Amateur. “For lying about being your girlfriend? That seems a bit harsh. You could just let me buy you lunch and we could have a laugh about it.”
“Oh, you’ll be buying me lunch, but that in no way gets you out of those dinners.”
Maybe I’d just compel him to forget the whole thing. On the other hand, I would get to spend time with him. What’s a demoness to do? “Okay. Fine.”
He ducked his head and brushed his fingers through his hair, making it adorably messy. When combined with his steely glare, it made him more than adorable. It made him wicked. And sexy. “What were you thinking?”
“I don’t know. I guess I panicked.” I shrugged. What else did he want?
“Not the boyfriend thing,” he said, taking a step toward me. His weird energy billowed off him, warming my skin as he loomed over me. “I couldn’t care less about the boyfriend thing. Yes, you’re going to have to bail me out with my boss, but other than that, forget about it.”
“Like I said, I’m really sorry—”
He grabbed my face, brushed his fingers through my hair, and pulled me close, pressing his lips down on mine. My body jerked from his energy. His tongue swiped across my lower lip and it was like having a defibrillator attached to me. Not that I’d ever put a defibrillator on my face, but it couldn’t have provided much more of a jolt than the sexy lawyer currently kissing me. And it wouldn’t have been nearly as enjoyable. My knees buckled, and I grabbed his arms to steady myself. I opened my mouth and fought the urge to simply inhale him. He tasted like mint gum and something spicy, and I was addicted. His left hand slid out of my hair and wrapped around my waist, pulling me closer.
The elevator stopped with a jolt and the doors slid open, dinging merrily to announce our arrival. Matt broke his lips from mine and released me, his breathing heavier than normal and his eyes dark.
“Uh,” a pregnant woman with curly brown hair said quietly. “Are you two getting off? I mean getting out of the elevator?”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” he said, grabbing my hand roughly and dragging me away.
“Did you just—”
“We’ll talk in my car.” He led me out of the hospital and onto the street, not bothering to slow down.
My puny stump legs had to work double-time to keep up. “Where are we going?”
His only answer was a grunt, and he didn’t slow down as he led me two blocks to a parking garage. He paid the attendant, led me inside, and we stopped at a black Ford sedan.
“I just wanted to tell you how grateful I am that you dropped everything to help me out.”
Still not saying anything, he pulled out his keys and hit the button to activate his power locks. The taillights blinked once and he opened the door for me.
I stood there looking at him, dumbfounded, when he motioned me into the car. “How do you know I didn’t drive myself?”
“Your sister has your car today.” He motioned me into the car again.
I slid in and he slammed the door before walking around the back of the car and opening the driver’s side door.
“And how did you know that?” I asked when he sat down.
“She almost ran me down this morning on my run.”
“Hope almost ran you over? Are you sure?”
“How many blondes in our apartment building drive red Civics with a ladybug sticker in the back window? Like I said—your car, your sister.”
“Sorry about that.” I glared out the passenger-side window.
“Why didn’t you call me the minute they requested you come in?”
“I didn’t think it was that serious.”
“Faith, two kids are dead because of medicine that went missing from your post.”
“But I wasn’t on duty! Those drugs were there after I left that night.”
“So why is Detective Kastellero so interested in you? Why you, specifically?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never met the man before.”
“He knows something about you that you’re not telling me.”
“There’s nothing to know.”
“Did you know the two young men who died?”
“No,” I said, more vehemently than I’d meant to. “I could have taken care of them at some point, but I don’t know. They haven’t even told me the names of the guys who died. How would I know if I’ve ever seen them before?”
“Did you ever work in the neighborhood around Presby? Maybe volunteer at a clinic where you could have met them?”
“I don’t volunteer anywhere. I’m too busy with the amount of hours I’ve already got. How would I know if I worked in their neighborhood? I don’t know anything about them. They’re just two dead kids in a hospital across town.”
“Right,” Matt said and put his key in the ignition, turning the engine over. “I’ve got to ask this, Faith, and, dear God, you cannot lie.”
I winced at his choice of words and nodded.
Matt turned to face me and looked me straight in the eyes. “Were you involved in this? Were you helping someone else steal medication?”
“How can you ask me that? Jesus!”
“I have to know, for my own peace of mind. And I need you to say it, Faith. Tell me.”
“I didn’t help anyone steal those meds. And I’m not covering for anyone. I don’t know what happened. When I left, the medication count was right. When I got back, Bernice was missing sixteen bags of IV morphine.”
“Have you ever been accused of stealing medication? Ever been terminated from a job for it?”
“No.”
“Good.” Matt nodded. “I just needed to make sure. That means the Pittsburgh PD is just looking for an obvious suspect to pin it on while they try to figure out how this happened.”
“And I’m the most obvious suspect?”
“You’re young, you had access to the narcotics, and most people who steal from their employer try to do it on someone else’s shift to throw suspicion on their coworkers.”
“If I was going to sell medication, I’d have Lisa lift it from the clinic. They’ve only got a minimal amount of security and no surveillance cameras. I’d be stupid to steal it from a hospital. With all the security in place, you’d have to be an idiot to try.”
“Or know that the security was going to fail,” Matt said. “But that doesn’t matter. What matters is you didn’t steal that medication.”
“It was the creepy guy,” Harold said, floating into existence in the backseat. “I keep telling you the guy is seriously freaky, but you don’t listen to me. I keep telling the head of housekeeping she needs to quit getting her busboys from the Scary Movie Extras Union but she ignores me.”
Matt’s eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror and I wondered again if he was somehow sensing that things around him weren’t completely normal.
I flipped down the sun visor and opened the mirror, staring back at Harold. He wore his lab coat and a pair of khakis, with a red stethoscope draped around his neck. Instead of answering, I flipped the sun visor back up.
The brain inside of his corpse must have started to rot if he thought someone from the kitchen had managed to bring down the hospital’s security systems. Although it wouldn’t have been the strangest thing I’d ever heard of happening in a hospital.
“You don’t believe me, but you’ll see.” Harold faded again.
“So,” Matt said when we turned onto the expressway, “how do you intend to spend the rest of the day thanking me?”
My jaw dropped open and I turned to stare at him. Was he suggesting what I thought he was suggesting? I pinched the back of my hand to make sure I hadn’t somehow drifted off to sleep. “Excuse me?”
“I bailed for the rest of the day when you told me you needed help,” he said.
“You what?”
“I didn’t sit around and quibble with my boss over whether I was taking an hour or all damn day. I told him my girlfriend had an emergency and I had to go. He told me he’d see me tomorrow. So, how are we spending my day
off?”
Panic tore through me. No way was I taking him to my place. “My family is in town.”
“I’m not normally a Dinner With the Parents on the First Date kind of guy.”
Oh, if only he knew.
He pulled at his collar. “But I’m nothing if not flexible.”
“Who said this was a date?”
“Who said I was asking? Now, were you thinking about a long lunch or should we just skip that and find a hotel for a nooner?” He turned to me and winked, and I fought the urge to giggle. Who knew bossy, dominating guys were one of my turn-ons? Definitely not me.
My mouth opened in a silent gasp but my lips still tingled. I wondered what else he could make tingle. “I am not sleeping with you!”
“Eh, lunch it is. Any preferences on where we go?”
“None,” I said and shook my head. If I didn’t have a major crush on him, I would have been offended by the way he was bossing me around.
“I was thinking Flannigan’s on the Square.”
“That sounds perfect,” I said. Flannigan’s was one of my favorite local pubs, the owner a Dublin transplant who believed hamburgers should fill a plate and beers came in only two sizes—pints or double pints, poured in his own specially designed glasses. “Although I think you’re a bit overdressed.”
“That brings us to my next question. Since it’s on the way, do you mind if we stop by the apartment so I can change out of my work clothes?”
“Into something more comfortable?” I asked with a wink.
“Hmm. And you were just pretending to be shocked by my suggested afternoon activities. Tease.”
“Oh, I’m the tease?”
“Yes, you are.” He pulled off the expressway and onto Carson Street and parked behind my Civic, its two passenger-side tires on the sidewalk and a dent in the back bumper. I should have known better than to let Hope borrow my car. Now my best hope was that Matt wouldn’t notice the damage and I could sneak out later tonight and fix it.
He got out of the car, raced to my side, and pulled the door open. I stepped out of the car, and he took my hand in his before closing the door behind me. For someone with an apparently infuriating streak of bossiness, he had excellent manners.
“So, five minutes?” he asked. “You don’t mind?”
“Nah.” I climbed the front steps and stepped aside as he hurried forward to open the building’s front door. “I think I’ll go ahead and change, too. I wasn’t exactly looking for something stylish this morning when Sally called.”
“I can imagine,” Matt said. He waited for me to walk inside. “But promise me one thing and we’ll drop it.”
“Okay. What?”
“No matter what, until this is handled, you talk to nobody—and I mean absolutely nobody—from the Pittsburgh PD or Rogers Hospital without me present. That means even your roommate. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“And don’t wait until you’re in a room staring down one of Pittsburgh’s Finest to call me.”
“Right.”
“All right,” he said, as we climbed the last couple of stairs to our floor. “I’ll see you in a few minutes?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Okay, then.” He ran his hand down the side of my cheek and my toes curled from the tingle it sent through my body. He pulled away, turning toward his door.
I turned the handle of my front door—Lisa and I never locked the thing—and opened it. I stepped inside and closed it quickly behind me, leaning against it.
The pictures I’d slipped into my hoodie slapped against my stomach. I couldn’t ignore the dread they caused. Someone was stalking me.
Harold had been sure it was some guy from the hospital, which made sense considering where he’d left the pictures. But there was no way some random employee had been able to snap pictures of Lisa killing Harold. Maybe a janitor? They’d have a key to access Harold’s office and the conference room. And no one noticed the janitors. But what did they think they would achieve with blackmail photos showing something most people considered impossible? People would assume the photos were doctored. Unless they were conspiracy nuts who believed in Bigfoot. And this might be a stretch, even for them.
I wouldn’t worry about it right now, though. Right now, I had a date with Matt to get ready for, and I didn’t even have good underwear on. Had I even put on underwear this morning? I grabbed the waistband of my pants and pulled them out—pink and green plaid. I let go of my waistband and did a spot-check down my cami and cringed at the sight of my blue sports bra. Yeah, that wasn’t going to work. It wasn’t like I intended for him to see my underwear on a first date, but I still needed something nicer. Just in case. What if we ended up in an accident?
“Problems?” Tolliver asked from my living room, sounding amused, and I looked up to see my entire family sitting there, staring at me.
“Nothing,” I said. “I just have a lunch date that I need to get ready for.”
“And you’re concerned about your underwear?” he asked.
“No, I was just checking them for my own sake. To see if they matched.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, and crossed his arms knowingly. He smirked at our father. “That’s funny. I don’t ever check to make sure my underwear matches before I go out to lunch. What about you?”
“Nope.” Dad looked at me pointedly, and Lisa squirmed in shared embarrassment.
“I really don’t have time for this,” I said, and headed toward my room, my cheeks burning with humiliation. Just what I needed—a group of commentators analyzing my love life. Or lack thereof, until now.
“My date will be here in five minutes so you shouldn’t be.”
Chapter Eleven
“Faith!” my father bellowed.
I shoved the envelope into my underwear drawer and tried to avoid looking in the mirror. I knew I looked like a hot mess. It wasn’t like I’d bothered dressing up to go to work. Hell, I’d barely scraped at my teeth with a toothbrush. Ugh. Thankfully, I hadn’t eaten any garlic.
“Faith!”
Did we really have to do this now? Didn’t he get the idea of a date? It did not involve long discussions with my father when I had better things to do. Like turn myself into someone a man would want to ask on a second date. Hell, at this point I didn’t even need to manage cute. I would be perfectly happy to pull off Reasonably Presentable.
“What?” I narrowed my eyes at the door and my horns pushed at the top of my scalp, dying to come out after an entire morning of staying hidden.
“I want to talk to you and your brother and sister in the living room right now,” he said from the other side of the door.
I stuck my tongue out at the closed door. “No.”
“No? No?” The lights flickered.
Shit. Obviously, I had overestimated what I could get away with today.
“I am the Devil, young lady.”
“And this is my house,” I yelled. I pulled the door open and let it recoil off the bedroom wall, my hands on my hips as I gave him my best Daughter of Ultimate Darkness Stare of Death.
“Living room,” he said, and raised one eyebrow at me.
“Please.”
“Excuse me?”
“This is my home and it is customary to say please when you make a request of someone. Especially in their own house.”
“Fine, point taken. Living room.”
“Please.”
“Now.” He turned on his heel and stalked down the hall.
“Fine.” I followed him and joined my brother and sister, who sat together on the couch, both with their arms crossed. Hope’s left foot tapped, and she glared at the ceiling. Mom sat on the love seat, wearing her typical goofy expression whenever Dad was around.
“Sit there.” My father pointed to the empty seat next to Hope, and I made a show of flopping down between my siblings on the couch and crossing my arms in juvenile solidarity with them. “We need to have a family meeting.”
“A what?” Tolli
ver looked at him with wide eyes. “You want to have a what?”
“A family meeting.”
“Oh man,” Malachi said. The tiny demon hovered in front of my kitchen window, tormenting the Pomeranian across the alley. “Satan’s having a family meeting? I’m out of here. If that’s okay with you, Your Excellency?”
“Of course.” My father waved his hand absently, and Malachi bailed like the giant chicken he should have manifested as.
“Well, we’ve got to make it quick. My lunch date is going to be here in”—I peeked at my wristwatch—“four minutes, and I really don’t think we want to explain this whole situation to him. Do you?”
“Fine,” my father said. “We’ll make it quick.”
“I still don’t see why we’re doing it,” Tolliver said. “I mean, we’ve done perfectly well without family meetings before now. What is this, a committee or something? It’s not like we’re children anymore.”
“Roisin thought it would be a good idea, now that we’re going to formalize things, for us to sit down and discuss how we feel about the situation so we can try to work things out as a family. And it will give us a chance to talk about some important changes that are going to take place.”
“Such as?” Hope asked.
“Our changing family dynamic and the responsibilities expected of you.”
I raised my hand and waved it at him. “Dad?”
“Yes?”
“We’re grownups. That means there are no shifting responsibilities. I will take out the trash and do the dishes in my apartment, Hope will do the same in hers, and Tolliver will do whatever it is that he does wherever it is that he resides, or sleeps, or whatever he does.”
“Exactly,” Tolliver said. “Besides, what changing family dynamic? You’ve been chasing Bimbette around for the past thirty-five years, and either shacking up or breaking up for almost all of it.”
“See, that’s what I’m talking about.” My mother pointed at Tolliver, her eyes narrowed in accusation. “You need to deal with this, darling. I’ll never have the respect I’m due as your consort if your own son talks about me with such disrespect. We need to allow everyone to get their feelings out in the open and resolve them or this blending just won’t work.”
Luck of the Devil Page 11
