“Where are you?” I asked Seth when he answered his cell phone.
“Terry and Andrea's. You want to come over?”
Spending the evening with his family sounded refreshingly ordinary after the sleaze and debauchery of Alec and that party. In fact, compared to everything else weird in my life at the moment, it sounded downright wonderful.
Identical blonde faces greeted me at the door when I arrived, both sets of lips forming a perfect âo' when they saw me.
A moment later, Brandy appeared behind her little twin sisters. “Oh, Georgina, that dress is so pretty.”
She pushed Morgan and McKenna out of the way, both still starstruck. I stepped inside the Mortensen home and found complete chaos. Sheets of clear plastic lay everywhere. Masking tape covered the wall trim. Most of the furniture had been pushed out of the living room, shoved into a pile in the hallway beyond. Those items remaining were wrapped in thick cocoons of more plastic sheeting. Paint buckets, trays, and brushes littered most of the free space, and everythingâthe people includedâwas splattered with yellow paint.
“Georgina!” squealed eight-year old Kendall, tearing toward me. Her mother, walking into the room, leapt out and tackled her daughter.
“Don't touch her!” Andrea exclaimed, tumbling to the ground. “Not in that dress.”
I laughed, wanting to sweep up each one of the girls in an enormous hug, the dress be damned.
“Seth,” chastised Terry, standing on top of a ladder, “why didn't you tell her this was a war zone?” The Mortensen Brothers always entertained me. Despite being younger, Terry always seemed exasperated by Seth's scattered behavior and often had to prod him into reality.
Seth sat cross-legged on the floor with Kayla, youngest of the Mortensen daughters, on his lap. Like everyone else, he had paint all over himâincluding his
Writers Do It at Their Desks
shirt. Looking as serene as a Buddhist monk, he flashed me one of his distracted smiles. “Because it's always a war zone over here.”
“Well, get her out of here and take her somewhere nice,” Terry said. “No need to drag her down into this.”
This immediately triggered cries of outrage from the girls.
“I don't mind staying,” I told them. “I'd like to help.”
Andrea rose from her tackle, one arm still around Kendall. “We're going to have to cover you up then. Come on, let's see if I've got anything that'll fit.”
She released Kendall. The little girl took a step toward me but didn't touch anything. “You look like one of the ladies in the Victoria's Secret catalog.”
“My favorite reading material,” I told her solemnly.
“Daddy's too.”
Her mother groaned and led me to her bedroom, forcing us to squeeze through the furniture packed hallway. Being in Terry and Andrea's bedroom was a lot different than being in Dana's. It was messier for one thing, with an unmade bed and piles of laundry on the floor. The color scheme and decorating were a lot less coordinated too, suggesting it had all been pieced together over the years, not preplanned with a designer's cold eye. Pictures of the girls at various ages covered the walls and dressers, and free surfaces held odd pieces of jewelry, books, and change. And yet, despite that clutter, the whole room felt filled with love, like the people who occupied it were happy and cared about each other. It made the place warm and cozy, not sterile and sharp as Dana's had been. It made me feel good to be in here, jealous that I had nothing like it with another person, and almost intrusive to be in such an intimate setting. It was like eavesdropping.
“Ah, here we are,” murmured Andrea, rummaging through drawers. She handed me some clothes. I slipped out of the dress and tried them on. While she had a fantastic body for having birthed five daughters, Andrea was still taller and bigger than me, so the clothes hung loose and long. Changing her mind, she handed me denim overalls instead of the jeans. They had to be rolled up at the cuffs, but the straps kept them on me. I tied my hair in a ponytail and was ready to go.
Seth laughed when he saw me.
“Hey,” I said, poking him with my foot, “be nice.”
“I think this is the first time I've ever seen you look anything less than . . .” He paused, playing with word choice. “Well-planned.”
“Why, you silver-tongued romantic devil. That
is
the look I usually go for. Other women go for sexy or chic or beautiful. But me? Well-planned all the way.”
“You know what I mean. Besides, unplanned isn't a bad look for you. Not bad at all.”
His voice sounded deliciously low and dangerous, and something ignited between us as we held each other's eyes.
“You guys can flirt on your own time,” said Terry briskly, handing me a roller and tray of paint. “Right now, you work for us. Think you can do this part of the wall?”
“Sure.” I glanced over at Seth, whose main job still seemed to be restraining Kayla. “Why aren't you painting?”
“Because he isn't allowed to,” answered Brandy, painting deftly around a doorway.
“Uncle Seth's a libation,” explained Kendall.
“Liability,” corrected her mother. She grinned at me. “The odds say you
have
to be a better painter than him. Correction: the laws of the universe say you have to be.”
“Of course she is. She's good at everything.” Seth watched me apply a smooth, even coat. “See?”
Painting with the Mortensens made for an utterly normal and utterly enjoyable evening. They were so funny and nice that it was hard not to love them. Working side by side, I could almost pretend I was really one of them. Like this could be my own family. They included me in everything and spoke as though Seth and I were a done deal, assuming I would be with them not only for Thanksgiving but also for Christmas and an assortment of other gettogethers.
The simple, casually extended affection made me feel happy inside, and sad too. I would never be able to quite fit in with any mortal family, even if this wacky relationship with Seth did ever stabilize.
I pushed aside a plastic-covered box and got a peek inside. Moving the sheet further, I smiled down at a framed picture of Terry and Andrea's wedding partyâincluding a much younger Seth.
“Look at you,” I teased. “You used to shave.”
He rubbed the stubble on his lower face. “I still shave.”
“So this is the infamous occasion Seth almost missed?”
“Yup,” said Terry, a rueful tone in his voice. “Apparently finishing
A Talented Heat
was more important than witnessing my nuptials.”
“Oh,” I said neutrally, “that's a really good one.” I wasn't sure if it was missing-a-wedding good, but it was still one of my favorites. It might have been worth the sacrifice. “Who's the other guy beside you?”
“Our other brother. Ian.”
“Another Mortensen? You guys are abundant.”
“Tell me about it,” said Terry. “Ian's the black sheep.”
“I thought I was the black sheep,” said Seth, sounding almost hurt.
“No. You're the unfocused artistic one. I'm the responsible one. Ian's the wild, hedonistic one.”
“What's hedonistic?” asked Kendall.
Her father considered. “It means you run up a lot of credit card bills you can't pay, change jobs a lot, and have a lot of . . . lady friends.”
Brandy rolled her eyes. “Good euphemism, Dad.”
Only in the Mortensen family, I decided delightedly, would a fourteen-year-old use a word like “euphemism.”
Andrea walked over to the portrait and admired her younger self. In the picture, she wore a long-sleeved lace dress that left her shoulders bare.
“Ah, those were the days,” she sighed. “Back before pregnancy ruined my body.”
“Well, that wasn't
entirely
before pregnancy,” observed her husband in an undertone. She shot him a dangerous look. Brandy groaned.
Seth tried to hide a smile and changed the subject. “That church had horrible carpet. Burgundy shag.” He shook his head. “I think I'm going to get married outdoors.”
“Oh my God,” said Terry with mock horror, “I can't believe you just acknowledged you might get married. I thought you were married to your writing.”
“Hey, I've never had a problem with polygamy.”
Kendall's eyes widened. “What's polygamy?”
Later, when we'd finished the living room, Seth and I offered to start cleaning up while Terry and Andrea put the brood to bed. The girls resisted, clinging to Seth and me, wanting us to talk and come back tomorrow.
“My nieces think you're a rock star,” he observed as we washed brushes in the kitchen. “I think they like you better than me.”
“I'm not the one they had to tear Kayla from. Hey, does she ever talk?”
“Sometimes. Usually when there's bait involvedâlike candy or small objects she might choke on.”
We washed the brushes in silence until I brought up the topic that had been on my mind ever since he'd mentioned it.
“An outdoor wedding, huh?”
The notion of Seth getting married held a perverse fascination for me. Fascinating because I was female and attracted to such things. Perverse because I knew I wouldn't be the bride at such an event. Succubus logistics obviously made that impossible. Then, of course, there was the fact that my mortal marriage had not gone so well. In addition to me cheating and pushing my husband into a debilitating depression, it had later resulted in me selling my soul and joining the ranks of hell. That didn't make for a good matrimonial track record.
Seth cut me a look, eyes amused. “Yup.”
“I didn't know guys ever thought about that kind of stuff.”
“Sometimes we do.”
“You got any other details worked out? Or just the outside lovefest part?”
He pondered this as we returned to the living room. He wore the intense expression that seized him when he was trying to write a certain line or think of something clever to say. “I want a good buffet,” he said. “Not one of those cheap ones with cold cuts. And no bows on the chairs or anything like that. Man, I
hate
those.”
“Wow. I guess you've got it all figured out.” I began pulling masking tape off the trim while he knelt down to gather more brushes.
He continued on, still considering. “And I want my bride to wear open-toed shoes.”
“Why open-toed?”
He looked up with astonishment. “Because toes are sexy.”
I looked down at my own bare feet. They were small and cute, each toenail painted a pale lavender. Andrea hadn't had any shoes my size.
I gave him a sly smile. “Like these toes?”
He looked away and returned to his work.
Forgetting my masking tape, I strolled over to him, trying not to laugh. “Why Seth Mortensen, do you have a fetish?”
“It's not a fetish,” he replied evenly. “Just an appreciation.”
This time I did laugh. “Oh yeah?” I moved my foot out to tickle his arm, wiggling the toes. “You appreciate these toes?”
“I appreciate everything about youâeven how mean you are.”
I crouched beside him and slung an arm around him. “To think, all this time I've been prancing around you in low-cut shirts and no underwear, in awe of your stalwart resistance, when really it was my toesâ”
“No underwear?” he interrupted. “Wait. Are you wearing any now?”
“My lips are sealed. You'll have to find out the old-fashioned way. I'm not going to talk.”
“Oh,” he said in a warning voice, “we have ways of making you talk.”
“Like what?”
In one surprisingly quick motion, Seth sprang up and rolled me onto my back. One arm pinned me and the other held a paintbrush over me, wet with paint.
“Hey!” I cried. “That's not sexy. That's not even cool.” Actually, being pinned to the floor by him was about as sexy as it got.
He stabbed it toward me playfully, never actually making contact, but I flinched anyway. “What's the problem?” he teased. “You can just shape-shift it away.”
“Oh! You're a twisted bastard.”
His lips quirked into a wicked smile, and he dabbed the brush at my cheek, leaving a small streak of paint. A second later, he added a matching mark on the other cheek.
“Ready for battle,” he declared.
I yelped in dismay, then used his momentary satisfaction to break free and reverse the situation, rolling him over. Now I hovered on top of him, one hand on his chest, the other on his arm.