Sympathy for the Devil Read online

  He stood as I approached and greeted me with a smile. “Miss me?” he asked, and although his voice was teasing, his eyes were not.

  All sorts of flip answers popped into my head, but for some reason I didn’t feel like using any of them. Instead I met his gaze squarely and said, “Yes.”

  Someone else might have looked smug. Luke just smiled and said, “Then I’m glad I followed a hunch and stopped by.” His gaze traveled to the gown I carried, safe in its covering of plastic. “Been shopping?”

  “I was fresh out of opera wear,” I responded. Since it was cold out, and I didn’t want to keep standing in the dubious light provided by the fixture at the bottom of the stairwell, I started scrabbling in my purse for my keys. The bulky gown wasn’t helping much.

  “Ah. May I?” He reached out and plucked the dress and its hanger from my arms.

  “Thanks,” I said, then added, “Just don’t peek.”

  The laugh lines around his eyes deepened a bit. “Of course not.”

  Finally I grabbed hold of the lanyard keychain I’d been using since high school and pulled the damn thing up out of the recesses of my bag. Maybe it was time to switch to a smaller purse.

  Luke followed me up the stairs and into my apartment. I set down my purse and book bag, then reclaimed the gown from him so I could go hang it in my closet. He waited in the living room, book tucked under one arm.

  “What are you reading?” I asked, after I’d come back out and given the place a quick look around to make sure there weren’t any embarrassing dirty dishes or other clutter anywhere. Usually I tried to tidy up the place either right before I went to bed or before I left in the morning so I wouldn’t come home to a mess, but I’d been a little distracted the past few days and honestly couldn’t remember if I’d followed my usual routine. Luckily, though, the place seemed mostly in order.

  “This?” He pulled the hardback out from underneath his arm. “Just amusing myself.”

  I shot a quick glance at the cover. “The DaVinci Code? You’re kidding, right?”

  “I told you I was amusing myself.”

  Since I hadn’t been expecting company, I didn’t have a lot to offer by way of beverages. However, I did have a few bottles of wine stashed away in the countertop rack in the kitchen. “Glass of wine?” I asked.

  “Absolutely.” After setting his book down on the coffee table, he followed me into the kitchen and inspected my meager wine collection with some interest. “Let’s have the pinot, shall we?”

  It figured he would choose the best one out of the bunch. I hadn’t even bought it myself; Nina had brought it over when we were having a “girls’ night in” a while back, but we’d never gotten around to opening it.

  My bottle-opening skills were shaky at best, so I handed the corkscrew to Luke and let him have at it. Of course he pulled the cork out so smoothly he might have been using one of those fancy gas-powered openers instead of the simple waiter-style corkscrew I owned.

  “Glasses?” he inquired.

  I fetched a pair from the cupboard and set them down on the counter. He poured an equal amount of wine into each, and then handed one to me.

  “To unexpected meetings,” he said.

  Taking the glass, I replied, “I’ll drink to that,” and sipped at the wine. A dark rush went over my palate, tasting of warm fruit ripened on sandy hillsides. Damn, that was good.

  He drank as well, and got an approving look on his face. I made a mental note to have Nina choose my wines whenever possible.

  “So,” I said, after we’d wandered back into the living room, “The DaVinci Code, huh?”

  “Are you mocking my choice in reading material?”

  “Um…yes.”

  “I suppose it does seem a bit odd.” He lifted the glass to his lips and took another swallow of wine. “But the inaccuracies amuse me.”

  My stomach decided that particular moment was a great time to growl. Loudly. I felt the blood rush to my cheeks, and hoped he hadn’t heard.

  But of course he had. “Hungry?” Luke asked.

  “Well, yes,” I said. “I spent my lunch hour shopping, so all I had was some yogurt, and — ”

  “I suppose I should have offered to take you to dinner,” he mused.

  “Oh, that’s all right,” I said hastily. “I’ve been out so much lately anyway.”

  “Then I’ll have it come here. What would you like?”

  Was he serious? I shot a glance at him from beneath my lashes and decided he must be. Probably conjuring up a meal was no big deal for someone who possessed his powers.

  “Don’t laugh,” I said.

  The blue eyes crinkled at the corners. “I promise I won’t.”

  “I really just want a cheeseburger.”

  “A cheeseburger?”

  “You asked.”

  To his credit, he didn’t laugh, but I could tell he was amused by my request. “Thy will be done,” he said. “Cheeseburgers and pinot noir, God help me.”

  And with that the coffee table suddenly covered itself in a white cloth, and in front of me was a plate with a huge cheeseburger, exactly the way I liked it, with lettuce and tomato and Thousand Island dressing. A similar plate appeared in front of Luke, although his burger looked as if it had bacon on it as well. Both plates were well-garnished with seasoned fries.

  “Now, that’s what I’m talking about,” I remarked. “That smells heavenly.”

  At the word “heavenly” I thought I saw him start a bit, but then he shrugged and leaned forward to pick up his burger. I did the same, and took a huge bite. It tasted as good as it smelled. Who cared if the meal was going to earn me an extra half-hour on the treadmill tomorrow? That burger was definitely worth the sacrifice.

  After a few more bites, my stomach felt sufficiently sated that I could slow down a little and actually engage in conversation once more. “So what inaccuracies were you talking about?” I asked. “Let me guess — Jesus and Mary Magdalene were just really good friends.”

  “No,” he replied, setting down his burger and picking up his wine glass. With a shake of his head, he drank, then added, “Jesus might have been the Son of God, but that didn’t mean he was dead below the waist.”

  I choked.

  “Are you all right?” Luke inquired, sounding oh-so solicitous. But the glint was back in his eyes — the devilish glint, if I could be allowed to call it that.

  “Fine,” I said, after retrieving my own wine and gulping enough down that it dislodged the troublesome piece of ground beef in my throat. “So you’re saying that, well — ”

  “Of course. But there were no offspring from that union, so there goes the central conceit of Mr. Brown’s book. Really, I have no idea why anyone would ever think such a thing.”

  “I don’t see what’s so strange about it,” I argued, “if you’re willing to accept the idea that Jesus was enough of a mortal man to have a physical relationship with a woman.”

  “Because that would have negated his entire reason for being here,” Luke replied calmly. “Jesus, being the spirit of God made manifest on this earth, and coming here to die for men’s sins and grant them redemption, would certainly not leave any children behind. Otherwise, his eventual resurrection would have no point. So what if he died on the cross? His heirs would still live on, carrying the divine seed within them. No, he lived and died, and did the work God intended for him. End of story.”

  I sat there silently for a moment, trying to digest what he had just said. My coping mechanism for dealing with Luke’s presence seemed to have been to shove the truth of his identity far back in my mind, and to concentrate on only the surface things — the sound of his voice, the way he looked at me, all the little things that made him seem just like a mortal man. But when he made statements like that, when he spoke as someone who knew these things as irrefutable truth — well, that brought the reality of the situation crashing down on me.

  “You were there,” I said at last.

  “Of course. I h
ad my role, just as He had His.”

  My world’s foundation begin to feel shakier and shakier. I’d been raised to respect other people’s beliefs, but my parents hadn’t practiced Christianity, and they’d never taught my siblings and me that Jesus was truly the son of God. Of course they’d said he was an enlightened man, a prophet and seer, but so were Buddha and Krishna and Mohammed. Luke, though, seemed to be telling me Jesus really had been divine, and I didn’t know what to make of that.

  Unsure as to how I should respond, I retreated to the safety of sarcasm. “Oh, that’s right,” I remarked. “They showed you in The Passion of the Christ, wandering through the crowd. You were pretty freaky-looking, though.”

  “Filmmakers,” Luke said, “rarely get the details correct. Are you going to eat those fries?”

  With a start, I realized that I’d been neglecting my meal. As usual, I’d eaten the important part first — the burger — and left the fries as filler. I silently pushed the plate toward him and watched as he added some ketchup to the fries before plowing into them. I didn’t recall seeing the bottle of Heinz before that, but with Luke around that didn’t mean much.

  “So you’ve always looked like this?” I asked.

  He had to finish chewing before he could reply. “More or less. Of course, this is a much better haircut.”

  I couldn’t help it. The giggle bubbled its way up into my throat, and the next thing I knew I was laughing so hard I could feel the tears starting to leak out the corners of my eyes. I heard him begin to laugh as well, and it took me a minute before I recovered myself enough to say, “Well, that puts some perspective on the whole thing.”

  “Most definitely.” He raised his wine glass and gave me a sort of salute. The smile never left his mouth.

  Wine sounded like a good idea. I had some more of mine, and then Luke asked, “Finished?”

  I nodded, and the detritus of our impromptu meal disappeared off the table. “Whew,” I said. “My mother sure could have used you around when I was a kid and she had to cook Thanksgiving dinner. Of course, even back then we had to get the lectures about free-range turkeys, but — ”

  “Christa.”

  I paused, and glanced over at him. He still looked amused, but there was no mistaking the deadly serious way those deep blue eyes met mine.

  Something inside me seemed to turn over. Mouth dry, I watched as he rose from his seat and came to stand next to me. He reached down with one hand, and I took it, standing so I faced him.

  Before I could really register what was happening, he cupped my face in his hands and brought his mouth against mine.

  Every nerve ending in my body seemed to explode. I couldn’t have stopped him even if I’d wanted to, and I didn’t. All I wanted was to feel his lips touching me, to taste wine as his tongue met mine. Suddenly I was pressing my body against his, my hands reaching up to tangle in the heavy, rich hair.

  I don’t know how long the kiss lasted. Eventually we broke apart; he seemed calm enough, but I was gasping like someone who had just swum the English Channel. My knees were rubber. I barely retained enough hold of myself to keep from collapsing right then and there.

  “Ah,” he said at last. At least his voice sounded rough and husky, not quite as controlled as he probably wanted me to believe. “You continue to surprise me, Christa Simms.”

  Somehow I managed to recover the power of speech. “Well, I’d hate for you to get bored this early on.”

  “Far from it,” he replied.

  That was all the encouragement I needed. I pressed myself against him once more, and he gave me another of those depth-charge kisses — you know, the kind that make you feel as if you’ve been blown back into another dimension. Did I even want to know where he’d learned to kiss like that? You wouldn’t think the Devil would have much experience, but maybe he was just naturally good at that sort of thing. Exposure to all that sin over the years must have had some sort of effect.

  It took a little longer for us to break apart this time. Or maybe it was just that the cumulative effect of his mouth on mine had begun to rob me of some much-needed oxygen. I didn’t know. All I did know was that I’d never had someone kiss me into something resembling semi-consciousness before.

  “Okay, you have to stop,” I said at last, trying to draw some air back into my lungs. “Or I’m going to end up in the hospital.”

  “I believe you initiated the last one,” he replied, but he did take a step back, giving me some much-needed breathing space.

  “True,” I said.

  Then he reached out to run a hand down my hair. He had a strange expression on his face, an odd mix of curiosity and tenderness. “Maybe we should leave it at that for now,” he said, after the slightest of pauses.

  The urge to tear off his clothes was almost overwhelming, but from somewhere I dug up a measure of self-control. I took a deep breath, and then another. “That might be a good idea,” I replied. Otherwise, we were probably going to end up doing it on the living room floor, and I sort of wanted my first time with him to be a little less trashy than that.

  “Until next time, then,” he said. Leaning down, he brushed his lips against my cheek, and even that feather-light touch was enough to get my blood racing.

  “Until then,” I whispered, and then he slipped out, leaving me standing in the center of the room. For a long moment I stared at the door, as my heart finally managed to resume something resembling a normal rhythm.

  Was I damned for wanting him?

  Did I even care?

  Chapter Nine

  After the events of the night before, the prospect of meeting Danny for lunch seemed particularly anti-climactic. But I figured it would give me the chance to make a clean break; I knew after that kiss with Luke there wouldn’t be any more nonsense on my part about trying to see both men at the same time. People date multiple partners (and sleep with them, for all I know) every day. I just wasn’t that sort of person, though, and it would be cruel to give Danny any more false hope. If he even had any.

  He picked me up in his little white Nissan truck. Shockingly, he was only about five minutes late, and I knew he must really be making an effort.

  Too little, too late, I thought, but I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him.

  We didn’t talk much on the way over to the Beverly Center. I had no idea what to say, and he seemed tense and nervous. Maybe he’d already picked up on the “you’re about to get dumped” vibe. Even though I knew it would be better for both of us in the long run, it still didn’t make the short term any easier to face.

  Luckily, though, we didn’t have to wait long for a table, and after about five minutes we were seated at a booth next to the window. Not that there was much to see today; another storm had come in, and the day outside was gray and gloomy.

  Remembering the delicious but oh-so-caloric cheeseburger of the night before, I ordered a grilled chicken salad with dressing on the side. Also, I was feeling sort of bloated, since my period had started just that morning. I would have worried about it ruining my weekend, except that my doctor had put me on some great new pills about six months earlier, and now I only had to deal with the inconvenience for three days instead of six. You just gotta love modern science.

  Still, I still knew I was a little off, and I made a mental note to think twice before I said anything so I wouldn’t let my hormones do the talking. I waited until after Danny had placed his own order for a barbecue chicken pizza (his favorite) before asking, “So how was your weekend?”

  “Great,” he said, although his tone indicated that it had been anything but. “Victor and Zach and I had a LAN party Saturday night, and then on Sunday I upgraded my video card.”

  I wanted to say, “Whoo-hoo! Party!” but that would have been downright rude. Victor and Zach and Danny shared a little one-story house on the edge of Culver City and generally indulged one another’s geekdom to almost pathological levels. Privately I referred to them as the “Lone Gunmen,” from the similar t
rio of crazies on The X-Files, which I binge-watched the summer between my freshman and sophomore year in high school, mainly because I had a serious crush on ’90s-vintage David Duchovny. Maybe Danny would have been a little easier to deal with if I’d been able to pry him away from his partners in crime, but I knew that was never going to happen.

  At any rate, LAN parties and upgraded computer hardware were pretty much par for the course. I tried to look impressed and said, “I’ll bet Warcraft runs a lot better now.”

  “Oh, yeah!” he said enthusiastically. “I kept having problems with jumpy movement, but now it’s so smooth you’d swear you were watching a DVD. I just wish I’d done it months ago.”

  I assumed what I hoped was an expression of polite interest. Well, if nothing else, Danny was definitely reinforcing my resolve to call it quits. Right then I couldn’t believe that I’d put up with more than six months of this stuff.

  “Anyway,” he said, his face sobering quickly, “how was your weekend? Big date, right?” Those last three words were uttered in a tone of snottiness so extreme it sounded as if he were channeling some backstabbing teen at cheer camp.

  “Just on Friday,” I replied. Cool, keep it cool, I told myself. “Saturday I went to Orange County to see my parents, and Sunday night the girls took me out for drinks.”

  “Oh.” For a second he looked a little surprised, as if he’d thought for sure I would have spent all weekend in some wild sex-fest with his unknown rival.

  I wish, I thought, and despite everything, a little chill ran down my spine. If just kissing Luke was that spectacular, what would it be like for him to make love to me? Any rational arguments I might have made against taking such a step seemed completely feeble at that point. If I weren’t going to follow this thing to its logical conclusion, then I should never have let him kiss me in the first place. And keeping him from kissing me seemed on a par with stopping the Earth in its orbit — not only was it physically impossible, but it would have had catastrophic consequences to boot. At least, that was what I told myself. I didn’t want to think what would have happened if I’d turned into the ice queen again and sent him packing.