The Devil Gets His Due (The Devils #4)(82)

“You know…Graham really cared about you,” he says. “I mean, the guy was head over heels.”

“He had a contract written up,” I reply, assuming he’s forgotten. “He was going to try to buy my baby.”

Mark shakes his head. “Nah. He’d come down here, ostensibly to talk about the markets but really because he wanted to talk about you. You were his favorite topic and the one thing that made him smile. A guy doing that isn’t trying to buy your baby.”

I feel my temper ratcheting higher. “Mark, I saw it with my own eyes.”

“I don’t care what you saw. That guy was never, ever going to do anything to hurt you, and I think somewhere inside, you know that.”

I brace myself to stand—it’s nearly impossible at this point. “I need to get going.”

“Keeley, you know what people see when they look at me now? They see a guy they assume is on drugs, or crazy, or just lazy as shit. And maybe all that is true, but you knew I could be homeless, and might also have gone through some stuff, so you listened. You got so drunk that you married a stranger in Vegas, but you’d gone through some stuff too. My point is that everyone has a story. And if you ever cared about Graham…you at least ought to ask. Because maybe he has a story too.”

I want to believe that. I can feel the way hope is already blooming in my chest, and I squash it flat immediately. If anything Mark’s saying was true, Graham would have tried to explain, or defend himself.

He didn’t care enough to do either.

“I’d better get going.”

“Did you sell the stuff from the storage unit?” he asks.

Last week, at his suggestion, I pulled some of the unworn or barely worn designer things from the storage unit and put them up for sale—three pairs of Louboutins that hurt too much, the Tom Ford dress I never wore once, a few Hermes bags, including the Birkin. I need a safety net for the not unlikely possibility that Fox fires me. I’m not asking Graham for shit.

“The Birkin already sold. I sent it out yesterday.”

“That had to hurt a little.”

I shake my head. “It wasn’t bad.”

All that matters going forward is this baby, and nothing else.

Unless Graham finally comes to his senses and tells me why he fucking did it. And then maybe I’ll allow him to matter too.

I guess I haven’t squashed all the hope after all.





“Sorry we kept you waiting,” I tell the woman sitting on the exam table the next afternoon. I’m fifteen minutes late, which is what happens when you’ve got double the number of patients any doctor could squeeze into a three-hour period. “I’m Dr. Connolly. What can I help you with today?”

She smiles. “I’m Ally. We’ve actually met before. Last winter. You were outside Native Planet with Drew Bailey. I guess you don’t remember. It was pretty early in the night, like nine.”

I gulp. She’s referring to the night I married Graham which is, obviously, quite a blur. And she’s claiming we were still in LA at nine. So how the hell did we get to Vegas before midnight? “Oh, sorry. It was kind of a crazy night.”

She nods. “It was. Anyway, right before the fight with your boyfriend—Graham, I think?—you told me I should get this mole looked at, so here I am.” She stretches out her forearm, and I know immediately that Drunk Keeley was right.

“Do you see how the borders are irregular?” I ask. “We need to do a biopsy.”

She shrugs. “Sure, whatever.”

I turn to the nurse assisting me and ask her to get the lidocaine.

“So are you still with that guy?” Ally asks, glancing at my stomach.

My throat tightens. I wait for the sadness to pass, knowing it won’t, entirely. “Um, no. But given that you saw me fighting with him even last January, it’s probably for the best.”

“Oh…I meant the fight he got in, when that guy tried to kiss you? Man, I thought he was going to kill him.”

I’ve just inserted a needle into the lidocaine but stop to stare at her. “I don’t remember that.”

She tilts her head, dumbfounded that I could have forgotten. My ability to appear sober when I’m not strikes again. “Remember that guy just grabbing you? He, like, threw you against the wall, and Graham had him on the ground in seconds. It was crazy.”

I smile weakly as I return to what I was doing. I’m a little embarrassed both my nurse and my patient are aware of this story, especially when I’m not. I must look extremely classy right now. “Yet somehow, I managed to notice a mole on your arm. One-track mind, I guess.”

“I wanted to talk to you about it but you guys went around the corner, and then like two seconds later, Drew grabbed you both and pushed you into a limo.”

I stare at her. I should play this off and act like I remember, but I’m too stunned. “She did?”

Even as I ask the question, though, I’m starting to put some things together. Like Drew telling me how “relieved” she was. Like how she’d “heard an earful” from her husband, but “all’s well that ends well”.

Like the fact that we were still in California at nine but somehow got to Vegas well before midnight…which we could only have managed by private plane.