The Devil You Know (The Devils #3)(82)

As we walk, I start talking about our new gender discrimination case and he stops me. “This is a no-work weekend, remember?”

“Well, if Julie wasn’t standing outside our room like a creep, I’d tell you exactly how to take my mind off work.”

He nods at the trees overhead. “Try to enjoy nature.”

“I’ve seen trees before,” I reply, kicking a branch out of our way. “Unpopular opinion, but nature is boring.”

He laughs and pulls me toward the stupid little lake, which was not worth walking a mile to view. We sit on a bench, and I rest my head on his shoulder.

“What do you think?” he asks.

“I think they ought to drain this lake and make it a big Target Superstore,” I reply. “That would make it worth the one-mile walk. But I’m glad you’re here suffering with me.”

“Because you like having me around,” he asks, “or because you want me to suffer?”

I grin. “Can’t it be both?”

He laughs, pulling me to my feet, and we head back. My cute white Vejas are no longer white by the time we near town, and they’re giving me a blister. He gives me a piggyback ride to the bed and breakfast, where we have furtive, silent sex in the shower before changing to go to dinner. It’s only four p.m., but there’s nothing else to do.

The diner isn’t as cute and retro as I thought. Tap water is delivered to us in cloudy glasses. We decide we aren’t thirsty.

“It smells like forty-year-old cooking oil in here,” Ben says, leaning forward to avoid anyone hearing.

We share a sandwich and fries, and when we finally get outside, I turn to him. “I can’t wait to get out of this town, Ben.”

He pulls me against him with a soft smile on his face. “So, life in a small town isn’t everything you thought it would be?”

“No,” I say, laughing into his t-shirt. “It’s so boring here. I’d go crazy.”

His lips press to the top of my head. “I know,” he says. “That’s why I picked it.”

I blink. “What?”

His shoulders shake with silent laughter. “There’s nothing wrong with my car. It’s parked in back of the barbershop and we can leave right now. I just wanted you to get your whole Hallmark experience.”

“You—” I sputter. “But…I can’t believe…I mean, how did you even know what the towns in those movies were like?”

He shrugs. “It mattered to you, so I watched a few of them the last time you went back to visit your mom.”

I abandoned the Hallmark thing quite a while ago, but tears sting my eyes. “I can’t believe you,” I say, and it comes out a little broken.

“Don’t get me wrong…I did a lot of fast-forwarding because they’re ridiculously boring, but yeah.” He stops suddenly. “Are you crying?”

I nod and press my face to his shirt. “This was both the nicest and the cruelest thing anyone’s done to me in a long time.”

“Amy was in on it, by the way,” he says. “From the coffee shop? I called her yesterday and asked her to be as nosy as possible.”

“And Julie?”

He shakes his head. “No. She’s just weird. But this whole trip has inspired me. I think I’ve got a movie we could pitch to Hallmark—”

“It can’t be about two lawyers. One of us needs to be a good person.”

He laughs. “They can branch out this once. So, these two lawyers are crazy about each other and refuse to admit it until he fingers her in his office. And then he takes her away somewhere like Santa Barbara and proposes because they’re too busy to go to Iceland.”

I fight a smile, my heart beating like a drum. “No one gets fingered in a Hallmark movie.”

“What about the rest of it?” he asks, pulling me closer.

“Yeah,” I whisper, as hope begins to expand in my chest. “The rest of it sounds pretty good. I’d have hated Iceland.”

He laughs. “I know.”

All those dreams and plans I had were…nonsense. They were fantasies—the more unlikely, the more impossible the better, because it kept me that much safer from having to contend with something real.

He rubs the back of his neck. “So,” he begins quietly, “we have a reservation in Santa Barbara if you’re ready to go.”

He’s so nervous. So sheepish. Just like he was his first day at FMG, trying to casually invite me to join him at the bar across the street.

I wrap my arms around his neck, my smile ridiculously wide. “I’m ready.”

Because something real is no longer terrifying. And I can’t wait to say “yes” to Ben Tate.

THE END