Free A Deal With the Devil by Abby Matisse Page B

I can. Plus, I’m all he has.”
    “Yes and because of that, he takes advantage of you,” Kate said and then she raised her voice with each word she said next. “Now—and I’m saying this with love—stop . . . being . . . a . . . pushover !”
    “Stop yelling,” Amanda said. “You’re making my head hurt.”
    “No. Your bad decisions are making your head hurt,” Kate continued at a slightly-lower decibel. “Promise you’ll tell him no.”
    Amanda pursed her lips and tried to decide if she could make such a promise.
    Kate’s voice took on her commander-in-chief edge as she said, “Promise me.”
    “I promise I’ll consider it,” Amanda hedged.
    Kate sighed and sounded weary as she said, “We both know what consider means.” She paused briefly. “Okay, where would you get the money?”
    “I was just thinking that maybe I should agree to Jake’s deal. I mean, it’s only a fake engagement, right?”
    “No! I suggested you go agree to his deal so you could get money to pay off your debts; not get more money to give to Rob .”
    “Maybe it’s a way to do both.”
    Kate groaned. “But you shouldn’t do both! I swear; you just don’t get it. Promise you won’t do anything until we have a chance to talk through your options in person.”
    Tired of the conversation, Amanda said what she knew her friend wanted to hear. “I promise.” But in truth, she didn’t have any intention of waiting. She would think it through and then she’d move forward in whatever manner she deemed best, just as she always did. And in all matters—except those involving her brother—the approach tended to work well.
    It’s not like she had a ton of options. At this point, Jake’s proposal appeared to be her most immediate—if not only—path to zero debt.
    The bedroom door opened upstairs.
    “He’s coming,” Amanda whispered as Jake jogged down the steps. “I have to go. Call you later.” She hung up just as Jake appeared beside her.
    “What’s wrong with your head?” He gestured to the peas lying on her forehead.
    She sat up, thrust her leg onto the ottoman and moved the bag from her forehead to her ankle. “I have a headache,” she mumbled.
    “Need some aspirin?”
    She shook her head.
    Jake dropped into the chair across from her. “The snow stopped.”
    “Can we leave now?” She sat up straighter and the surge of hope Jake’s words brought magically healed her throbbing headache.
    “I think we have to. We’ll run out of wood and food in the next few days and if it gets any colder, the snow will turn to ice and if that happens,” —he spread his arms wide and shrugged— “who knows how long we’ll be stuck here.”
    Amanda didn’t need to hear anything more. She shot off the couch, wincing as pain radiated from her ankle to her thigh, but she pushed through it and hobbled determinedly toward the stairs. “Let’s go.”
    Even if they ended up in a ditch again, eventually they’d get pulled out, at which point she could find a hotel room. She wished she’d thought of that yesterday because if she had, they wouldn’t have been stuck here together last night, he wouldn’t have proposed and for the past hour she wouldn’t have been sitting there actually considering such a ludicrous idea. Jake’s engagement idea equated to sheer lunacy and she needed to get the hell out of here while she still possessed a shred of sanity and before she did something stupid, like agree to go along with it.
    “The body shop called. My Escalade checks out, so we’ll swing by to pick it up and then we’ll head back to Chicago.”
    An hour later, Amanda waited in the driver’s seat as Jake locked the front door. Then he jogged down the steps and slid into the passenger seat. After securing his seat belt, he pulled a slip of paper from his jacket and referred to it as he punched an address into the car’s GPS system.
    She didn’t bother telling him the Garmin didn’t work out here in the boonies. As the