The Devil's Due Read Online Free PDF Page B

force any food down. Brian had said little, but I was very much aware of how closely he was watching me. I cut off a hunk of eggplant parmigiana, but the idea of putting it in my mouth made me want to puke.
    I must have been wearing my emotions on my face—not unusual for me—because Brian pushed his own food aside and reached across the table to grab my hand.
    “My bad,” he said softly. “I should have known we needed to clear the air between us before we ate.”
    I let out a whoosh of air, wishing my tension would flow out with it, then slumped in my chair. Gently, I extricated my hand from Brian’s grip and pushed my own plate aside. I couldn’t meet his whisky-brown eyes, afraid of what I’d see in them.
    “We can try,” I said. “But you know I suck at this.”
    I could almost feel his frown, even though I still hadn’t found the courage to look at him. “What exactly is ‘this’?”
    I squirmed. “Talking.”
    “Ah. Yes, I know.”
    That made me wince, and I finally looked up. “You didn’t have to agree that easily,” I grumbled.
    One corner of his mouth was turned up in wry amusement. “You wouldn’t have liked a lie any better.”
    “Silence is always nice.”
    “Yeah, that was working really well for us.”
    Never argue with a lawyer. It’s a losing proposition. “What do you expect me to say, Brian? That I’m okay with you helping Lugh kill my father? Well I’m not, and you know it.”
    Brian leaned forward, propping his elbows on the table and fixing me with an intense look. “You’re right, I do. But if I had it all to do over again, I’d do the same thing. If we’d let that demon go back to the Demon Realm knowing what he knew, you’d be dead by now. I’d rather have you hating my guts than dead.”
    I rolled my eyes. “I don’t hate your guts,” I said, though I knew he’d just basically manipulated me into saying it.
    He shrugged. “Maybe not, but at the moment, you dislike them intensely.”
    Even in my muddled state of mind, I couldn’t possibly imagine disliking Brian. I might be disillusioned, and I might have made assumptions about him that turned out to be incorrect, but whatever his faults, he was a truly nice guy. At least, I was pretty sure he was. Had I been putting him on a pedestal all this time, seeing only what I wanted to see?
    I grabbed the paper napkin I’d laid over my lap and began calmly tearing it into shreds. “The man I thought I knew would never have been party to murder. You wouldn’t even lie to the police to give me an alibi when they hauled me in for illegal exorcism.”
    He let out a long-suffering sigh. “I didn’t lie because I could have been caught in it and that would have made you look guilty. Look, I don’t like what I did. Just thinking about it makes me sick to my stomach. But I love you. I’ve always loved you. How could I let you throw your life away like that?”
    Of course, he was right. Der Jäger, the demon who’d possessed my father, had had to die. Not just for my safety, but for Lugh’s. If Lugh died and Dougal took the throne, he’d do his best to make the human race into slaves. There had been far too much at risk to let Der Jäger live. In a way, Brian had even done me a favor, helping Lugh take over so that I didn’t have to be directly responsible for my father’s death. Logic told me I couldn’t hold any of this against Brian. Now, if only emotions were logical …
    I pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling a non-Lugh-induced headache coming on. The napkin lay on the table in front of me in neat, thin strips. I fought the compulsion to start tearing at those strips. I had to swallow past a painful lump in my throat before I could speak.
    “I know all that, okay? I understand why you did it, and I know you were right, but I still can’t seem to swallow it.” I’m just not as nice as Brian. I hold grudges and nurse my anger like a well-loved baby. Why a man like him loved someone like me was beyond my