Devil May Care

by Patricia Eimer

  “Watch me.” Power crackled around his entire form.

  “Faith?” Brenda looked at me, her eyes wide. “You aren’t going to let him threaten me that way, are you?”

  “You bet your creepy angelic ass I am.” I smirked at her.

  “This is unacceptable.” Valerie dropped her bags and pointed at Matt. “I will not allow you to order me around like I’m some sort of commoner. Or threaten Brenda, for that matter. She is your future bride and I will not allow you to disrespect her by choosing to side with some demonic concubine against your own family.”

  “Excuse me?” I pulled back from Matt and stared first at him and then at the two other women. Valerie looked like she was in the middle of some sort of psychotic fit, her eyes glowing and golden light sparking out of her fingertips in erratic bursts. Brenda just gave me a smug smile and the satisfaction rolled off her in sugary waves. “What did you just call me?”

  “My son’s concubine,” Valerie repeated. “The willing sexual submissive he indulges himself with when his lawful wife is otherwise occupied.”

  “Lawful wife?” I stared at my boyfriend, waiting for an explanation. Apparently there was a breakdown in communication taking place somewhere. Last I checked, Matt had told me his mother wanted him to get engaged to Brenda. He didn’t mention that engagement had taken place or that they’d followed through on it.

  “Mother…” Matt sighed. “I’m not marrying Brenda. It’s never going to happen. No wedding will be taking place. She is not my wife. She is not my fiancée. She is not my intended. Or any other term you want to use for it. She’s just some sad little girl whose hopes you’ve raised to impossible levels before you sent her here to cause trouble.”

  “But—”

  Brenda’s devastated look said it all. Whatever she’d expected to happen when she hatched her little plan, this wasn’t it. If it hadn’t been my boyfriend she’d been trying to steal, I’d almost feel sorry for her. It had to hurt to find out the person you thought you were in love with couldn’t stand you.

  Valerie looked over at the other woman and pursed her lips in annoyance, obviously waiting for Brenda to say something to defend herself. When Brenda just sniffled, she grabbed the stunned girl by the arm and dragged her into Matt’s apartment like a domesticated imp fighting against the leash for the first time.

  She turned around to face us and her eyes were glowing so brightly that I couldn’t even see her pupils. “I hope you’re happy with yourself,” she hissed and then slammed the door.

  Matt wrapped his arms around me. “Maybe I’m a bad person but yeah, getting her out of my life for good makes me exceptionally happy.”

  “I’m just happy I don’t have to worry about driving Brenda to Philly. The toll road is not where I want to spend my day off.”

  “Apparently, she never had any intention of taking you up on that trip.” Matt dropped his forehead down against mine. “She told Dad that she and Mom cooked this plan up to get between the two of us before she ever left Biloxi. If I get my hands on Tony I’m going to pluck his feathers one at a time.”

  “Do you think he knew she was planning to cause trouble when he took off?”

  “I think that’s going to be the first question I ask him when I finally track him down. But, before I can do that I have to get the three of them on their way back to Biloxi and out of our lives. Then things can go back to normal. Or as normal as they ever are around here.”

  “About that…” I took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. It was now or never. I had to tell him about Dan and I had to tell him about all of it. Even the kiss. No matter how much he freaked out. “We need to talk.”

  “I know.” Matt brushed his lips against mine and tightened his arms around me in a brief hug. “I haven’t forgotten that you said you wanted to talk. I promise. But can it wait?”

  “Wait?” I swallowed and tried to keep my voice even.

  “Just until they’re really gone?” He asked wearily. “We can talk later but right now I just need to get rid of them and reconnect with you for as long as I can. Is that okay?”

  I ran my fingers over the exhaustion lines that had etched themselves into his forehead and let my thumbs trail over the dark bruises underneath his eyes. I’d waited this long to tell him Dan was back in town, what did a few more hours matter anyway?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Miss Bettincourt.” Dan smiled and opened his arms to me in mock welcome the next morning as Lisa and I stumbled into the hospital’s basement training room. “You’re five minutes early. I’m impressed.”

  “Oh, stuff it, tech boy.” I waved my cup of coffee at him and then gave him a tight smile. “I’m not required to be chipper or pleasant until the caffeine has completely entered my bloodstream. All you get for the next five minutes is coherent. Got me?”

  Lisa yawned and took a slug of her own coffee. “We’ve both had long shifts and this training is keeping us from going home and going to bed.”

  “That makes three of us who’d rather be home in bed,” Dan said. “I finished all the security updates last night. Plus I finished my paperwork on the security breach and handed it over to your hospital administration. I was hoping they would wait a few more days before acting on it but I think that redhead, Sally, might have the police department on her speed dial.”

  “Great.” I rolled my eyes and took a big drink of my latte. The guy at the coffee shop across from the hospital had added two double shots of espresso to it to help perk me up this morning when I told him I had to stay over on my day off for a training seminar. Alpha, bless helpful young baristas. “So I should expect Detective Kastellero to show up during lunch—”

  “Or now,” a snide, masculine voice said from behind me.

  Crap. I turned to find the detective leaning against the open doorjamb, staring at me.

  “Miss Bettincourt. Why am I not surprised to see you here?”

  “Because I work here?” I said. “Much like you often find yourself working out of the local Dunkin Donuts if that jelly belly you’re sporting is any indication of things. What do you want, Detective?” I took another drink of my coffee and sighed. “I have a training that this guy says I can’t skip out on. No matter how much I want to.”

  “I wanted to let you know, personally, that we’ve looked at the paperwork Mr. Cheswick provided us and I don’t think we’ll need any further information from you regarding the robbery that took place last month. But we’re investigating the attempts on your life. So I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again soon. Unless you have something else you need to share?”

  “Not a thing.” I had to give the man credit. He was persistent. He had no evidence to link the car bombs that had destroyed my father’s, Matt’s, and Tolliver’s cars last month to anything else, but he wasn’t about to let it die, either. He intended to find something, and Alpha save us all when he finally did.

  “What about any information you might have on the death of Dr. Harold Winslow?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “Are you sure?” Kastellero leaned closer to me, so we were almost nose to nose, and narrowed his eyes like he had suddenly become Kojak and I was about to go away for a very long time after beating someone’s granny to death. “Because it seems very convenient to me about the timing of all these incidents. You file a harassment complaint against Dr. Winslow and the next day he comes up missing along with a whole batch of morphine. But no one sees anything and I do mean no one because even the security cameras were down.”

  “That has nothing to do with me.” I straightened so that I was standing at my not-so-impressive full five foot two height and narrowed my eyes at him in a way I hoped looked more like annoyance and less like a sudden urge to confess to everything but stealing morphine—including accessory to murder after the fact. Especially since I didn’t think he was going to buy my defense of “my best friend the succubus did it. I was just the poor innocent schmuck that got pulled along for the ride.”

/>   “I’d believe you but that very same week you suddenly gain a stalker who decides to go from threatening notes to explosives in record time.” The burnt coffee smell of irritation mixed with the peppery smell of suspicion wafted off of his clothes and I had to try my best not to sneeze as it tickled my nose.

  “Crazy people, who knows what they’re thinking?”

  “Now we find Dr. Winslow and the man who stole that morphine, except both of them are rather inconveniently dead. With no visible connection to you.” Kastellero took another step toward me, forcing me to take a step back.

  “Because there is no connection to me,” I said, my voice shaking slightly.

  “Of course there is. I just have to find it and when I do you, me, and your lawyer are all going to sit down together for a chat.” Kastellero stepped back and gave me a predatory smile.

  “Lucky us.” I took a drink of my coffee and rolled my eyes at him, like I was totally not pissing myself at the idea of being trapped in a room with him. Not that any sane person could blame me. The guy had tried to accuse me for the missing morphine even though I hadn’t even been in the hospital when it was stolen. Then, he’d tried to somehow tie it to the whole Stalker Blowing Up My Car incident and even went so far as to suggest to the ATF that maybe it was tied to drug trafficking on my part. Which was totally bogus, and thankfully the ATF had seen that after only a little bit of subtle mind fuckery courtesy of the Son of God.

  “Have a good day, Miss Bettincourt. Try not to kill anybody. Or get yourself killed, either.” Kastellero turned on his heel, and walked away.

  “Same to you, Detective, and do try not to wrongfully accuse too many innocent people today. I’m sure the paperwork is killing your superiors.”

  “Okay, you two obviously have a history,” Dan said.

  “He tried to blame me for the MEDTECH incident. Plus he scared off Bernice by coming in here every single night to grill her for more details on what happened. Now guess who has to cover her shift until they can find a replacement nurse who’s willing to work midnights? One hint, it’s not Detective Kastellero.”

  “But now that this is settled, maybe he’ll quit screwing with the staff so much and you can all get back to your normal routine.”

  “Your mouth to God’s ears.” Lisa grabbed my arm, pulling me up the stairs to one of the back rows in the auditorium.

  “I’d like to get hold of God’s ear,” Harold muttered, appearing in the seat next to me. I raised my eyebrows. I wasn’t sure if my ghostly companion could manage to not make a scene in a room full of doctors and nurses who couldn’t see him. It was a huge temptation to cause trouble and the fact he’d been divorced four times—all of them for adultery—should prove that temptation wasn’t something Harold was good at resisting.

  “Relax. I promise I’ll be good. No matter how much fun it might be to mess with these guys, I can control my more juvenile urges.” Harold rolled his eyes. “I just thought I’d come keep you company today. You know me. I like to stay up on all the new medical devices. Amazing the stuff they’ve come up with in the past twenty years. You would be shocked if you had to work in the conditions we used to when I was in medical school. Compared to you guys we were trepanning skulls and applying leeches.”

  “They’re actually finding that leech thing is pretty effective,” Lisa said.

  “Really?” Harold raised his eyebrows. “I can see it, I guess. There had to be a reason all those people used to use them before the advent of modern medicine. Not something I’d want to play around with, but then again I always hated dealing with slimy stuff.”

  “Enough, you two.” I opened my notebook and uncapped my pen. “He’s getting ready to start and we should be paying attention. We’re professionals, remember?”

  “Says the girl who brought in three turkeys and a dozen two-liter bottles of soda last year on Black Friday so her patients could start the First Annual PICU Holiday Turkey Bowl,” Harold said. “You’re not exactly a model of professional behavior, Faith.”

  “They all had a blast and it didn’t hurt anyone for those kids to have some fun,” I whispered, glad no one sat in front of us. “This is actually related to patient care so I think maybe we should try to pay attention.”

  “Oh please,” Harold said. “Why are you so concerned with being teacher’s pet today? Matt’s not going to like it. You should have told him you were going to be here with Dan today.”

  “He already knows.” I tapped my pen against the side of my foldout desk. “He met Dan last night.”

  “Wow,” Harold said. “The engineer doesn’t have any black eyes. I expected Matt to kick his ass. I bet Malachi twenty bucks he’d knock him out in less than five minutes.”

  “Matt didn’t touch him. He had no reason to. Dan just came over to tell me about the Cosgroves and then he left,” I said and rubbed my temples. I wasn’t about to tell Harold that Dan had kissed me last night. Which could be uncomfortable since I still hadn’t gotten the chance to tell Matt. Not that I hadn’t tried but it seemed like he was allergic to the phrase “we need to talk.”

  “Did you tell Matt who he was?” Harold asked.

  “I told him Dan was the software engineer MEDTECH sent to investigate their system failure and install an update. I also told him that Dan had stopped by to tell me what he’d found out during his investigation. That was actually pretty good thinking on his part because Pittsburgh’s Most Annoying was waiting for me here this morning.”

  “Did you happen to tell Angel Boy the software engineer’s name?” Harold asked. “Or illuminate for him that, even though he doesn’t remember it, Mr. MEDTECH has seen your naked boobies?”

  “I’m not even going to answer that.”

  “So you didn’t tell him, which would be why Cheswick is still able to walk today.”

  “Matt wouldn’t have punched Dan for something that, one, happened years before I even met him, and two, Dan can’t even remember.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Harold put his hands up in the air. “It’s this thing with guys. We can’t help it. There’s like this short circuit that happens when we see another guy who might have seen naked breasts that belong to us. We don’t want to hurt that other guy but the reptilian part of our brain takes over and we have to punch them in the face until we cause enough brain damage that they can no longer remember what the breasts we have in common look like.”

  “That is the most immature, childish—”

  “Tolliver wants a list of all my ex-boyfriends so he can have them tortured by imps when they die,” Lisa said.

  “Like I said, immature, childish, and so very much something that someone like Tolliver would do. Matt is a reasonable adult.” I narrowed my eyes at Harold and reached for my coffee.

  “And he could come up with much better ways to torment Mr. Cheswick,” the Alpha said, His voice sounding like melted chocolate poured over ice cream.

  My uncle and my cousin stood in the aisle, wearing scrubs and white lab coats. The Alpha’s white hair was cropped close to His head and when He smiled the lines around His eyes deepened.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Lisa called me.” J ran a hand through his dark brown hair and the muscles in his arms rippled underneath his lab coat. Which was so wrong in my opinion. The Son of God really shouldn’t be such a hottie. It messed with the whole scheme of things. “She said you got some bad news last night before work and I thought we’d come spend the day with you for moral support.”

  “You can sit right here next to me,” Harold told J, motioning to the empty seat beside him. He looked at my uncle and raised an eyebrow. “You can go sit next to Lisa. I have nothing to say to you. Except to tell you you’re an asshole.”

  “I have been accused of that a time or two.” The Alpha nodded, His white hair glowing underneath the fluorescent lights. “Did I do something particularly asshole-like today to upset you, or is this just a general philosophical decision on your part?”

&nb
sp; “Emily Cosgrove,” I muttered and looked down at my notebook.

  “Right.” The Alpha nodded and covered my hand with His. Warmth traveled up my arm and my fatigue from a long night on duty dissipated like the clearing of morning fog when the sun rose each morning. “I know it doesn’t help to remind you, but they do say that I work in mysterious ways.”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit.” Harold squared up against my uncle and shoving his phantom finger underneath the other man’s face. “I’m dead and that means there aren’t any mysteries left for me. So I don’t need to hear a bunch of platitudes and excuses. Sometimes you just suck. Case closed.”

  “Right.” The Alpha nodded. “I’ll just go sit next to Lisa. Son?”

  “I think I’ll sit next to Harold.” J gave his father a sour look. Harold wasn’t the only one who disagreed with the Alpha’s hands-off stance. J was fiddling with the cuffs of his lab coat and had pulled them down to cover the tops of his hands. He reached up to scratch at his hair and shuffled his feet, rubbing the bottom of one against the top of the other. I reached around Harold, my hand sliding through his phantom clipboard, and took my cousin’s hand in mine, giving it a brief squeeze of reassurance.

  He glanced at me and smiled. A bolt of warmth and love shot through the length of our connection and my energy levels were back to normal. If I were a mortal I’d feel like I’d just spent a week on the beach being pampered instead of just off an overnight shift where everything that could go wrong had.

  “Feel better now?” he asked and glanced toward my coffee cup. “Because I have to tell you I’m bushed and I didn’t get a chance to stop for a drink.”

  I smiled, grabbed my coffee cup, and waved it at him. “Nice try, but I’m not giving you my latte with a double shot of espresso.”

  J winked. “It was worth a try.”

  “Everyone…” Dan stood at the front of the room and clapped his hands. The medical personnel jammed into the conference room took their seats and quit gossiping. One thing you could say for people in a hospital—some of us were pains in the ass, but we all had excellent listening skills.