Courting Mortality (Brothers of Fate Book 1) by Allyson Lindt Page A

hers when he sat on the edge of her desk. “The odds are, the more times I ask, the better my chances you’ll say yes.”
    Eli had stepped in on Marley’s behalf the first dozen or so times this had happened, but she’d asked him to stop, and said she could handle it herself. Even now, he had to force himself not to say something.
    He’d tried to tell himself it wasn’t jealousy. He knew it was, though. Even if he couldn’t have Marley, everything about her called to him, and most of the time, it took all of his restraint not to step in on her behalf when some unworthy dickhole hit on her.
    “Game theory doesn’t work that way.” She sat up, and moved her chair back a few inches. “The odds are the same, every time you roll the dice. Besides, no-chance-in-hell multiplied by not-in-this-lifetime-or-the-next will always equal zero.”
    Eli couldn’t completely hide his smirk, and had no desire to hold back his pointed reminder. “Don’t you ever work?”
    Loki winked at him, before turning back to Marley. “I’ll be back another day.”
    There were lots of things Eli was grateful for, and at the top of the list was that his brother owned his own antique store, instead of working for the family business.
    Some days Eli questioned why a family of gods—his family—did something as banal as running an insurance underwriting firm. Logically, he got it. Over the centuries, as their followers had dwindled and life had become more structured, Eli and his family had to do something to stay busy. The demand for miracles, and the destruction of entire sects of opposing tribes, had really sloped off. Since Eli’s father, and really most of his family, were gifted with the ability to control the elements, they knew more about acts of God than almost anyone, so they’d just gravitated toward insurance.
    Marley spun in her chair the moment Loki was gone. She tucked a strand of black hair behind her ear. “I don’t suppose you’re in such a splendid mood because my cable came in?”
    Her teasing pulled him back into the conversation, and reminded him of why he was actually at her desk. “About that.”
    Her brows knit together, and she studied him for a minute. “Good thing I don’t have a hot date tonight.”
    He agreed, though his reasons didn’t have anything to do with work. He beat back the emotional response to her retort. Even if she wasn’t vehemently opposed to getting involved with people from work, hell, even if he wasn’t her boss, his fate wouldn’t let him do more than relegate her to daydreams. “The hubs came in. The cable and connectors weren’t with them. Tomorrow morning.”
    Her shoulders slumped. “We’ve got less than a week before the move.”
    He knew. Everyone knew. The countdown reminders went out every morning via email. Their branch of the company was moving into a new building over the Christmas break, which meant all the network wiring had to be in place before a single workstation was set up. As IT director, it was his job to make sure it got done, and he knew Marley could handle the work fine on her own. Or, she would’ve been able to, if she’d had the time they’d been promised months ago. No one could wire the entire place by themselves in just a few days. Sure, he could summon lightning, fly, and even heal people and sometimes bring them back from the brink of death. However, even as a god, he didn’t have the kind of power it would take to pull off a miracle like wiring and testing an entire building in a single day. He couldn’t make the cables appear out of thin air. He didn’t have the power to materialize them into the places they needed to be.
    “I’ll help.” He knew she wouldn’t let him do the work. It would be a blow to her pride. He wasn’t sticking her on the job alone, though. Not this late in the game. “We’ll probably have to pull an all-weekend shift, but I promise I’ll comp you for it.”
    She shook her head, but a smile had crept in, erasing