Dance with the Devil Read online

  "It won't change our agreement," the devil warned.

  She shook her head. "I don't care. I want to know."

  "You'll be able to cry again. I daresay you won't be able to keep yourself from it."

  "I don't care."

  "You're risking everything you've found with him, Kathleen," the devil continued smoothly. "You could lose it all."

  Again she shook her head. "I need to know."

  "All right. Far be it for me to deny you, then. But I do wish..." the devil paused, and for the first time in all her acquaintance of him, she saw him look sorrowful and believed the emotion to be true. "Never mind. What is to be, will be. It's all part --"

  "Take it away," she told him.

  The door inside her mind swung open.

  24

  Kathleen sat in the coffee shop, the few hours she had every week while Callie was in preschool. The time she spent drinking coffee and working away at this dream she was convinced would never come true. Kathleen focused on the computer, searching for the words that wanted to become sentences that would tell a story.

  It was crowded in here, as always, so when the man passing her table bumped her by accident she didn't think much of it. At least not until he kept looking at her. She pulled out an earbud and gave him a lift of her brow that made words unnecessary.

  "AC/DC," the guy said.

  Faintly surprised and taken aback that he'd creeped on her phone to see what she'd been listening too, she pulled out the other earbud. "Yeah?"

  "Good music."

  She narrowed her eyes a little, studying him. He wasn't tall, but he wasn't short. He had dark hair. Hazel-y eyes. A nice smile. "Uh huh."

  The guy lifted his cup toward her in a silent and totally lame toast that didn't seem to need a reply. Kathleen tucked the earbuds back into her ears and bent over the laptop again. Still, she couldn't quite shake off the weight of his gaze. He was staring, though pretending that he wasn't.

  "It's a book," she said finally, pointing at the computer screen. He looked caught, and she kept herself from laughing by biting at the tip of her tongue for a second. "I'm writing a book. People ask me that a lot. What I'm typing. So...there you go."

  That was the first time she saw him, but it wasn't the last.

  Every Tuesday and Thursday from quarter-to-ten to quarter-to-noon, she came to the coffee shop to work. She drank flavored coffee and listened to music with her earbuds in so she could avoid random conversations, and also because she wrote better to the beat of a playlist.

  After three weeks, they'd become acquaintances, worthy of a nod of greeting. She couldn't remember when she figured out his name was Jake, or that he knew she was Kathleen. Probably they both simply absorbed the information the way she had about the rest of the coffee shop regulars, overhearing names when the counter clerks called out the orders ready at the counter. Jake always had a book with him; she'd noticed that right away when she'd seen him reading one of her favorites, Trout Fishing in America.

  Today, it was something else. "Hey, Jake. Good book?"

  He looked at the slender paperback in his hand, the cover battered and taped in places. Brave New World. He shifted a little in his seat. "Yeah. You've read it?"

  Kathleen studied it. "Yes. It's one of my favorites."

  He grinned. "Have you read every book I've been reading?"

  "Yes." She returned the grin.

  "How's your book coming along?" He jerked his chin toward the laptop.

  Kathleen's smile faded into a frown. "It's okay, I guess. Actually, it's shit. I don't know why I bother. I should just give up. There's so much better stuff I could do with my time."

  "Hey, don't say that. I'm sure it's not shit." He hadn't read it and of course could have no idea if it was shit or not, obviously, but it was nice of him to say.

  "I got another rejection." She paused. "I'm almost finished with this one. It's my fifth. I have a stack of rejections and an email folder with more taking up too much space on my hard drive. I don't watch TV, I barely read anymore, I don't do anything but clean the house, pick up after everyone else, and work on this stuff, and it's going nowhere."

  "You can't give up."

  Kathleen raised both brows. "Sure, I can. I should. I mean, there comes a time when you should just admit that something's not working, even if you really want it to."

  "All writers get rejected. Stephen King got rejected hundreds of times."

  "Not everyone is meant to get what they want, Jake."

  He studied her for a second. "Is that what you really want? To be a writer?"

  "To be a published writer," she corrected. "I am a writer, if you define that by the fact that writers write. Well. I write. But I want to be a published writer. I don't need to be famous. I don't need to make a million bucks. I just want to be published."

  "Then you can't give up," he told her. "'Cuz if you do, you definitely will never get published."

  Surprisingly, it seemed like the right thing for him to say, and gave her pause. Her husband treated her writing as something less than even a hobby. He certainly never told her not to give it up. If anything, he grouched that the time she spent working on her books would be better spent mopping the floor or folding his laundry.

  Kathleen looked at the clock. "Shit. I gotta go. I'll be late picking up my kid, and they get sort of irritated when that happens."

  Quickly, she gathered her belongings, closing her laptop and slipping it into her bag, grabbing up her coat. Juggling too many things, she almost dropped her mug. Coffee sloshed. Jake took it gently from her hand.

  "Here. Let me get that for you."

  "Thanks," Kathleen said after a second. Her eyes met his. His touch had tingled, literally, a small static shock. "See you Thursday?"

  Jake nodded. "Yep. I should be here."

  "See you then," Kathleen said.

  At the front door, pushing the door so the bell overhead jingled, she paused. Looked back over her shoulder. Her gaze found him all the way across the room, and she smiled a little uncertainly before going out the door.

  She looked back.

  And it began.

  "Closed?" Kathleen turned to Jake. "It's closed today?"

  Jake looked closer at the sign on the coffee shop door, then up and down the street. Other shops on this side were dark, while ones across the street were lit. "Power outage."

  Kathleen blew out an irritated breath. "Well, shit. I really needed the time today. I got another request from an agent, for a full. I need to get some revisions done."

  "Eighteen-wheeler hit a power line," said the man passing behind them on the sidewalk. "Knocked the power out for this block only. Strangest damn thing, you'd have thought it would've taken out more than that. Guess we got lucky."

  "Anyone get hurt?" Kathleen asked.

  "Heard the driver died." The man's shrug said he didn't really know for sure, or maybe didn't care.

  Jake waited until the other guy had passed them before he turned to her. "I can make you some coffee, Kathleen. I have a table you can sit at, if you need to get some work done. I only live over on Maple. You want to come over to my place?"

  She should say no, she thought. No thank you, Jake, but I couldn't possibly. It wouldn't be appropriate. I'll go to the library. Or I'll sit in my car....

  "Are you sure? I don't want to be a bother."

  As it turned out, Jake had no coffee. He had hot tea, which he offered instead, and Kathleen accepted. She put her computer bag on his kitchen table. She hung her coat on the back of the chair.

  When she turned to face him with an uneasy smile, Jake kissed her.

  She turned her face at the last second so his mouth barely brushed the corner of hers, but she didn't pull away. When he put his arms around her, holding her close, mouthing first her jaw and then her neck, she sighed and shivered and tipped her head back to allow him access. When he pressed his teeth to her skin, Kathleen let out a long, low moan.

  She stepped backward without let