A Deal With the Devil Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  A Deal with the Devil

  * * *

  A Romantic Comedy

  Abby Matisse

  Copyright 2012 Carla Hudson. All rights reserved.

  A Deal with the Devil

  By Abby Matisse

  All Rights Reserved.

  Copyright: 2012, Carla Hudson writing as Abby Matisse

  Cover Artist: Pish Posh Design

  Layout: Stocco Book Design Services

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons living or dead or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ebook ISBN - 978-0-9859612-0-6

  Discover other titles by the author @ www.abbymatisse.com.

  Fan or Friend Abby on Facebook

  Follow Abby on Twitter and Pinterest

  Chapter One

  he needed a do-over. Big time.

  The realization struck Amanda Wilson like a thunderbolt during hour four of what should have been a two and a half hour drive to Lake Geneva. Unfortunately, it was too late for a do-over. Also unfortunately, she was utterly and completely lost.

  For the last ninety minutes, she’d driven aimlessly through the unmarked roads of backwater Wisconsin, cursing Google Maps and whacking her ill-functioning Garmin on the dashboard of the car. The fact that neither high-end GPS technology could locate the place was probably some sort of sign; a universal warning of impending disaster. As a city girl, going off the grid for a weekend alone may not be the smartest thing she’d ever done.

  The car rolled to a stop.

  Amanda put it in park, picked up the Google directions and studied the map for the umpteenth time in the past few hours. According to the worthless piece of paper in her hand, she had arrived. She dropped the map in her lap and looked out the passenger window, frowning at the dilapidated wood fence peeking out from under a tangled mass of weeds. She could only imagine what sort of ramshackle dwelling might sit on the other side of those trees.

  She shook her head in dismay. If this was the place, she needed to turn right around and hightail it back to Chicago as fast as her Audi A4 could take her. And as soon as she got there, she needed to sit Kate down and demand an explanation, because this felt like a sick joke. And after the day she’d had—no, make that the past few months—she was in no mood to be toyed with.

  This area appeared to be about the furthest thing from luxury she could imagine. Of course, if she decided to head back, finding the highway again would be no small feat. She had no earthly idea where she was and it was entirely possible she was stuck here. Permanently. A very sobering thought.

  She much preferred her urban and ultra-chic West Loop neighborhood to this critter-infested, overgrown locale. Rustic, Kate had called it. Amanda’s lips curled in disgust as she surveyed her surroundings. Rustic didn’t even begin to describe it.

  It was hard to imagine Kate venturing anywhere near a place like this. It looked scraggly and abandoned and downright filthy—exactly the sort of horror movie location where you ended up after you ran out of gas in the middle of the night and just before you met Freddie Krueger.

  She leaned forward and peered up through the dirty windshield. In the past hour, the sky had turned an ominous shade of white—not a good sign given the weather bulletins she’d tried to ignore all week. If she was going to leave, she’d better get on it because it looked like they were about to get a winter’s worth of snow dumped on top of them.

  Amanda flung the map onto the passenger seat and flopped back as she contemplated the best course of action. She needed a cocktail and an hour-long shower, not a three-hour drive back to Chicago.

  She expelled a long, exaggerated sigh and turned her head. Despite the dull overcast day, a shiny piece of metal caught her eye. She sat up straight and then leaned forward, peering intently. Wait a minute. She squinted and glanced up and down the road. The mailbox! This had to be the place.

  Amanda yanked the car in gear. In her excitement she hit the gas harder than intended, spraying a long fountain of gravel in her wake as she executed a U-turn that would make a NASCAR driver green with envy. She skidded to a stop in front of the mailbox and leaned over the passenger seat to peer at the name. Connelly.

  She smacked her palms on the steering wheel. Finally.

  Thank God the chichi mailbox had caught her eye. Kate’s place featured an ornate wrought iron and steel number—so different from the beat-up metal contraptions nailed haphazardly to rotted wood posts that adorned other driveways up and down the lane. As she turned into the driveway, she vowed to ignore her earlier misgivings about Freddie Krueger and going off the grid. She was here. That had to mean something.

  She stopped the car and got out, stretching lazily as she studied the wide logs that formed the walls of the cabin. Her eyes drifted up to the stone chimney that jutted skyward from the cedar shake roof. Kate had declared the cabin ‘rustic with an urban twist.’ Whatever that meant. The exterior didn’t look too promising, but to be fair, Kate said they had focused on the interior and wouldn’t tackle the outside until next spring. Given the decrepit look of the front porch, the sooner the better.

  A large, puffy snow flake drifted down and landed on her cheek, melting instantly. She looked up at the sky and two more landed on her forehead. It was starting. Amanda brushed the moisture off her face and strode toward the back of the car. After popping the lid on the trunk, she hauled her suitcases out. The larger of the two landed on the ground with a dull thud.

  Good grief. How many suitcases do you need for three days alone in a cabin?

  Apparently two plus one tote bag stuffed with every beauty product she owned. To be fair, what she’d done couldn’t technically be considered packing. She’d just tossed random items into a few bags without giving it much thought, which was completely out of character. Amanda was a planner and an obsessive organizer and normally when she traveled, she packed by checklist. But she had been too preoccupied to bother planning and so she’d brought one quarter of her closet and every item in her bathroom vanity.

  A do-over would be pretty sweet though. She’d give anything to go back and undo the last six months. Even the past three would suffice. Too bad it wasn’t possible. The only thing she could do now was come up with a plan to crawl out from under this massive cluster of a situation. And she needed to do it soon. She only had another month or two at most before her financial house of cards would collapse around her.

  A familiar lump of dread formed in her stomach at the thought. Drastic measures were called for or she’d face bankruptcy—an option she refused to consider. At least for now.

  She dragged bag number one up the porch steps while trying to talk herself down. No point getting all worked up. She had three whole days to figure something out, which was plenty of time to come up with a plan.

  When she got everything into the cabin, she plopped down on the larger bag, huffing and sweaty and trying to muster the strength to haul the bags upstairs. The bottle of Shiraz she’d stowed in the smaller suitcase tempted her, but she resisted. No cocktails. At least for the next hour. She needed a shower and then she planned to get busy on her strategy for resolving this mess. Cocktails could come later.

/>   After she lugged her bags upstairs, Amanda strolled into the bathroom, laid her robe on the counter and turned on the water. Then she peeled off her uncomfortable suit—which she would have changed out of at the office had she known she’d get lost—opened the beveled glass door and stepped into the slate-tiled, multi-jet dream of a shower.

  Kate hadn’t oversold it. The bathroom—and everything else in the newly redecorated cabin—looked magnificent. The place might be tiny but it absolutely oozed luxury. Not even the teensiest detail had been missed. No big surprise given her best friend’s reputation as one of Chicago’s hottest interior designers, but completely unexpected if you went by the broken down look of the exterior.

  As the warm spray hit her from all sides, Amanda sighed and stood there, soaking it in. Then she reached out and twisted the temperature dial. The water grew hotter and her eyes drifted closed as delicious moist heat seeped into her stiff muscles. She relaxed into it for several minutes and then reached for the over-priced shower gel she’d bought on a whim the weekend before. It had beckoned from its fancy tabletop display at Nordstrom and practically leapt into her hands as she and Kate wandered by.

  She wiped the water from her eyes and examined the label. Tahiti in a Bottle. Her mouth twisted. Its claims of instant stress relief sounded absolutely ridiculous, but she’d purchased the shower gel anyway. She always did, even though her career as a brand marketer should make her impervious to merchandising gimmicks. But when it came to beauty products, she fell for them all, finding it impossible to resist the promise of discovering magic in a bottle, a face cream, a hair conditioner or pretty much anything else. It was one of the few areas in her life where she could be considered an optimist.

  As she squeezed a dollop of lavender-scented magic into her palm, the scent wafted upward. It reminded her of why she’d found the product so irresistible. Wild promises aside, the fragrance alone had been worth every penny. She drew in a long appreciative breath and sighed. Heaven.

  Amanda lingered until she used every last drop of hot water, but when she stepped onto the rug, her shoulders still seemed level with her ears. She needed to chill—a tall order given her money problems—and it would take something more drastic than a few blobs of expensive bath gel.

  With her salary and position, she shouldn’t experience money issues. Granted, she definitely splurged on occasion and she certainly didn’t consider herself a genius budgeter. But she managed expenses okay, aside from the random irresistible beauty product or occasional afternoon of power shopping with Kate. Those little luxuries hadn’t caused her problems, though. Rob had. And after ten years of care-taking her younger brother, she should have known better.

  Amanda shook her head as she dried off. Given their history, she should have known Rob’s requests wouldn’t stop with the first loan. If she’d cared to really look at it, she could have guessed he’d come begging for more. But she hadn’t. And he had.

  Now she found herself on a one way street, headed straight for financial ruin. Hence her weekend at the cabin. Sam and Kate had insisted she stay at their newly refurbished place and—aside from being free of charge—its location in the middle of nowhere seemed the perfect setting to plot a life reinvention. A hundred grand in debt sounded serious by anyone’s standards and it would take a serious plan of attack to get her out from under it.

  She slipped into her cheetah print bathrobe and tightened the belt. As she glimpsed her reflection in the half-fogged mirror, she scowled. Leaning closer, she traced her fingers over the contours of her face. She looked like crap. Not surprising given her money problems and her thirtieth birthday, which loomed just around the corner, wasn’t helping matters. She dreaded the upcoming milestone as it would highlight her current reality as a spinster and possibly the biggest loser she knew.

  Snap out of it.

  Debbie Downer mode wasn’t going to solve anything. Three days sounded like an eternity, especially when they came with no irresponsible brother, no crazy branding job, no phones and no friends. With no distractions, she could work miracles in that amount of time.

  She’d been so excited about her weekend of solitude, even news reports of a November snowmaggedon couldn’t scare her away. She needed this time alone. Hell, she deserved it. And on Sunday night she’d have it all figured out.

  As Amanda reached for the hair dryer, glass shattered downstairs.

  Her stomach lurched and she froze mid gesture, holding her breath as she strained to listen; afraid to move, afraid to do anything but stand there, still as a statue.

  After what seemed an eternity, she allowed herself to breathe again, expelling a long sigh as she collapsed against the counter, weak with relief. Thank God. On top of everything else going on, she didn’t need to battle a crazed serial killer. A tree branch had probably just knocked against a window.

  As if on cue, the winter wind whistled outside, banging the shutters against the house. Definitely a tree branch. Besides, Kate’s cabin lay so far off the beaten track; Amanda doubted a criminal could even find the place. And considering the overcast, frigid weather, any sane serial killer would be home and curled up in front of the fireplace with a glass of wine—which was exactly what she planned to do as soon as she dried her hair.

  Her thumb moved to the power switch just as a door slammed.

  Amanda jumped two feet in the air. Holy Crap!

  Her fingers tightened around the dryer and her heart stopped for a beat, maybe two, and then thumped so hard, she felt lightheaded. She fought a wave of blackness. Don’t be a wimp. Do something! She shook her head and tried to think.

  Heavy footsteps clomped across the wood floor below.

  She slapped a hand over her mouth to muffle a scream and every instinct compelled her to run.

  But to where?

  Adrenaline pumped as Amanda set the dryer on the counter and did a quick Fred Flintstone-like tip toe to the door. She opened it with caution, grimacing as the hinges creaked and groaned. Then she peered down the hall and calculated the distance to the bedroom. At least there, she could hide in the closet or maybe cram herself under the bed. The tiny bathroom left her too exposed.

  The footsteps paused at the base of the stairs and then started up, one heavy thud at a time.

  Amanda bit her knuckles to stifle another scream. She’d never make it. She was trapped! Her heart pounded as she eased the door shut and spun around, her eyes darting about in search of cover. With nowhere to hide, she lunged for the counter and snatched up the dryer.

  Where the hell was her cell phone?

  She wracked her brain. Crap. She’d left it on the bedside table. In the bedroom she didn’t have time to get to. Perfect.

  Don’t scream. Do. Not. Scream. The screamer is always the first to go in slasher movies. She rolled her eyes. Slasher movies? What the hell! Get a grip and do something.

  Amanda tried to ignore the approaching footsteps, ticking through her options at lightning speed. The self-defense advice she’d recently Googled rushed back. When faced with immediate danger, the blogger had advised, launch an offensive and then run like hell.

  Sounded like a plan.

  The dryer appeared to be her only potential weapon, so she mustered her nerve, gripped the dryer like a baseball bat and assumed a stance that would’ve made Hank Aaron proud.

  Google had never let her down before. Well, except for the bad directions to the cabin. But to be fair, Garmin hadn’t found the place either, so Google should get a pass. She rolled her eyes again. Who gives a crap about Google or Garmin? Take control and say something, anything, damn it!

  Amanda cleared her throat and felt a little dizzy as she shouted, “Who’s there?” She’d done her best to channel the I’m-in-charge-here tone—the one she trotted out during boardroom altercations—but she didn’t quite succeed and so she added a fib for good measure. “I’m not alone in here!”

  Lame. Super lame. Everyone knows the horror movie chick who claims she isn’t alone, is. Why did I le
t Kate drag me to so many horror movies?

  Amanda drew in a sharp breath and—as the footsteps went ominously silent—she envisioned Jack Nicholson in The Shining, limping down the hall and dragging his bloody ax.

  She stifled a shriek, which came out sounding more like a kitten’s mew.

  Out of options, Amanda made a deal with her maker. She’d never complain about her thirtieth birthday, ever again. Hell, she wouldn’t even whine about her mountain of debt. Just let the crazed serial killer turn around and leave.

  He can take whatever he wants, but it would be great if he left the wine. Oh, and my laptop.

  Still posed like Hank Aaron, she shuffled away from the door, resisting an urge to cower in the corner. Please don’t let me be chopped into little pieces. Big pieces either. No pieces.

  A familiar male voice drawled, “Well if you’ve got company, then I suggest you make yourselves decent or this is about to get really embarrassing . . . for all of us.”

  The door swung open.

  Amanda blinked and her stomach dropped. Jake Lowell. What the hell? He’s supposed to be in Iraq. Given a choice, she’d rather face the serial killer or have a Here’s Johnny moment with Jack Nicholson.

  Amanda let the blow dryer drop to her side but her grip on the makeshift weapon tightened as he sauntered in. He made a show of glancing around as he said, “You look alone to me” —he gestured toward the vanity— “unless you shoved your friend into one of those cabinets.”

  No, no, no! Amanda squeezed her eyes shut. This was too much on top of everything else going wrong in her life. Maybe her debt problems had finally gotten to her. Maybe she was having a nervous breakdown. What was a nervous breakdown, anyway? If it meant conjuring up the image of your ex—otherwise known as the devil incarnate—the man who should be half a world away at the moment, then yes, she experienced a nervous breakdown.

  Just before she opened her eyes, she incanted a silent prayer that she’d imagined him, like some sort of dark illusion. She opened her eyes and frowned. The flesh and blood Jake—all six foot one hunkified love ‘em and leave ‘em inches—stood before her, looking immensely pleased with himself.