“Something horribly fattening,” she replied.
“Fettuccine alfredo from Tortellini?”he suggested.
That was her favorite local Italian restaurant.Most of the time, she tried to avoid the dish affectionately referred to as “heart attack on a plate,” but right then, she just wanted the comfortiest comfort food she could find.
“I love you,” she said simply, and he grinned and then leaned over so he could press a kiss against her cheek.
“I’ll call in the order.”
He got his phone out of his pocket and placed an order for a family-size alfredo, along with a house salad and an order of garlic bread.Probably the bread was redundant, considering all they’d be eating was pasta heaped with cream sauce, but that was all right.
Still, she guessed she should send any leftovers home with him.Being part demon seemed to have given Caleb the metabolism of the gods, considering he could eat pretty much anything he wanted and never gain weight.She tended to be okay at that sort of thing, too, although she knew a meal like this would probably require an additional half hour on the treadmill tomorrow morning.
That was all right, though.Maybe the mindless exercise would give her the time she needed to think of some convincing arguments as to why Olivia needed to move her wedding to a location that wasn’t quite so spiritually fraught.
“It’s going to be okay,” Caleb said as he rose from the couch, extending a hand to help Delia up as well.“After all, it’s not as if the Styx Group has bought up every wedding chapel in Las Vegas.There are other places where your cousin can have her ceremony.”
“Easy for you to say,” Delia replied wearily as she headed into the dining room to set the table.Tortellini’s tended to be pretty prompt with their deliveries, which meant they didn’t have a lot of time to get things prepped before the food arrived.
“I do like to look on the bright side,” he agreed.
She couldn’t help smiling as she got out some placemats and napkins, then made a side trip into the kitchen to fetch plates and glasses and flatware.Or rather, she got the plates out of the cupboard and handed them over to Caleb so he could take them into the dining room.
Not a moment too soon, because the doorbell rang just a bit after that.He hurried to get it, obviously wanting to be the one who paid for the meal and tipped the driver.As harrowed as she was in her mind right then, Delia decided she wouldn’t waste any energy on protesting.
If nothing else, he had a lot more money in the bank than she did.
He brought the bags of food into the dining room just as she was setting a bottle of Montepulciano on the table.“Good choice,” he commented, eyeing the bottle of wine.
“Glad you approve,” she said with a smile.
They sat and were quiet for a moment as they portioned out the food, and Caleb uncorked the wine and poured some for both of them.Delia had to admit it all smelled delicious, and her outlook on life improved further as she took a swallow of wine and let its friendly warmth course down her throat.
A piece of garlic bread helped as well…but not so much that she could completely ignore the reason why she’d needed this calorie-fest in the first place.
“I keep racking my brains, trying to come up with a totally logical reason why Olivia should move her wedding somewhere else,” Delia said as she set down her wine glass and reached for her fork.“But so far, I can’t come up with anything.”
Caleb twirled some fettuccine around his fork, his brows pulling together as he appeared to ponder their current quandary.“What would make someone change wedding plans at the last minute?”he asked.“I mean, normal people reasons.”
She couldn’t help teasing him a little.“Are you saying you don’t know what ‘normal people reasons’ might be?”
That question got her a smile, as she’d hoped it would.“Well, considering I was raised by a half demon and the frostiest bitch east of the Mississippi, there’s a whole lot I don’t know about ‘normal.’”
Delia set down her fork and reached over so she could lay her hand on top of his where it rested on the table.Although his tone had been light enough, real pain had underlaid those words.He’d spent his whole life having to pretend to be something he wasn’t, and even though he’d had other quarter demons as his friends, they’d all been pretending as well, hiding the truth of their natures from everyone else in the small Indiana town where they lived.
It must have been a hell of a way to grow up.
“I think you’re doing pretty well at it,” she told him, and the tense set of his jaw seemed to relax slightly.
“Well, it helps that I can be myself around you,” he replied, and the simple, matter-of-fact way he said those words made her heart ache for him that much more.
“Yes, you can,” she said.
Their gazes held for a moment.Then he shifted in his chair and reached over to pick up his glass of wine, and she realized he wanted to move on.Maybe someday she could get him to truly open up about his past and his childhood, but she knew that time wasn’t now.
No, right now they needed to deal with the matter at hand.
What could they come up with to convince Olivia that Angel’s Dream was the absolute last place she should be getting married?
