The Devil Gets His Due (The Devils #4)(43)

“Does she drink? I’d start there and see where the wind takes you.”

He sets his phone down and turns toward me. “So my great aunt is flying across the country, and your suggestion is that I take her to a bar. For the day.”

I hitch a shoulder. “Well, she’s Irish and from Boston. I doubt it’ll be the first time she’s spent a day in a bar.”

His mouth moves as if he wants to laugh. “That’s an offensive stereotype.”

“If I’m wrong it’s only because she was too busy spitting out one baby after the next to get a day in a bar to herself.”

He shakes his head. “Keeley…Jesus. That’s another offensive stereotype.”

“A, I can say these things because I’m Irish. And B, how many kids did she have?”

“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

I laugh. “More than six, then?”

He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Eight. It’s still a stereotype. But anyway…it does involve you a little. She’s flying out for a party at my mom’s house.”

“What does that—”

“The party is so everyone can meet you.”

My jaw falls open. “Me?” I repeat, suddenly nervous. Because Graham’s family is huge. Three brothers, two stepsisters, assorted spouses, and significant others. Including my best friend, who knows exactly how much of this is fake. “Graham, what the hell, dude? When were you going to tell me?”

“I just found out.” He wraps a hand around my foot, and I wonder if he’s planning to hold it hostage until I agree. “Right before you got home. Look, I know it’s a lot, and believe me, I hate lying to my mom about all this but…it’s what you wanted.”

I feel the briefest sting of guilt. It is what I wanted, simply because of the grief I’d get from Shannon and the very strong possibility she and Graham’s mom will meet at some point in the future. Maybe it wasn’t fair of me to ask.

“Fine,” I say with a sigh, “but only if I can wear the Tulane sweatshirt.”

He glares at me. “One of these days that sweatshirt is going to fucking disappear.”

The funny thing is he sounds jealous. As if he cares about me, regardless of whether or not I’m having his child. He squeezes my foot, now pressed to one of his very muscular thighs, and I wonder what it would be like if that was actually the case.





“They aren’t going to demand we kiss, right?” I ask on Saturday night, preparing for the worst.

He cuts a glance at me from the driver’s seat. “What kind of people would demand we kiss?”

“It happens in movies all the time. You can’t be in a fake relationship without winding up on a kiss cam or having to kiss because someone’s family has demanded it.”

“That has literally never happened in a single movie I’ve watched, nor in a book I’ve read.”

“If that economics book you’re reading had a fake relationship trope in it, you’d have finished it weeks ago.”

We pull onto the idyllic streets of Newport, which I’m familiar with thanks to abundant reality TV programming, and then arrive at his mother’s house.

I’ve seen it before in photos, but never from the street in all its glory: a massive two story with a Spanish tile roof, a wood door, and a long driveway that is already full of cars. It’s far more impressive in person than it was in photos.

“Your mom should be on Real Housewives. This is incredible. I’d never have thought you came from this.”

His lips press tight. “I didn’t come from this. My mom and Walter moved here a few years ago, after his company took off.”

I’d forgotten they had some lean years after Graham’s father died. Of course they didn’t live in a mansion.

“My mom is…sensitive about a few things,” he continues. “From when we were kids. We try to avoid talking about childhood stuff as much as possible around her.”

There’s something in his face that warns me not to ask what she’s sensitive about. That same something in his face whenever he discusses his mom.

“You know, if we’d just lived a little closer to Newport, your mom might have married my dad instead. We’d have been stepsiblings.”

“I think we dodged a bullet, then,” he says as he opens my door.

“I’d have been a very good little sister,” I argue.

He lifts me from my seat as if I’m as light as a feather, his gaze falling to my face, to my lips, then away. “I wasn’t trying to say you wouldn’t have been. Come on. Let’s get this over with. Pretend you’re in labor if this thing isn’t over within two hours.”

We walk through the wooden door and discover absolute chaos, the kind I longed for as a kid. A football arcs through the air, followed by a woman shouting, “no football in the house!” Two of his brothers wrestle over the ball, and his mom gingerly steps past them before throwing her arms around me as if I’m a long-lost friend.

“Keeley, it’s so good to see you again!” she cries.

I worry for the first time about whatever conversations she and I might have had the weekend I drunk-married her son.

I hope none of them were about Six Bailey.