Devil May Care by Patricia Eimer Read Free Book Online

front of me, six inches above the ground. Now dressed in his golf clothes and a white lab coat instead of an open-to-the-navel white shirt and tight black pirate pants, he crossed his arms and pretended to tap one of his toes on the empty air beneath him.
    “I invited her to stay with me. He didn’t like the idea, but it seemed like the only way keep the peace.” I pulled my name badge out of my pocket and headed to the time clock.
    “You should have listened to Matt.”
    “That’s what I said.” Malachi, the dread demon who was supposed to be my personal bodyguard, popped out of the time clock like a demented jack-in-the-box. He was a three-foot-tall vision of the grim reaper—without the scythe—and the hood of his cowl was pushed back to show off the newest artwork tattooed on his bare skull. Personally, I’d have expected a Demon Lord to go with something a bit more dangerous looking than a group of butterflies, but what did I know? Maybe he was trying to get in touch with his softer side?
    “Demonesses never listen. Especially Faith,” Malachi continued. I quit focusing on his uber-feminine tats and instead glared at the tip of where his nose should have been. “No, they always have a better way of doing things. Then it blows up in their faces and someone has to fix it for them. This will all lead to tears and then you and I, my ghostly friend, will have to save the day.”
    “Enough, you two,” I said. “It was either let Brenda stay until we could arrange to put her in a shelter, or throw her out onto the street. Then what would she have done? You haven’t seen this girl. No survival skills. She’d have died on her own before lunch was over. So get off my back already.”
    “Sure, no problem,” a familiar voice said.
    My stomach immediately twisted into one solid lump and plummeted to my toes. Oh damn it. It couldn’t be him . Not today of all days. I spun around and my knees weakened. This was so typical. Of course Dan was here. Because I needed this one last thing to take my day to new and inspired levels of shit. And an ex-fiancé with a fragile hold on reality—thanks to a Celestial intervention to wipe out his memories of me and our life together—was exactly the level of crap I had been reduced to.
    Dan looked exactly the same as the last morning I’d seen him in Chicago. He still had the neatly trimmed blond hair, cornflower blue eyes, broad shoulders, and dimples that could cause a saint to sin. He was even wearing the same shirt he’d worn on our last day together.
    I tried not to grimace. He’d been sitting in the kitchen at our townhouse, eating Cheerios and commenting on the font I’d chosen for our wedding invitations. For a brief, spectacularly normal moment, I’d believed we could have a future. Of course the big old hand of Fate had intervened, in the form of my father, and shattered Dan’s mind into tiny fragments before we could get our happily ever after.
    Not that he’d remember any of that after the Alpha’s version of a mindwipe last month. Nope, masochist that I was I’d let the Alpha tinker with his memories while saving mine. Which put me at a bit of a disadvantage right now since I could remember what should have never been and he couldn’t.
    “I was just talking to myself.” I tried not to stare at him while I regained my composure. Like all the other mortals he couldn’t see Harold or Malachi, which was good on the Not Scaring Regular People on the Street When Creatures Out of Horror Stories Appear plan, but lousy when someone catches you having an argument with the time clock.
    He was clearly trying not to laugh. “I can see that. It seemed pretty intense. Anything I can help with? Would you like me to call some of the staff to help you out? It’s a big hospital. I’m sure patients get lost all the time. Although you do seem to be a bit old for a pediatrics patient.”
    “I work here.” What a great way to make a first impression—okay, a second