Devil Take Me

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Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520

Macon GA 31201

Devil Take Me

Copyright © 2008 by Anna J. Evans

ISBN: 1-60504-057-6

Edited by Tera Kleinfelter

Cover by Anne Cain

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: July 2008

www.samhainpublishing.com

Devil Take Me

Anna J. Evans

Dedication

For my husband, the sweetest man in the world…who still has a little devil inside.

San Fernando Valley , California

6:45 p.m., July 24th, present day

Annie put the last of the burgers on the grill and stood back as far from the smoke as possible on the balcony of her intolerably small and insanely expensive condo—which wasn’t very far.

“Great,” she muttered, pushing sweat-damp black curls from her forehead, already dreading the grousing her fiancé was going to do about her smelling like a discount burger joint.

Roger loved her burgers, begged her to make them, but then bitched and moaned about her stinky hair and clothes. He was such a brat about it she usually ended up getting in the shower right after she took the burgers off the grill. Sure it sucked that her dinner was always cold, but a cold dinner was preferable to a grouchy Roger.

At least if she showered, she could eat in peace.

“Annie! Are you out grilling again? In this heat?” came a saccharine voice from the pavement below.

Annie’s left eyelid started to twitch. Of course she’d purchased the condo directly across the drive from the Most Annoying Neighbor in the History of the World. She was just lucky that way. She was good-luck Annie, cursed with the worst fortune on the planet, starting when she was barely three years old.

In an accident the papers had dubbed a “real life comic tragedy”, a runaway clown car had rammed into her parents’ seats on her first trip to the circus, killing her father and mother instantly, but leaving their only daughter unharmed—physically anyway. She didn’t remember the accident, but she did remember the next fifteen hellish years in her great-aunt’s house. Her only living relative hadn’t relished the idea of a child living in her home and made sure Annie learned how to stop acting like one as soon as possible.

After that first traumatic bit of misfortune, her luck had turned to more garden variety bad. But whether it was catching the flu and getting replaced by her understudy in the fifth-grade Christmas Pageant, or having a tooth knocked out by a softball three days after her braces had been removed, Annie had learned to expect her share of black cloud moments. It made her wonder if she’d been a rotten person in her last life. She was a very nice and unassuming English teacher in this one.

“Hi Carla. It’s not so bad. I’m getting used to the heat.” Annie forced a smile, knowing her face was bright red and the sweat on her upper lip probably visible even from twelve feet below.

“Really? You look like you’re ready to pass out.” Carla followed the words with a laugh, that breathless giggle that never failed to make Annie feel laughed at—not with.

“No, I’m fine. I just get flushed when I’m hot.”

“I’ll say. Just between us girls, your eyebrows look even darker and thicker when you’re all red like that,” Carla said. “You should really let me take you to my girl in West Hollywood. She does wonders with ethnic people.”

Carla was an actress who actually worked from time to time on some of the lower budget series that filmed in Los Angeles. Still, Annie didn’t understand how she could afford the mortgage on her condo and the payment on her red sports car, let alone her out of control beauty indulgences. Even if she’d had the money to burn, Annie couldn’t fathom paying three hundred dollars to get her eyebrows waxed, no matter how artfully they would frame her “ethnic” face.

Ethnic. She wanted to tell Carla she was Greek, not merely “ethnic”, and that her people had been creating staggering works of art and philosophy when Carla’s ancestors were still digging for slugs under rotten logs. It would also be liberating to tell the neighbor from hell that she could take her snarky, prejudiced comments and shove them up her…nose.

But that would be mean, and Annie wasn’t mean. Unlucky? Yes. Unfulfilled? At times. But she was never mean. With Roger being so difficult to get along with, she felt it was her responsibility to make up for his sourness with a little extra caring and patience.

It was part of what made her the perfect match for her high-strung, high-powered, attorney fiancé. Roger was spontaneity, Annie was forethought. Roger was dynamic, Annie was dependable. Roger was charismatic, Annie…grew on you after you got to know her better. So even though that little voice inside had told her a thousand times to quit letting Carla walk all over her feelings, she controlled her temper and forced another tight smile.

Hadn’t a wise person once said it was best to “kill them with kindness”?

“I’ll have to think about that. Thanks, Carla,” Annie said, instead of the million other things she wished she could say.

“You do that.” Carla smiled, flashing her newly whitened teeth. “And would you mind putting my trash out when you put yours out on Thursday again?”

“Are you still not feeling well?” Annie asked, feeling horrible for thinking such negative things about her neighbor. Carla hadn’t been well for the past several months. Annie had no idea what was wrong with her, but she had looked pale and weak when they’d run into each other at the pool the day before. “Have you been to see a doctor?”

“No, I don’t need a doctor. I feel fine,” Carla snapped, obviously irritated. ”I just have a photo shoot on Wednesday night and I figured I might sleep over. The photographer is a special friend, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, sure, no problem.”

“After eight o’clock, remember, it can’t go out before eight Wednesday night.”

“I remember.”

“You’re such a doll. It’s no wonder Roger is so crazy about you, even though you don’t starve yourself like the rest of us girls,” Carla drawled, pinning Annie with a long assessing look that made her long to dash inside and hide behind the curtains. “See you later.”

“Later,” Annie called through only slightly gritted teeth, no longer feeling the least bit badly for Carla. The witch.

Still, she refused to let the woman get to her. She was a successful high school teacher, beloved by her students, and planning a wedding for the end of the summer with the man of her dreams. Maybe her life up until now had been plagued with bad luck, but all of that was about to change. She was going to marry Roger and they would live happily ever after. They would have the two or three children she’d always dreamed of and be a big, happy family and she and Roger would continue to love each other no matter how much weight either of them packed onto their hips or anywhere else.

Still, she knew she probably wouldn’t indulge in fries with her hamburger tonight. She would fry them for Roger and then have her burger plain, no bun, with a side salad. It wouldn’t hurt to watch her weight a little bit. She did want to make sure her wedding dress still fit by early September.

“What a wimp.” There were suddenly tears in her eyes that had nothing to do with the smoke from the grill.

She should learn to stand up for herself. The voice inside her was right. Did she want her kids to grow up thinking their mom wasn’t brave enough to confront people when confrontation was truly unavoidable? No matter how nice you wanted to be, sometimes people wouldn’t let you be nice. Sometimes, you had to kick a little ass. Not that she would know from personal experience, but the sentiment felt right on some basic level.

“Annie? Are you cooking burgers?”

“Yeah, grab a beer and they’ll be ready in a minute, sweetie,” Annie said, a wide smile stretching across her face as Roger’s booming voice met her ears. The minute she heard the door slam and knew he was home was always her favorite moment of the day. “How was work?”

“The traffic was God-damned horrible today.”

“But work was good?”

“I took the car pool lane. I’m not going to waste half my life sitting on the 405 inhaling exhaust fumes,” Roger said, putting his face up to the screen door that lead out onto the balcony. “Wow, that smells good and you look hot.”

“Well, it’s still nearly ninety degrees outside.”

“No, I mean you look hot, sexy hot. Are you going to shower after you’re done? ’Cause I really want to have you for dessert.” He gave a nefarious wiggle of his immaculately plucked brows.

“We’ll see.” Annie giggled, knowing as she looked into Roger’s bright blue eyes that she would be showered, shaved and more than ready and willing when he finished his dinner.

God she loved the man, even when he was a pain in her butt. She would gladly eat cold dinners for the rest of her life if it meant he would be there to snuggle on the couch once she finished doing the dishes. She enjoyed their lovemaking, but it was the holding, the closeness, that she craved. The entire time she was growing up in the loveless, sterile environment her aunt called a home, she’d dreamed of what it would feel like to have a special man to hold her every night. She’d even picked out names for the children they would eventually have, incredibly loved children whom she would lavish with all the physical, emotional and mental attention she herself had never received.

“Did you buy more beer?” Roger laughed, obviously confident he was going to have his burger and his fiancée too.

“I did, but they didn’t have the low carb kind at the store on Copper Canyon,” Annie called after him as he disappeared into the kitchen.

“Then why didn’t you go to the one off Solar?” The irritation in his voice sent a shiver of unease whispering across her skin.

“I’d already spent an hour at the store, Roger, and I had all the other groceries in the car.”

Annie winced as her voice lilted toward a whine. Roger hated it when she whined. It wasn’t one of her favorite things either. She should just state the facts of the situation, not beg forgiveness for not spending her entire afternoon searching for Roger’s favorite beer. She loved him to bits, but she did have lessons to prepare, and she deserved to enjoy her vacation with at least a little time poolside with one of her favorite romance novels.

“What was so pressing that you couldn’t go ten minutes out of your way? You’re only teaching one summer school class, Annie,” Roger accused as he reappeared without his beer. “You just wanted to come home and sit on your ass.”

His tone cut far more deeply than it should have. He loved her. It was okay for him not to be super sweet all the time because she knew, deep down, that he cared for her more than anything. A little yelling didn’t change that, and it shouldn’t hurt so bad, but for some reason…it did.

“Roger, that’s not fair,” she said, not daring to look up into his eyes.

She didn’t want to see the anger there, see how cold he could become when he wasn’t pleased with her behavior. Sometimes, when he looked at her with such disdain, it was hard to trust that the love they had was as real and strong as she believed. Sometimes, the contempt she saw on the face of her future husband made her wonder if she was making a terrible mistake.

“That’s not fair,” Roger mimicked, his imitation of her hurt—and yes, slightly whiney—voice dead on.

“Stop it, Roger. That’s not nice.” She braved a look into his eyes, making sure she sounded as tough as she, Annie the wonder wimp, was capable of sounding.

“I work my ass off and commute for over an hour both ways because you want to keep living in this stupid condo across the street from the school, Ann. I don’t bitch and whine about that. All I ask is that you have dinner and a cold beer waiting for me when I get home to help take the edge off. Is that too much for you to handle?” Roger sounded exactly like the high-powered trial attorney that he was. He was too good at arguing. She would never win and she should have learned by now to quit trying.

“No, Roger. Sorry. I know that commute is horrible.”

“It sure is, but I put up with it because you’re happy here in this suburban hell hole. And still, it seems like you’re the one who’s always overwhelmed by our life together. I swear to God, Annie, I really don’t see how you think we’re ready to start a family after the wedding. You can barely take care of yourself, let alone a child.” Roger shook his head sadly, as if a beloved puppy had just peed in his five-hundred-dollar shoes.

“Roger, please, don’t start. You know how much I want us to have a baby. I promise I’ll do better. I’ll go get the beer right now if you want me to,” Annie said, the part of her that was desperate to hold the little girl she dreamed of every night warring with the voice inside that demanded she stand up for herself.

If she kept letting him get away with talking to her the way he did, then she was going to have to put up with it for the next thirty, forty, maybe fifty years. No matter how much she loved him, didn’t she love herself enough to demand they disagree respectfully? She knew no two people could get along all the time, but they could voice their objections with kindness, keeping in mind the person they were angry with was also the person they loved more than anyone in the world.

“No, I’ll go get it.” Roger sighed. “I need to go get gas for the morning drive anyway.”

“No, Roger, I want you to relax. I haven’t been in the car nearly as much as you have today. Let me fix your plate and then I’ll go get the beer and fill up the car while I’m at it.” Annie scooped the perfectly cooked burgers from the grill and closed the lid.

“You’d do that for me?” Roger asked, the surprised note in his voice that always made her feel excited to do nice things for him.

Roger had been the third child in as many years for his family and despite the fact that his parents were the sweetest and most giving people Annie had ever known, she knew Roger had felt overshadowed by his two older brothers. He repeatedly brought up the time his family left his baby basket in the grocery store, and never let his dad forget he had been the only Blake brother who had never had new toys or clothes, who had always been dressed in Chris and Michael’s hand-me-downs.