Page 17 of Asher

“Garrett?” Asher appears at my side. “I’m sorry, I need to steal you for a moment.”

“Uh, yes, sure. Have you met my colleagues yet?” I make hasty introductions, glad when Asher greets them both with interest and respect. They briefly exchange small talk, and then he makes our excuses and hustles me across the room. “What is it?” I murmur.

“My cousins. We need to talk to them.”

I open my mouth to ask why, then abruptly remember that one of his cousins was the one who came up with the “he’s got a boyfriend” idea in the first place.

The two men are waiting over by the window. Sometime in the last forty minutes they’ve gotten themselves drinks, and I find myself yearning for a good stiff drink. I definitely think I’ve earned it.

“Micah, Zac, this is Garrett,” Asher says. “My idiot cousins, Micah and Zachary.” He gestures to them in turn, even though I’ve already met Zac.

“Hello again,” I tell him, and he laughs. Actually laughs out loud, in a most undemonic manner.

“Thank you,” he says. “So much. Really. This has been one of the best nights of my life, and I think it’s only going to get better. I sent a message to Gideon so he can also glory in this moment, but I don’t think he’s seen it yet.”

Who’s Gid—

“Oh fuck no!”

All three of them blink at me. “I beg your pardon?” Micah says politely, but all my focus is on Zac.

“What did the message say, exactly?” I ask, but in the next moment, my phone rings in my pocket… and so does Asher’s. I groan.

“What?” he asks me.

“Alistair.” And sure enough, when I pull out my phone, my cousin’s name is on the screen. I contemplate ignoring it, but he’ll just keep calling until I answer.

“Hello?” I answer as Asher rejects the person who’s calling him—I’m assuming Gideon.

“You dark horse!” my cousin crows. “What secrets have you been keeping from me? Tell me everything now or I’ll call your mother.”

I hate him so much. “What makes you think she doesn’t already know?” I bluff, smiling apologetically at Asher and his cousins—hisnormalcousins.

Well… almost normal, anyway. More normal than Alistair, that’s for sure.

He hesitates for a second, then scoffs. “Nope. If she knew, I would have already gotten a call frommymother, asking why Aidan and I aren’t engaged and why I didn’t tell her you were seeing someone. As if I’m supposed to know everything you do.”

Damn him, he’s right. “We’ve been keeping it quiet,” I hedge.

“Oh,haveyou? I don’t know, Garrett. It seems awfully coincidental that you’ve been hot and heavy with a member of the demon family I just happen to have a connection with and who needs your help…”

Fuck, he knows. I think. “Hold on.” I hit the mute button on my phone and look Zac in the eye. “What did that message say?”

He shrugs. “That Asher took the lucifer’s advice and is getting married.”

If Lucifer Sam gave Asher advice, Alistair probably knows about it. They’re “bestest besties,” as he likes to say.

I really should have done something about him when he was too small to fight back. The man’s a tank now, and I don’t think I’d win if I tried to take him down.

“What was the advice?”

Zac looks at Asher, and I snap, “Now, quick! Before he gets bored and calls the rest of the family!”

“It was about a marriage of convenience,” Asher says. “The lucifer suggested I find someone agreeable and we marry in a business arrangement.”

For a second, I’m so taken aback that I’m speechless. Thelucifersuggested a marriage of convenience?

I shake off my shock and unmute my phone. “I know you know, Alistair. So stop harassing me. I have a lot of things to sort out right now.”

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