be putting it in your mouth,” I tell her.

She grins. “I bet I’m not the first girl you’ve said that to.”

“Most women seem to figure it out on their own.”

She blinks in surprise and then there’s something between us, a silent, quicksilver moment of tension. Her tongue brushes along her lower lip as if she’s picturing the same thing I am, and every muscle in my body tightens in response. Fuck. Nope. Next topic. Except all I can think of right now is her on the floor, looking up at me with a gleam in her eyes, as if sucking me off was the only thing she wanted to do for the rest of her life. “Eat your vegetables.”

“I had a bunch of Doritos today. The seasoning is full of herbs. It’s practically a salad.”

“I really hope you aren’t the kind of doctor people go to for advice.”

“Not yet,” she replies blithely. “But I will be soon, once I get my show. What do you think of the name Kicking it with Dr. K?”

“Will it be about an old white guy who adopts two inner-city youths and grows more than they do?”

“Okay, what about Dr. K Knows Everything? I’ll solve medical mysteries.”

I lean back in my seat, fighting a smile. “Could you actually solve medical mysteries?”

“Of course not. The production team will solve them. They just need me because then viewers will be like ‘oh she’s pretty and also a doctor, I didn’t see that coming’. No one ever believes I’m a doctor.”

I glance at her untouched plate. “That might have less to do with your looks than you think.”

She clicks her tongue and pulls out her phone. I feel like a dad eating dinner with the teen daughter he’s just grounded. I guess, aside from the daughter part, it’s not that far from the truth.

“Ugh,” she says to her phone. “Fuck you, Shannon.”

I raise a brow.

“My stepmother. She’s having a party,” she explains. “Why the hell would I want to celebrate her son-in-law going to law school at age forty? You know what’s worth celebrating? Going to law school without taking eighteen years off first.”

I focus on my dinner, trying not to laugh since she seems genuinely irritated by the situation. After a moment, I sense her gaze on me. There’s something about Keeley’s focus. It’s a physical thing, one that leaves a mark long after she’s left the room, which is the only explanation I’ve got for the way I followed her all over LA during the weekend of the party we threw. I wanted to shake her off, erase her somehow. I was sober enough to know that it wasn’t going to work and drunk enough to keep trying.

“We could just eat in front of the TV,” she suggests. “There’s a movie about a sexy kidnapper that—”

“I’m not watching anything that involves the descriptor ‘sexy kidnapper.’”

We are certainly learning about each other by living together. I’m still waiting for one of those things to be good.





I’ve just finished my first conference call of the day with New York when she marches into the kitchen, smoothing balm over her lips while reading on her phone.

“Elijah Wood’s house is really kind of small,” she says aloud, her brow furrowed.

Trust Keeley to worry that a person with way more money than she has isn’t spending enough of it.

“Instead of reading about Elijah Wood, you could actually eat breakfast.”

She narrows her eyes, reaching for the muffin she’s saved for Mark. “Never too early in the day to start giving advice, is it, Graham?”

I hand her a Tupperware container. “Your lunch.”

She takes it, and then her face falls at the sight of the leftover fish and salad from last night.

“Bro,” she says. “I didn’t even want to eat this the first time. If you think I’m eating it of my own volition, without a single witness to laud me for it, you don’t know me very well.”

“Keeley, you’ve got to eat vegetables.”

“I know, but the thing is, vegetables are terrible and…”

I wait for her to finish the sentence and she does not. “Vegetables are terrible and…?”

“That’s it. I realized I’d already made my point. Vegetables are terrible. Where were all these control freak tendencies of yours the night you knocked me up, anyway?”

Muscle memory takes over, as if we’re back in that hotel bed and her nails are digging into my back while she’s saying oh-God-I’m-going-to-come-again-this-never-happens, her voice breathy and desperate, the way it gets just before she… Fuck. Stop. You’ve got to forget all of it.