The Devil Gets His Due (The Devils #4)(39)

“How much older?” he asks as we approach the house.

“Twenty-seven years.”

He raises a brow at that but says nothing since we’re nearly to the door. People—at least the people in this house—always want to cast my mother as this femme fatale. No one ever suggests that maybe it was fucked up for a forty-seven-year-old man to be sleeping with his twenty-year-old student. Maybe it’s simply what Shannon has to tell herself, since she’s the woman he left behind.

The door opens before I’ve even rung the bell. I haven’t seen my father since the holidays, right before Ben and Gemma’s party. He’s more stooped and gray than he was the last time, and it makes me sad. As much as I hate the way he hurt my mother, I recognize that somewhere under it all…he actually cared about us both. That, much like Graham, he was trying to do the right thing. He probably got tired of feeling like the bad guy all the time.

I ignore Shannon, grumbling as she approaches, and turn to my father.

“Dad,” I say as we step inside, “this is Graham. My husband.”

“Husband,” he repeats, saying it as if the word is new to him—some crazy made-up thing all the kids are saying and he’s not sure he understands.

“What?” barks Shannon. “You got married?!” The note in her voice is less surprise than it is accusation, and Graham steps closer to me, wrapping his arm around my waist as if he thinks I’m at physical risk.

“Yes,” I reply, my gaze flicking toward her before it returns to my father. “We got married last January, actually, but with my training and his job we—”

“January?! You’ve never even mentioned him!” Shannon snaps.

Graham raises a brow at her and the arm around me tightens as he extends his free hand to my father. “Graham Tate,” he says, shaking my dad’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you at last.”

I stare at him in wonder. He’s so smooth and suave and masculine right now when I expected nothing but awkward silences and uncertainty.

Graham Tate is apparently good at hiding what he feels.

“Jim Connolly,” my father says. “I…this is a surprise, obviously.”

“I believe you know my sister-in-law, Gemma,” Graham continues.

“I don’t understand,” Shannon snaps. “It’s June. How could you have failed to tell us you were married for five months?”

I open my mouth to reply but Graham speaks first, squeezing my hip. “Perhaps we could sit? Keeley’s been on her feet all day.” There’s a hint of a reprimand in his voice directed at Shannon. Do you always make your guests stand in the foyer while you hurl accusations? that voice asks, and something warm and sweet blossoms in my chest. As long as I’m carrying his child, Graham Tate isn’t going to let anyone hurt me.

Sybil, Shannon’s daughter from her first marriage, and Sybil’s husband, Karl, are seated at the table when we enter the kitchen. “She’s married,” Shannon says to her daughter. There’s a whole world of shade in that flat pronouncement to Sybil, a can-you-believe-what-she’s-done? With a side helping of I told you she was crazy. It’s been par for the course with Shannon and Sybil my entire life, toward me and my mother alike—the news that my mother had auditioned for a part could spawn an entire evening’s worth of shared glances and snickering at the dinner table, even when I was small. Anytime my mom wanted me to audition…the mockery was entirely open. “I wouldn’t hold my breath there, Jennifer Aniston,” she’d say.

“So, uh, how did you two meet?” my father asks as we take our seats.

My eyes meet Graham’s. I still think my obsessed hospital stalker story would sell this better.

“We planned the party for Ben and Gemma together last fall,” I reply.

“I had to go back to New York and Keeley was getting ready to leave for DC,” Graham continues, “and we didn’t want to wait so we took off for Vegas as soon as the festivities were over.”

“You got married in Vegas?” Shannon says from the stove, not trying to hide her disdain. In even my earliest memories, she was making me feel like I’d done something wrong and this time, I actually have. I can’t wait until she learns I’m pregnant.

Graham tenses at her tone, and then, beneath the table, his hand squeezes mine. A shiver runs through me—he has nice hands. Huge hands, to go with the huge rest of him. I think, once again, that it’s a shame I can’t remember just how huge the rest of him actually is.

“Not ideal,” agrees Graham. “I wish I could have given Keeley the wedding she’d been planning, but it was still very special.”

Wow. I don’t think Graham can lie to me, but he sure can lie on my behalf. I give his hand a quick squeeze to say thanks.

“Well, that’s certainly a Melinda way to go about things,” Shannon says.

My mother has been dead for fourteen years, but Shannon still can’t miss an opportunity to trash her.

The topic turns to Karl and his law degree, to Sybil and her crusade to get a speed bump placed in front of her house. For ten minutes straight, she and Shannon discuss how unfair it is that her efforts haven’t worked and how the people cutting through her neighborhood are going to kill someone.

When the subject of speed bumps is finally exhausted, my father turns to me. “So how was your thing at NIH?” he asks.