ChapterOne
“…andluxury vinyl plank throughout, with carpet only in the bedrooms,” Delia was saying as she walked out of the living room of Caleb Lockwood’s latest acquisition and headed into the kitchen.
He nodded, even though he knew only a portion of his brain was absorbing her comments.
A much larger part was preoccupied with watching the swing of her long red hair as she moved, the gorgeous shape of her long, slender legs as highlighted by the dark gray pencil skirt she wore.She’d come straight here after leaving the real estate agency she ran with her mother, so she had on her usual work uniform of slim skirt and silk blouse and high heels.Now that May was just about to flow into June, that blouse was sleeveless, and she’d abandoned the jackets she wore during the cooler months here in Las Vegas, but she looked as elegant as ever.
“Um…sure,” he said, and she paused and looked across the Formica-topped peninsula — an element in the kitchen he knew was slated for the chopping block, since Delia wanted to tear it out and replace it with an island — and set her hands on her hips.
“Earth to Caleb,” she said, and he couldn’t help grinning.
“Sorry,” he told her.“I trust you on all this.I don’t have to know every single detail.”
Her brows lifted.They were a dark russet, several shades deeper than her coppery hair, and a perfect frame for the cool, gray-blue eyes he never tired of looking into.
“Even if I go crazy and decide to install marble in the bathrooms and herringbone hardwood floors in the rest of the house?”
Although she had far more real estate experience than he did, even Caleb knew you didn’t put costly materials like that in a flip that at most was going to sell in the mid to upper $400,000 range.“Well, okay,” he said.“I’d probably have a few questions about that kind of stuff before I signed off on those invoices.”
“Good to know you plan to pay a little attention,” she remarked, then turned back to the kitchen as though to give it another once-over.
Why she needed to look at it again, he wasn’t sure, since he already knew that she planned to rip out everything, just as she intended to similarly gut the master bath and the hall bath that serviced the two secondary bedrooms.The house — which he’d snagged in an online auction after the demon-backed Aegis Holdings collapsed, thanks to their utter defeat at a poker tournament designed to conjure all sorts of diabolical energies — was your basic three-bedroom, two-bath model, measuring a little over 1,700 square feet and located in a neighborhood of equally modest, vaguely Mediterranean-style homes.
Delia estimated they’d probably be able to make around $40-50K on the flip as long as they were careful about the improvements they implemented.Maybe it wasn’t quite as quick a way to earn a buck as his time working the various casinos around town, influencing a card turn here and a dice toss there to ensure he won far more than was statistically likely, but he had to admit that flipping houses was a whole lot more honest.
And he wanted to be honest.He wanted to be the man Delia thought he was, the man she’d told she loved only three weeks ago.
He wanted to be worthy of her, despite lineage on his father’s side that went straight back to a Prince of Hell.
They’d kissed that day, a kiss that had been everything he hoped for and much, much more.And there had been plenty of other kisses after that, including a few sessions on the couch at his place or the sofa at her house, passionate interludes that he’d hoped might lead straight into the bedroom.
But they hadn’t.Was she taking things slow because that was how she approached all intimate relationships…or was she holding back because she was worried he would bust out with some demon horns and a tail at an inappropriate moment?
Caleb knew that would never happen.Far more human blood than demon ran in his veins, and although that blood gave him some handy powers like being able to teleport or conjure flames — or make sure the cards went in his favor whenever he wanted — he didn’t have an alternate, demonic form.He wasn’t like the demons who’d taken on human bodies to be able to conceal their true natures.Those bodies had been nothing more than suits, while he knew his biology was no different from Delia’s or any other mortal.
Or rather, while there might have been a few genetic markers to prove his grandfather hadn’t exactly been the guy next door, it wasn’t the sort of thing that would show up in a simple blood test.You’d have to analyze his DNA with an electron microscope to find anything at all out of the ordinary.
And even though he understood that Delia was holding back for her own reasons, he knew he’d wait for her as long as necessary.When he’d met her back in January, something within his soul had understood that no other woman could ever be the one for him.
She came out of the kitchen and glanced over at the fireplace in the living room.One could argue that such a feature wasn’t really necessary in a place with the kind of climate Las Vegas enjoyed, but it did add to the value of a property.This one wasn’t terribly prepossessing, with its ’90s-vintage brass hardware and ceramic tile surround that looked suspiciously like the same tile on the kitchen floor.
“I do want to spend some money to fix that up,” she said, and Caleb tilted his head at her, brow raised slightly.
“I thought we were trying to watch our costs on this project.”
“We are,” she replied, looking utterly unconcerned.“But I have a stucco guy who can cover all that up and make the fireplace look more Mediterranean, which will fit better with the style of the house.It should be less than a grand, and it’ll make a real statement.”
All right, that didn’t sound so bad.He knew the soapstone slabs on the floor-to-ceiling fireplace in his recently remodeled home had cost four times the amount, but it seemed clear that Delia was doing her best to get the most visual bang for their modest bucks.
“Sounds good,” he said.He’d never intended to scrutinize every line item on the budget for the remodel, and he knew that if Delia said something would cost a certain amount, then it would.
“But,” she went on, “everything here looks cosmetic, just as we’d hoped, so I think it will go fast.We should be able to get this thing done and on the market in about six weeks.”
“Great,” he said.“Then I guess there isn’t anything else we need to do here.Meet you at your place?”
She nodded.They’d fallen into a routine of alternating whose home would be their evening hangout — well, during those times when they wanted to stay in rather than go out to eat or maybe catch a movie or whatever — and since they’d been at his house the night before, they’d already agreed to go to her place.
“I’ll lock up here,” he added.They both had keys to the flip property, and he figured that would give Delia time to get home first and pull into the garage, maybe take off those stilettos she was wearing.He noticed she tended to ditch them each night as soon as she could.
