She scowled. Luke was such a strange beast. “Those aren’t hard.”
He gestured over his shoulder toward the street. “You been out there lately? Politeness waved bye-bye to humanity a while back. I’m sad to say. It was one of the things I used to like about coming here.”
Clearing her throat, she stepped back before she gave in to the need to kiss those sexy lips. “Yeah. I feel that. And yes, if you could please help me redecorate, I would be eternally grateful.” As soon as those words were out of her head, she remembered the “asshole” on her whiteboard. “Out of curiosity, you’re not the one who made it look like it currently does, were you?”
He flashed a devilish grin. “Aren’t you glad I like you?”
Definitely, but she would never say that out loud. No need to feed his abundant ego.
“I think so.” She wandered over to his smart board. “By the way, I love this. I’ve always wanted one.”
“Okay. Done.”
Was he serious? “Really?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Why not? They are handy for what we do. Makes it a lot easier to share info. I highly recommend them.”
Was he that rich or could he just make things like this appear with his powers? Both were terrifying to think about, but one was a lot scarier than the other.
Just what all could he do with nothing more than a thought?
She narrowed her gaze on him. “Are you ever going to tell me what your powers are?”
“Rather not say, but I’m glad they work in the human world. Bad enough to be kicked out of home. I’d hate to have been stripped of my powers, too.”
“Wonder why your father left them intact?”
Luke shrugged. “I’m not about to defend my father and say he’s a nice guy who was misunderstood. He’s really not. But he’s not always a bad dad. For all his faults, he was once an angel and sometimes…rare times…those instincts return when he lets his guard down.”
In a weird way, that made sense. “I never really understood his rebellion. My preacher grandad always said Satan became angry because people had freewill and angels didn’t. Is that true?”
“If angels didn’t have freewill, how could they disobey and rebel?”
Another thing she’d never thought about. He was right. The angels would have needed some degree of freewill to do that. “Then what happened?”
“Simply put…jealousy. Root of all evil.”
“I thought that was money.”
Luke shook his head. “Money only comes into play because people are jealous someone has more of it than they do. I can’t say this enough. Jealousy is the real root of everything bad. All throughout history. It was even the cause of the first murder.”
Cain and Abel. He had a valid point.
But one thing didn’t make sense to her. “Why would an angel be jealous of humanity?”
“Grass is greener over a septic tank. No matter how good someone has it, that person always thinks someone else has it better or easier. And instead of being grateful for what they do have, they want what they perceive someone else has that they lack or that it’s something that person they hate doesn’t deserve. My father was a fool for envying mankind, and the worst part is that he knows it, but will never admit it. If he did, he could return to the fold. But that will never happen.”
“If that’s true, I almost feel sorry for him.”
Luke snorted hard. “Don’t. Sympathy for the Devil is a Rolling Stones’ song. At the end of the day, my father will never repent or admit he was wrong. You know the old saying, better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”
“Is that how you feel about it?”
“I reign nowhere and never have. Don’t want to. I’m just a spoiled kid who isn’t happy he got tossed out on his ass without warning. Ambition wasn’t in my vocabulary until a year ago when I found myself naked and freezing on a Savannah sidewalk.”
She sucked her breath in sharply between her teeth. “Is that really what happened?”
He nodded slowly.
