A Deal with the Devil (The Grumpy Devils, #1)

by Elizabeth O'Roark

“You’ll be working long hours,” he says, “and you’ll have to do...other things as well.” I sink into my chair. “That sounds like the sort of vague thing Harvey Weinstein would suggest,” I say with an awkward laugh. This is greeted with utter silence.

Being shielded by someone a head taller and a foot wider held a primitive kind of appeal.

His gaze holds mine. “If it were an option,” he says, suddenly fierce, “I’d never be willing to share you.”

like an English castle, massive and stone-fronted. It even has ivy growing up the sides. “Oooh,” I say delightedly, smiling wide. “I see why she chose him now.”

“Grandmother,” he says, “let me introduce you to my friend Tali.” She peers up at me. “Well, well, well,” she says. “This one’s much prettier than Ella, isn’t she?” Hayes laughs quietly, holding a chair for me and taking the seat on the other side. “Yes,” he whispers, “but you’re not supposed to say that aloud.” “I’m old. I can say whatever I’d like,” she replies. “And how did you manage to find this fine young specimen?”

saw her photo on Jonathan’s desk and started looking for her all the time, because she worked at this bar I’d pass on my way home,” he says. Weirdly…it doesn’t sound like a lie. “I saw her reading while she was walking in, even though it was raining. And I thought she was the loveliest thing I’d ever seen in my life, so I followed her.”

“Now I just have to decide what I should say on the flowers I send myself.” “And you’ll want breakfast, too, I imagine. Will Starbucks suffice?” he asks, tying off the trash bag. “Probably not. I’ll get you a gift card. Applebees? That seems like a place a person from Kansas would enjoy.”

“Come on. Let’s have a drink on the terrace. A shrill little person I know has been insisting I need more sunlight.”

The point was never whether or not I could trust again, because love isn’t an exchange. It’s not something you hand out only if it can be returned in equal measure. Love is handing your fragile heart to someone else because you want him to have it, no matter what he’ll do in response. You do it because you love him more than you love yourself.