by Maria Luis
“What should a New Orleans woman drink to?” Shaelyn asked. She liked football well enough, but she certainly didn’t want her first toast going to a stupid sport.
Mr. Arthur drummed his fingers on the chair’s armrest. “First loves,” he finally drawled. “The kind that stays with you until you’re old and gray like me.”
Her cheeks burned at the suggestion and she tried not to look at Brady. She tried so, so hard not to let him see that she had a crush on him, except that Shaelyn wasn’t all that good of a liar and Brady knew her better than anyone. They’d been best friends since diapers.
“Y’all ready?”
Shaelyn heard Brady audibly swallow.
“Bottom’s up!”
She and Brady had started dating six months later.
Now, as she looked up at her fake fiancé, Shaelyn had to wonder if Mr. Arthur hadn’t been referring to his own first love. Because she was pretty sure that if Meme Elaine hadn’t had a bone to cross with Mr. Arthur’s wife, Shaelyn wouldn’t be faking an engagement right now. She didn’t need a man to make her happy, and she definitely didn’t need a man to prove her desirability to an ex. Despite the fact that the ex was hot as hell, even while wearing a dress.
“Code red.”
Shaelyn cut a sharp glance to Ben. “What?”
“Code. Red.”
“You see him?” She’d barely turned to scour the crowd for Brady before Ben caught her by the waist and hauled her up against his side.
And then, right after he muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “five grand,” he leaned down and laid one on her.
Something twisted in the pit of Brady Taylor’s gut at the sight of his ex-girlfriend kissing a stranger. It wasn’t jealousy—Brady didn’t do jealous—but maybe he could call it awareness. Made sense. It was only natural that he’d feel some sort of weird knee-jerk reaction to seeing her with somebody else.
Although from what his grandmother had told him, Shaelyn wasn’t just involved with the guy. She was engaged.
He halted a few feet from the scene and cleared his throat. Loudly. The pair broke apart, rewarding Brady with his first glimpse of his ex since she’d fled Louisiana when they were eighteen. He was surprised to find that she didn’t look all that different: same curly, chestnut hair, same hazel eyes, same cool smirk on her red lips that had always spelled Trouble for him. On closer inspection he noticed that her frame was curvier. Her waist flared into full hips that begged to be gripped and—
Brady shook his head to dispel the image. He purposely didn’t look in Shaelyn’s direction when he said, “I hear congratulations are in order.”
“Congratulations?”
Brady’s gaze flicked from the fiancé to Shaelyn. “Your engagement?”
“Right! Our engagement!” The fiancé flung his right arm around Shaelyn’s shoulders and squeezed. “We’re so lucky to have found each other. Right, cupcake?”
Even if Brady hadn’t been a cop for the New Orleans Police Department for eight years, and a homicide detective for the last five of those, there was no way he could have missed Shaelyn’s pained expression. Problem was, he couldn’t tell if her pursed lips were on account of having to talk to him or because she disliked the pet name. Brady studied her. Those hazel eyes of hers said it all: if she could skewer him where he stood, he’d be served to the rest of his grandparents’ guests like a kabob.
“Sorry, I haven’t introduced myself.” Brady slid his gaze to Shaelyn. Waited to see if she might actually do the honors herself. When it was clear she had no intentions of playing nice, he said, “I’m Brady Taylor. Shae and I go way back.”
Back so far that there was an old picture of the two of them naked in a bathtub together. They’d been three and you couldn’t go much further back than that.
“Ben Beveau.” The man stuck out his left hand, and the gold band on his ring finger didn’t escape Brady’s notice. His gaze flicked to Shaelyn, focusing on the left hand wrapped tightly around a glass of sweet tea. Saw clearly that while her fiancé’s ring finger bore an expensive, shiny gold ring, hers remained unadorned.
Jesus. How had Shaelyn gotten herself involved in one of those pansy relationships? Call him old-fashioned, but Brady was a firm believer in the tradition of certain things. When it came down to a marriage proposal between a man and a woman, the man did the asking.
Brady reached up to readjust his ball cap, then slid his hand into the front pocket of his Levi’s. “I’m sure the proposal was memorable.”
Beveau squeezed Shaelyn’s shoulder again. “Very memorable. Right, cupcake?”
Shaelyn’s expression pinched. “Very.”
Brady didn’t like the way the sound of her husky voice teased sensations of hot, wet kisses to the forefront of his memory. Didn’t like the way he could so easily recall her whispering naughty things in his ear. “Tell me all about it,” he said, mainly in an effort to distract himself from memories of them together in bed.
Shaelyn blanched. “What?”
He smiled slowly. “How did you propose?”
Bringing the sweet tea to her lips, Shaelyn sucked it down like she wished it were something stronger. No doubt his grandparent’s strict no-hard-liquor policy was killing her.
“It was romantic.” Her gaze settled on something beyond his left shoulder, all squinty-eyed. “Ben brought me out to dinner—my favorite seafood place—and he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.”
A quick look at Ben Beveau showed that the man was smiling and nodding. “Shaelyn is pescetarian,” he said, as though Brady gave a damn.
He tucked his thumb into the belt loop of his jeans. Not that he wasn’t interested about her eating habits, but . . . “So, he proposed at dinner?”
“After dinner.” She cut a swift glance at him. Hastily looked away again. “It was nice.”
“Nice” was a trip to the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans’ Uptown neighborhood. “Nice” was a cold beer after a hectic day at work.
“Nice” didn’t cut it when it came to marriage proposals.
So, she wanted to pretend that Beveau had done the asking. Usually Brady would have let the matter drop. Unless he was on duty, Brady wasn’t a tenacious sort of guy. He preferred to sit back, crack open a beer, and watch football. Despite the Saints’ losses over the last few seasons—all right, except for that one miraculous season in ’10 when they’d won the Super Bowl and he’d cried tears of joy—Brady’s loyalty to the football team never wavered.
Okay, maybe he was a bit tenacious and maybe there was something about Shaelyn kissing someone else that burrowed under his skin. And so maybe there was a logical reason as to why he opened his mouth and said, “Did you foot the dinner bill, too, or did that ring on Beveau’s finger wipe you out?”
Shaelyn’s red lips parted just as Beveau groaned and stuffed his left hand into his pocket.
With a pointed look at Beveau, Brady drawled, “No need to hide it, man. I’m sure they do it differently up—where did y’all meet again?”
“New York,” Shaelyn bit out.
He didn’t have to hear the tension in her voice to know that she was furious. Her hazel eyes were verging on a mossy green, and if Brady remembered one thing about Shaelyn Lawrence, it was that when hazel morphed into green, she was seconds away from nailing him in the balls.
He stood his ground and returned her steely glare with an arch of his brow. She’d always hated when he did that—God, could you at least try not to be a jerk today? she used to demand right before he kissed her senseless.
Brady didn’t think she’d be too keen on receiving one of his kisses right now, even without considering the whole engagement factor.
“There’s no need to hide it. You’re among friends”—at this, Shaelyn snorted derisively—“but let me give you a bit of advice.” Brady pushed the bill of his hat up with his index finger and leaned in close. “Leave the ring bit out, and maybe just stick to that real nice story of a proposal at your favori
te restaurant.”
Brady didn’t give either of them a chance to speak, and honestly he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what Shaelyn had to say. He’d moved on years ago.
Once more with the less-than-genuine congratulations spiel and Brady was already stepping away, seeking out his grandmother to say his good-byes.
He was suddenly filled with the need to drive away as fast as possible, to throw himself into endless work until he could push away the image of Beveau bent over Shae, his mouth on hers. Brady had never been one to keep his head on straight where Shaelyn Magnolia Lawrence was concerned. Apparently twelve years hadn’t diluted his attraction to her.
Much to his disappointment.
One thing was clear, though. He’d been an ass and he was going to have to apologize. Brady only hoped that he could keep his loose tongue in check the next time around.
In the interim, he planned to dig a little deeper into Ben Beveau’s history. That panicked look on Beveau’s face was all Brady needed to know that something wasn’t quite right. Either the man was actually embarrassed about the fact that his fiancée had done the ring-popping or he was hiding something. Fortunately, Brady’s job with the NOPD supplied the necessary resources to discover what that something might be.
Four hours later and Shaelyn was still furious. Oh, she’d put on a friendly façade after her encounter with Brady. She’d greeted family friends whom she hadn’t seen in years, held a perfectly boring conversation with Mary Taylor, and drank three flutes of champagne too many.
After talking with Brady, she’d needed something a whole lot stiffer than sweet tea. Problem was, Shaelyn wasn’t much of a champagne drinker. One minute she’d been standing next to her pretend fiancé and drowning her fury in Dom Perignon, and in the next she was tossing up three glasses of the bubbly and her breakfast into a birds-of-paradise plant.
Not her finest moment.
Not the birds-of-paradise’s either, which hadn’t looked so much like paradise right then.
It was official—Brady Taylor brought out the worst in her.
“This is all your fault,” she told her grandmother, as she lay sprawled on the couch, her exposed skin sticking to the plastic furniture cover that should have been ditched in the 1970s.
Meme Elaine didn’t need further elaboration because she picked up the remote and lowered the sounds of What Not to Wear to a low hum. “Did I force the champagne down your throat?”
“No, but you did set me up with a married man.”
“An exaggeration, cher.” Meme Elaine exchanged the black TV remote for another. Pushing one of the buttons, Shaelyn’s grandmother settled in as the brown leather La-Z Boy—also furnished with plastic coverings—reclined to horizontal. “All I’ve done is help you to show Brady that you’ve moved on.”
Shaelyn swung her legs from the couch’s armrest to the gray carpet. With a pitiful moan she clutched her head and cursed Dom Perignon. How could something so expensive make her feel like a Mack truck had hit her after an all-night boozer on Bourbon, New Orleans’ most famous party street?
Deep breaths; in through the nose and out through the mouth. No more champagne—ever. “Meme, that’s the problem. I have moved on.”
“I’m not sure that he has.”
Shaelyn’s wayward heart kicked up its pace before she kicked the unwanted emotion to the curb. “I think you were the one to have too much to drink,” she muttered.
“Do we need to revisit what happened today?”
Total humiliation. Shaelyn preferred if they never mentioned it again.
She planted her elbows on her knees and clasped her hands together. “Listen, Meme,” she began in as accommodating of a tone as she could muster given her raging headache, “I appreciate your . . . help, but today was a mess. I’m already the resident screwup. I really don’t need that sort of attention.”
Meme Elaine’s lips pursed. “You have a roof over your head, your health, a job—what more could you want?”
That was part of the problem. Shaelyn had no idea what she wanted; she only knew that she didn’t want to relive her NYC days. In the meantime, selling crotch-less panties, lacy bras, and nightgowns at her cousin’s French Quarter lingerie boutique was definitely preferable to the nature of her previous job. Just the thought of it sent a tremor of anxiety down her spine.
Shaelyn’s fingers dug into her thighs.
“You like working with Anna, don’t you?” Meme Elaine pressed curiously. “You girls haven’t spent all that much time together in years.”
Anna was Shaelyn’s older cousin through her mama’s side of the family. Growing up, their one-year age difference might as well have been twenty. Anna, with her sleek, blond hair and baby-doll blue eyes, had always been fashionable and perfect. She’d been a debutante, the teachers’ pet, and a cheerleader. Naturally.
Then she’d gotten knocked up during her freshmen year at Tulane. At the time, Shaelyn had been a senior in high school, but she could still vividly recall her mama’s horror at the news.
“Dropped right on out,” Charlotte had said as she scrubbed the dishes in the sink. “The boyfriend dropped her first. Guess he wasn’t interested in being a daddy.”
Drying the dishes with a towel, Henry Lawrence stacked them high on the counter. “Never would have thought Anna to be the one to end up pregnant.”
Had they expected that of Shaelyn? Her and Brady were always very, very careful.
“My sister is furious. That’s what happens when you stop attending church, I said.”
Henry hadn’t said anything, but that was only because his faith came nowhere near his wife’s dedication to Scripture.
Charlotte went on robustly, ignoring her husband’s silence. “So I asked her, what will you do? Will you let Anna stay in your home? Dorothy said she has no plans of kicking out her only child. But now Anna is working down in the Quarter at some naughty boutique and, Lord, I never once thought I would see that girl selling unmentionables to the general public.”
What would her mama do, Shaelyn wondered now, if Charlotte knew that her only child was working for Anna and selling unmentionables to the general public right along with her? Anna now owned La Parisienne, and her son, Julian, was thirteen years old.
Shaelyn was utterly grateful for Anna offering her a position, and she and Anna got along surprisingly well. It was just that . . .
Shaelyn felt her throat tightening up, just as it always did when she thought about the looming responsibilities lying ahead of her. Inheriting the family home was more than she needed, and certainly more than she’d ever wanted. And it certainly required more monetary funds than her position at La Parisienne earned her every two weeks.
Closing her eyes, Shaelyn rubbed her temples. She’d figure it out. Meme Elaine’s only wish was for the house to continue through the generations. Shaelyn was it. She just had to remind herself that this unexpected inheritance did not mean New Orleans had to be it for her—she didn’t have to stay forever.
“It’ll be fine,” she heard herself say out loud, as though her hands weren’t clammy from the stress and her toes weren’t curling into the rug in a futile effort to ground herself.
“‘Course it will be fine.” Meme Elaine cracked a smile, then reached forward to grab the TV remote from the table. After a moment, she clucked her tongue. “Would you look at that?” she demanded. “What sane women wears spandex at her age?”
Shaelyn figured it was best not to point out that her grandmother had no room to talk when it came to questionable wardrobes.
“Oh!” her grandmother exclaimed, pointing the TV remote at Shaelyn. “I meant to tell you earlier, but a woman called for you yesterday while you were at work.”
“Here?” Shaelyn couldn’t think of anyone to whom she might have given the landline number. “Did she leave a name?”
Meme Elaine’s attention remained focused on the show’s hosts throwing hangers of Spandex into a large, metal trash bin. “A Carla-something. Carla Winter
? Carla Ritter?”
No. Shaelyn swallowed past the bundle of dread climbing her throat. Had she given Carla her new phone number? She was positive that she hadn’t. Carla Ritter was nice . . . for a ballsy woman who ran the sort of business establishment that she did. But Shaelyn had left New York City for New Orleans, and her two weeks’ notice had been closer to four. No way did she owe Carla anything.
“You know her, cher?” Meme Elaine asked. “She seemed real nice, had a sweet Southern accent.”
“No,” Shaelyn lied, “Never heard of her.”
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Acknowledgments
Once upon a time, I once thought that a book could be successful on its own merit.
…We don’t really need to mention how ridiculous of an idea this is, right??
I cannot even stress how many people I owe thanks to for helping me to pull together SIN BIN into what it is today.
Viper, you are kickass. I can’t even stress how thankful I am that you agreed to be my beta reader. For as long as I’m writing, you are more than welcome to stare over my shoulder and watch me type, creepily or not. You don’t even have to ask. You are amazing!!!
So much thanks goes out to Najla, my cover designer, of Najla Qamber Designs. I may be able to write a book, but I have no talent when it comes to book design and I never want to try. Thank you for always taking my jumbled requests and giving me a product that was exactly what I wanted. Even more, thank you, thank you, thank you, for making the girl’s hair on the cover brown and making her into the perfect Zoe!
Kathy, you are such an amazing editor and I cannot stress enough how grateful I am to have found you. I’m not kidding when I say that I need to make a ‘What Would Kathy Do?’ t-shirt. When I write, you are constantly in my head (in a non-creepy way, of course), so that I always keep in mind your words of wisdom. Also, one day I promise I will get colloquialisms right on the first round. Thus far, I’ve failed epically, but I’m sure I’ll get there at some point! LOL.