The Devil You Know (The Devils #3)(49)

In retrospect, I wish she’d at least mentioned that sometimes you are scared for good reason.





28





I’m trying very hard to focus on Sophia Waterhouse and the numbers she’s given me, but I’m only half here, the other half focused on that ache between my legs. It’s so like Ben Tate to make my job difficult.

My cell is on silent, but Ben’s name pops up when he texts, and that alone is enough to distract me. I turn the phone facedown and focus again on the task at hand—Sophia’s monthly expenses.

People have no idea what they spend. They pay a credit card bill, or their husband pays it, and they look the other way. When I ask them to itemize it all—how much did you spend on groceries? How much did you spend on your kids’ after-school activities?—they either go way too high or way too low.

Sophia has either gone too high, or she and her husband have been spending far beyond their 400k income.

“Is this correct?” I ask politely, trying to hide my incredulity. “You spend five hundred a month on manicures?”

“It’s pedicures also,” she says. “Gels, so it’s more expensive.”

“And doctors’ visits—two thousand a month,” I continue. “Can you tell me what that’s about?”

It’s probably wrong that I’m hoping she’ll tell me she has a serious medical condition. In my defense, though, I have a better case if she does.

“I see an alternative practitioner for my food sensitivities, so that’s about a hundred a week because I need these infrared colonics and supplements.”

My optimism dies. No court is going to look at food sensitivities the way they might Parkinson’s. “Okay, and the rest?”

“Well, facials and Botox and filler, mostly,” she says. “It really adds up.”

“Right, sure.” So far, she’s spending three grand a month just on her face, hair and nails, an additional eight hundred on personal training and a gym membership, and two grand a month on clothes. We haven’t gotten to her mortgage, her car, insurance or her phone—we haven’t even gotten to her kids—and she’s already spending far more than I’ll be able to get from her husband.

Sophia is telling me she needs acupuncture every week for some disorder few doctors believe is real, and my mind wanders back to Ben. Ben, moving over me in a dark room. Ben, cupping my face and kissing me like I matter to him. Admitting he’s been bringing strawberries in, just for me.

Is this real, or is it just a castle of cards he’s constructing, careless of the mess he’ll make when it inevitably falls apart? My throat tightens the way it always does when the past creeps in.

“Don’t get married,” Sophia says. “At least not to an LA guy.”

I blink, as if I’ve been caught at something. “I don’t intend to,” I reply.





Ben walks into my office at dinnertime, looking scruffy and slightly day-weary: tie loosened, some serious five o’clock shadow along his jaw.

I rise and walk around to the other side of my desk. I want to tell him I’m busy but I just can’t. “Shut the door.”

His eyes flicker over me, head to heels. His hand goes to his belt and his mouth opens slightly as he considers it, but then he winces, and his hand falls away. “Let’s go, Gemma.”

He’s obviously going to be tedious about this. “I need to work.”

“On what?”

“I—”

His tongue taps his upper lip, and I lose my train of thought. God, I love when he does that.

“Stuff,” I conclude.

He gives a low laugh. “Stuff? Must be important. I’ll be at your place in thirty minutes.”

I have every intention of saying, “that was a one-time thing”, but I’m already shutting down my laptop.

I’m at my apartment when he arrives with takeout in hand. I glance at it, wondering if this is the point where we start acting like boring grown-ups who eat dinner, watch TV, and fall asleep too fast.

He drops the bag on the floor and pushes me against the wall. So I guess we’re not that boring.

“These outfits of yours are going to end me,” he groans, tugging up my skirt as he kicks the door shut behind him.

My hand is already on his belt. I get his pants down, and he steps out of them while he moves me back toward the bedroom. We land on the bed together.

“Admit you’re glad I came over,” he says, as I roll him onto his back.

“Whatever.”

He pushes inside me, and I gasp at the feel of it.

“I’m pretty sure that was a yes,” he says.

An hour later, we’re sitting at the little table in my breakfast area. He’s only in boxers, and I’m wearing his t-shirt, which hangs to mid-thigh. It’s bizarre that I’m sleeping with the terrible Ben Tate, but it’s even more bizarre that we’re sitting at my table together half naked, like an actual couple, and I’m completely comfortable with it.

My phone, sitting next to the rice, lights up with a Zillow notification. Having no respect for boundaries whatsoever, he lifts it to read. “Why are you hunting for houses in…” He squints, “Manassas, Virginia?”

I frown. “I’m not. It was for my mom.”