“You did an amazing job,” says Tali, coming up beside me.
I shrug. “Thanks, but Beth did most of the planning.” She wanted me to cook for this—she keeps trying to teach me how to make Josh’s favorite foods—but my domesticity has its limits. “Have you met Ben’s date, by the way? I couldn’t get a straight answer about what she does for a living.”
Tali rolls her eyes. “I think she just goes around being hot for a living, and taking pictures of herself. Who can we set him up with? He needs to settle down.”
Ben shows no signs of wanting to settle down, but now that Tali’s happily married she’s hell-bent on marrying everyone else off too. Between her and Beth the number of daily hints I get about weddings is staggering.
“You have two sisters, right?” I ask.
“One of them is married and one of them is barely twenty,” she replies. “What about that friend who’s been helping you with the album…Juliet?”
Juliet has been a godsend now that I’m finally free of my obligation to the record label. It’s her label and producer I’m working with, and she even came in and sang backing vocals on two tracks. But I can’t see her with Ben.
“She’s hung up on someone else. And she’s more of a Six sort of gal, anyway.”
Tali’s nose wrinkles. “Ugh. Six.”
I laugh. Six has been trying to clean up his act a little these past few months, ever since he learned about Beth’s cancer. And he’s going to need people in his corner when his mom is gone. I plan to be one of them.
“He’s not so bad,” I reply. “He even played on one of my new songs since I am, and I quote, ‘about to be a member of the family’.”
Her eyes light up. “Member of the family, huh? Does he know something I don’t?”
“No,” I say firmly. “He’s just been listening to Beth, who—like you—keeps putting the cart before the horse.”
“Says the woman who claimed she and her boyfriend were going to take things slowly when he got back from Somalia then moved in with him a week later.”
I smile without a hint of shame. We did plan to go slowly, but after waiting three more months for the refugee camp to replace Josh, I was done with being away from him. Even living together, I still feel like I don’t see him enough—only Josh would move from one wildly understaffed medical facility to another. On the bright side, the fact that he is “wasting his talents” at a free clinic aggravates his father to no end, which we both enjoy.
“Oh God,” Tali says, her attention focused across the yard. “Hayes just took the baby from Jonathan. We’ve got to get over there.”
I laugh. “He’s the most overprotective father I’ve ever seen. The baby is fine.”
“Sure, the baby is fine. I’m worried about myself. If Hayes holds that kid for more than thirty seconds, he’s going to want another one.”
We cross the yard. Tali deftly “borrows” the baby from Hayes, Josh returns Audrey to her father and wraps an arm around my waist. He’s currently telling the guys about my latest foray onto Twitter, which I’ve discovered is the perfect place to mess with people who irk me. After Richard, my stepbrother, sent a text saying he wasn’t surprised I’d been “dropped” by my label, I put out a one-line tweet about the white-collar criminal he was in the process of defending, a guy he was trying to get a plea deal for.
Suddenly the case was in the news, and not in a good way. It was something along the lines of another rich guy is escaping justice. As it turns out, having your client’s wrongdoing become the focus of national attention does not help grease the wheels of justice. Who knew?
Ben covers his face with a hand. “Please don’t start encouraging people to do that, Drew,” he says. “Not everyone I represent is, uh, as deserving as you.”
“It gets worse,” Josh says, pressing his lips to the top of my head. He has enjoyed the hell out of my Twitter revenge. “Her stepfather sent a text scolding her for it and Drew tweeted about one of his clients too.”
Ben groans aloud while everyone else laughs. Weirdly, my mother didn’t seem to mind all that much. She told me the firm was in an uproar, and when I told her I wasn’t sorry, she said I didn’t figure you would be. Let’s get lunch the next time you’re here. It can even be burgers.
Dinner is served, toasts are made. It’s a lovely evening but it ends pretty early given that there’s an infant, a ten-month old, and a toddler all falling apart by nine PM.
When everyone’s gone, I climb into bed and wait for Josh.
“I think it went well,” he calls from the bathroom.
“It did but Ben seemed kind of…wistful when he left. Do you know anyone we could—”
Josh wanders out with only a towel wrapped around his waist, skin still damp. My thoughts turn carnal in a second flat. “Well, hello there, nearly naked stranger.”
He grins. “I’ve got something for you.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” I reply, throwing off the covers. “Remove the towel.”
“It wasn’t that. I mean, it will be obviously, in about thirty seconds,” he says with a chuckle, “but not just yet.”
He goes to the dresser and pulls out a sheet of paper. “Remember that reporter who came to the studio when you were recording? She just published a story about it.”
I stare at him for a moment, and then I start to laugh. “An online blogger wrote an article…and you printed it? You are so old.”
He raises a brow. “You never know how long that stuff will stay up—”
I’m still laughing. “Yes, you do. It stays up forever. I don’t need to read it, but that’s very sweet of you.”
“She makes Davis sound like an asshole,” he says. “Obviously, not the hardest job in the world. But she also says really nice things about the songs she heard you working on.”
I don’t really care what anyone says about Davis, or what anyone says about the album, but I love that he cares. I love that he likes my new songs. And I love that he printed the article out like someone who still thinks the internet is a passing fad.
He crosses the room to put it away but stops in place when I pull off my t-shirt. He stands there, blinking, as if he’s forgotten for a moment what he was doing, and then he slowly turns away, putting the printout in his sock drawer next to a black velvet box I’m trying very hard not to peek at. And I wasn’t snooping. I do his laundry sometimes.
“Come here,” I tell him. His eyes already have that dark, drugged look they get when he’s thinking about sex. I stretch out on the bed, relishing the outline of him now bulging under that towel. My work here is done.
He climbs beside me and I wrap my arms around him. “Tell me something,” I whisper. “Tell me something no one else knows.”
“I’m madly in love with you,” he says, pressing his lips to my neck.
I smile. “Everyone knows that. And of course you are. I’m adorable. Tell me something else.”
He laughs and rolls on his side, his hand on my hip. “I was thinking we ought to take a trip to Maui,” he says. “My mom has a book that says it’s the most beautiful of all the Hawaiian islands.”
“Sure, but how’s the medical care?” I ask.
He pulls me closer and bites down on a grin. “I don’t know, but they apparently have several good places to hold a wedding.”
My heart thuds in my chest. “Yeah? Do you know someone planning to get married?”
His lips brush over my temple, my cheekbone, down along my jaw. “I might. Depends on if she says yes.”
I remove his towel. “I bet she’d say yes. It sounds like she’d be crazy not to.”
“You’re sure?” he asks. I arch up to help him tug off my shorts. “It’s a pretty long trip. I know you have an aversion to that.”
I pull him toward me. “I’m sure. I don’t mind a long trip every once in a while.”
It makes all the difference when you’re not taking it alone.
The End
Want a Drew and Josh bonus no
vella? Get The Devil Goes to Maui here. And for info on Ben’s story, turn the page!
The Devil You Know:
An Enemies-to-Lovers Office Romance
There’s a devil on my shoulder, and each Monday morning she announces herself as a delicious flame in my chest, whispering suggestions in my ear…suggestions entirely focused on Ben Tate.
Ben—Stealer of Clients, Evicter of Homeless Women, Nemesis. Sitting across from me at every staff meeting with his lovely, smug smile and his too-perfect teeth, the living symbol of everything I hate.
But for the sake of a case that could change my career—one that means long nights and weekends alone with him—I decide to endure it.
Endure his smirk and his smart mouth. Endure the growing tension between us.
Until the night Ben says “Beg”.
And that devil on my shoulder decides to make a few demands of her own.
Coming June 23rd. Preorder here.
ALSO BY ELIZABETH O’ROARK
A Deal with the Devil
Waking Olivia
The Parallel Series
Drowning Erin
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When you decide, at the very last minute, to scrap the book you’ve written and start fresh (based on one page you wrote about Hawaii a year before)…some help is required.
First and foremost, thanks a million times over to my friend Sallye Clark, who’s been letting me tag along on her work trips to Hawaii for years. We’ve stayed in places I could never afford on my own and have seen sights I’d never have found if she hadn’t been there to direct me. (When I tell people about these trips, they always ask if Sallye needs another friend. The answer is No, she does not. I like things exactly the way they are.)
Thanks next to the wonderful Sali Benbow-Powers, whose brilliant suggestions and love for this book gave me the confidence to move forward with it. Sali, I will never publish anything that hasn’t been placed into your hands first.
Thanks to my amazing, last-minute beta readers for taking this on at the eleventh hour to help me perfect it: Michelle Chen, Christine Estevez, Katie Meyer, Jen Wilson Owens and Tawanna Williams. Your suggestions and confidence in this book made all the difference.
Thanks so much to Staci Frenes at Grammar Boss for squeezing me in for editing and Julie Deaton and Janis Ferguson for squeezing me in for copyediting, to Lori Jackson for another HOT cover, to Nina and everyone at Valentine PR for their endless help, and the amazing Christine Estevez for handling all the stuff I’m terrible at so I can write.
Finally, thanks to my kids and extended family for not rolling their eyes every time I say “I can’t, I’m on a deadline”. I’d like to promise this frantic, last-minute behavior will change, but we probably all know better by now.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elizabeth O'Roark spent many years as a medical writer before publishing her first novel in 2013. She holds bachelor’s degrees in journalism and arts from the University of Texas, and a master’s degree from Notre Dame. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her three children. The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is her tenth book.
The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea Page 26