The Devil Gets His Due (The Devils #4)(63)

His tongue darts out. He is…ever so slightly amused. “I’m not sure you really had to say anything to her.”

I’m not sure you had to say anything to her either. Why the hell would she tell you what apartment she’s in?

I move away, pretending I don’t care. I can’t believe I’m on the cusp of getting everything I want, and all I can think about is…Graham.





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GRAHAM





Keeley is pacing the room, talking to MacNulty. She’s come alive during this conversation, all laughter and wildly gesturing hands he can’t see. When she’s like this, she could draw blood from a stone. She could persuade you to give her a TV show. She could persuade you to give her an entire network if you had one at your disposal.

She seems to be persuading MacNulty, anyway. The interview time is set, and when she tells him she’s got nothing to wear, he says he’ll have a stylist send some things for her. It’s exactly what Keeley wants—fame, stylists, adulation—and I hate everything about it. I guess that makes me an asshole, but I never believed for a second I wasn’t one, so the revelation doesn’t make much of a dent.

“Our daughter will be famous,” she says to me, eyes gleaming. It’s one fucking interview, and she’s already spun this out into a future as a talk-show host. “Can you imagine? She could, like, be on the Kids’ Choice Awards and go glamping with all the little Kardashians in a private jet.”

“Yes,” I say dryly. “That sounds like just the recipe for developing into an intelligent, emotionally mature adult.”

She frowns and stomps away, already casting me in the role her father played…the bad guy, ruining all their fun.

And I will be.

Keeley dreams so vividly she can persuade everyone around her it’s real. She makes you believe in a world entirely different from what it is, and then you wake up in a hotel room thinking your whole life has changed and discover you’ve been ditched with nothing but a marriage certificate and the bill for two wedding rings to show for it.

I imagine it’s one more thing she inherited from her mom, that ability to spin things so vividly.

When this interview occurs, they’re going to love her. The whole world will love her. How could they not? Keeley lights up every room she enters until she’s the only thing you can see. And when all that happens, she’ll be endangered. There will be fans and photographers and strangers stopping her in the street. She and our daughter will no longer be safe, and I’ll be helpless to stop it.

It feels like history is repeating.





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KEELEY





It all happens so fast.

There’s a live taping of Mindy and Mills Sunday afternoon, outside at The Grove. They bump a child violinist to fit me in, which I should probably feel bad about but…that kid’s got his whole life ahead of him while with the O’Keefe genes, I’ve got another ten years or so if I’m lucky.

A rack of dresses is delivered to the apartment by a stylist, who quickly rules out everything loose because of my height, and everything dark because of my coloring. In the end, we agree on a bright pink dress that has a bit of sixties flair to it—sleeveless, with a rounded collar and a built-in belt that loops just above the baby bump.

Graham is in a foul mood throughout, ignoring me and grunting at the stylist when she greets him. And I’ve had it…mostly with the being ignored part.

It’s late by the time the stylist leaves. He’s sitting at the kitchen table on his laptop, acting like I’ve left too.

I ask if he wants to see the dress we chose, and when he grunts, “I’m good,” I finally explode.

“What the hell, dude? My dreams are coming true and you’re being a dick.”

He shuts his laptop and leans back in his seat, letting his eyes fall closed before he looks at me. “Has it occurred to you how hard life is for celebrities? And how unsafe? Drew Bailey wears a disguise everywhere she goes and still can’t walk out her door without getting photographed. A guy scaled a twelve-foot fence and hid in their backyard, for God’s sake. If this goes the way you hope, you’ll spend the rest of your life in danger.”

I laugh. “I’m not going to be Drew Bailey-level famous. Doctors don’t get stalkers.”

“You would,” he says morosely. “You’re the type of female even someone mentally stable marries on the fly. Imagine what you’d unleash in someone who wasn’t stable.”

I’m tempted to suggest he’s not acting all that stable himself at the moment, but I manage to refrain. “Drew manages just fine.”

“Drew doesn’t want to chat with every person she meets,” he counters. “She’s not hanging out at the bakery for twenty minutes catching up with the cashier. She doesn’t stop complete strangers to ask about the meaning of their tshirts or where they get their hair done.”

My eyes sting. “I’m not that bad.”

He sighs as he rises, tucking his laptop under his arm as he turns for his room. “I never said you were bad, but I worry every time you walk out the door, and it’s about to get worse.”