The NOLA Heart Novels (Complete Series)

by Maria Luis

  Slowly the heaviness faded and the quick tempo of her heart slowed to a normal pace. Lifting her head from the steering wheel, she leaned back in the driver’s seat. How long had she even sat in the car for?

  She unzipped her purse and fished around for her cellphone. One look at the home screen told her that she had one missed call from an unknown number, a voicemail, and two text messages. She double-tapped to open the texts. The first was from Anna, asking if Shaelyn still planned to come over the following night after work for girl time. She typed a quick “yeah, can’t wait!” and pressed the blue arrow to send. Spending a Friday night with Anna sounded like a lot more fun than anything else she would have been doing otherwise.

  The second text message was from an unknown number, a different number from the person who had called and left the voicemail. She opened the text, and the minute she scanned the black block letters, her heart flipped over in her chest.

  Get me a last name and I’ll take care of it - B

  Shaelyn reread the words one last time, and then dropped her phone into the cup holder. If she rode with a smile on her face the whole way home, she refused to acknowledge it.

  10

  “How was the tour the other night? For once Julian isn’t talking.”

  Shaelyn cradled her wine glass and pretended that she was A) pro-red and B) not a total Chardonnay girl. They were seated in Anna’s dining room, a pizza box laid open before them. No plates, just paper napkins.

  A classy affair, just the way Shaelyn liked it.

  “I’m surprised,” she told her cousin after sipping the incredibly rich Malbec. “He nearly lost it when he found out La Parisienne was a brothel in the early 1900s.”

  Anna’s blond brows lowered as she plucked an olive off her pizza and popped it into her mouth. “Wasn’t the tour supposed to be family friendly?”

  Nodding, Shaelyn snagged another pizza slice from the near-empty box. “Oh, definitely. I had to educate Julian on the meaning of the word ‘brothel.’”

  “Shae!” Anna’s mouth parted in shock. “Innocence is bliss.”

  “Actually I think it’s, ‘ignorance is bliss.’”

  “I’m going to stick with my version, and repeat: innocent, Shae. My boy is innocent.”

  Shaelyn helped herself to some more Malbec. Maybe her taste buds were mutating; it wasn’t awful. “Not so innocent,” she said around a mouthful of pizza crust. Crust first, inside last. Growing up, Brady had always eaten her crusts so that she wouldn’t waste food by tossing them out. “You do realize that he watches American Horror Story, right? Orgies, Anna. That’s so much worse.”

  Malbec sloshed over the rim of Anna’s glass when she plunked it down on the table. “He does not watch that show. I told him he had to wait till he was at least sixteen.”

  “You might want to sit down and repeat that convo.” Not that she thought it would matter—weren’t teenage boys supposed to test the waters? “He’s a good kid, Anna. I doubt you have to worry.”

  At that her cousin slid from her chair and moved into the kitchen. Over the sounds of rummaging, Anna called out, “You say that because you aren’t a mother yet.” Returning to the dining room, Anna put down a plastic container. She popped the lid to reveal Heaven itself in the form of bite-sized brownies.

  “God, you’re my favorite cousin,” Shaelyn gushed. She washed down the rest of her pizza with some wine before grabbing a brownie.

  “I’m your only cousin.”

  Shaelyn pointed her half-eaten brownie at Anna. “Doesn’t mean you can’t also be my favorite.”

  “Anyway,” Anna went on, ignoring Shaelyn with an eye roll, “I’m always worrying about Jules.”

  Slouched back in her chair, Anna was the poster billboard of Single Motherhood: bloodshot eyes, tired, blond hair scraped back in a black hair claw, and baggy clothes that failed to flatter the trim body beneath. This Anna was the polar opposite of Boutique-Owning Anna, who rocked stilettos and fashionable clothes as though she’d been born to be a cover model for Vogue.

  This was probably the opportune moment to bring up Tony, but . . . Shaelyn didn’t want to ruin the evening. Anna was the closest thing Shaelyn had to a friend in New Orleans, and damn it, it was nice to kick back and have pizza and drink wine. She could almost pretend that everything was normal.

  Like Julian hadn’t asked for Shaelyn to track down his father; like she hadn’t almost made out with Brady; like Carla, her dreaded ex-boss, hadn’t called and left a voicemail; like Meme Elaine hadn’t decided to dump the Lawrence familial home on Shaelyn. And who seemed to be as hearty as a horse, despite the doctor’s “orders” to take it easy and let her body recover at its own pace.

  Shaelyn’s temporary trip to New Orleans wasn’t feeling so temporary any longer.

  She promptly topped off her wine glass.

  “Don’t your parents help out?” she asked, partly to continue the conversation but also because she needed to get the hell out of her own head.

  “When they’re in town,” Anna said flatly. “Most of the time they travel.” She paused, slowly rotating her wrist as she watched the red liquid swirl around. “The other night was the first time I’d had a girls’ night in a while.”

  For a brief moment—so brief Shaelyn told herself that it wasn’t real—she felt a twinge of hurt.

  Unlike her popular cousin, Shaelyn had never had a million friends. Brady had been her confidante, her rock. After she’d left New Orleans, she’d had a lot of acquaintances. People with whom she went to bars with every so often, or with whom she’d caught the latest blockbuster.

  But Anna had real friends, who were there when things were good and when things went sour. Shaelyn had . . . well, she had Meme Elaine and Anna.

  If Meme Elaine were here to listen to Shaelyn’s pity party, she’d be the first to tell Shaelyn to get over herself. Elaine Lawrence was not the sort of woman to mince words.

  “What did y’all do?” Shaelyn asked.

  Anna waved an arm in the air—the general signal for you know, this and that. “Went to this chic bar. Chit-chatted and drank Prosecco.” Anna tossed back the rest of her wine. “Can I tell you something?”

  Shaelyn nodded, eager for once to be on the “in.” To be given exclusive information—to feel needed and trusted. She schooled her features into a mask of indifference, anything to shield the fact that she was seconds from begging if she could be invited to the next girls’ night. “Of course.”

  Anna’s blue gaze lifted from her empty wine glass to Shaelyn’s face. “I’m getting old.”

  “You’re definitely not. You’re only a year older than me, and I refuse to believe I’m aging.”

  Anna would not be dissuaded. “I am,” she exclaimed, pitching forward on her chair so that her elbows were planted on the table, the wine glass stem still clutched tightly in one hand. “I found a gray hair.”

  “You’ve only just found one?” Shaelyn laughed, pointing up to her own head when she added, “Found my first at twenty-six. I told my coworker to yank the bastard out and destroy the evidence.”

  “No, you don’t get it. I found one down there.”

  Despite the fact that the table obscured down there, Shaelyn found herself glancing at the surface of the mahogany table anyway. Oh. Oh. Were they at that age already?

  “Do you want to know how I found one?”

  She didn’t, not really, but a freaked out Anna had Shaelyn scrambling for an answer, so she hastily murmured, “Erm . . . you were showering?”

  Blue eyes narrowed with a frustration Shaelyn had never before witnessed in her cousin. Anna was the epitome of cool elegance and warm positivity. The woman was a unicorn. Her special type of breed of woman wasn’t supposed to exist in real life.

  “I found it because I haven’t gotten my pubes waxed in two—no, three—years!”

  Oh, God. Shaelyn’s gaze immediately sought out the bottle of Malbec sitting next to the pizza box, and wondered how bad it would look if she switc
hed out her glass for the real deal. Was there proper protocol for a situation like this?

  In the end, she was barely able to string two words together. “You’ve trimmed though, right? I mean, during the summer . . .”

  “Are you kidding? No way am I putting myself through a Brazilian when I’m the only one who’ll see it.”

  While Shaelyn applauded her cousin for sticking to her guns, she herself wasn’t the sort of woman to go au natural. Who would have guessed that gorgeous Anna wasn’t perfectly groomed every day of the year?

  Without preamble, Anna reached for the Malbec bottle and cradled it to her chest, effectively dissolving Shaelyn’s opportunity to have made the same play.

  So. Close.

  Shaelyn sighed with disappointment.

  “When I first gave birth to Jules, I was so naïve. I figured that my ex would want something to do with Julian but he refused. Then I thought I’d still be able to have a boyfriend if I ever met the right guy.”

  “There’s still time to meet him,” Shaelyn said with an encouraging smile, even as she stuffed a brownie in her mouth. Chocolate trumped wine, anyway.

  “That’s what I thought. But Julian was so young and I was so young, and I focused all of my attention on him—”

  “That’s because you’re a good mom.”

  “I figured that when he got a little older it might be okay if I went on a date or two, now and again. I tried when he was five. Didn’t work out so well. I was thinking of my baby the entire time, wondering if my mom was sneaking him Cheetos again.” Anna brought the bottle to her mouth and took a long swig. “It wasn’t the right time.”

  Shaelyn stared at her cousin, a little surprised to realize that this was the first heart-to-heart they’d ever had. As kids, Anna had had better things to do; as adults, Shaelyn hadn’t been around until recently. Except that . . .

  “Is that when you and Julian visited me?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” Anna lifted her shoulders in a halfhearted shrug. “I figured it might do me some good to get out of N’Orleans for a bit. Since I couldn’t bear to leave Jules behind, I took him with me.” Her features visibly brightened as though the memories were a day old. “I always thought Bourbon Street was flashy but it’s nothing next to Times Square.”

  Shaelyn rather thought that Times Square was just as much of a tourist trap as Bourbon, if not worse.

  “Julian was nine when one of my girlfriends set me up on a blind date. Markus was cute. Not Chris Hemsworth hot, but he was nice and . . . I was desperate to get laid, Shae.”

  “Understandable.” Shaelyn got it. She’d gone without for four years herself. That conscious decision to go without had gone into place right around the time she’d grown tired of men thinking that a trip to her bedroom was a given if they dated her. It wasn’t.

  Her almost kiss with Brady had been the first time in years that she’d been tempted (though still incredibly nervous) to accept what a man was offering. Which was why minutes after leaving Brady’s office, she’d questioned her sanity for throwing away the best offer she’d had in years.

  In the last twenty-four hours, she hadn’t stopped thinking about him putting her in handcuffs, which meant that he was getting under her skin, which meant that she was one bad mistake away from making the mother load of bad mistakes.

  Letting Brady Taylor fuck her till Kingdom Come.

  Wine. She needed wine. She motioned to her cousin to pass over the bottle, but Anna must’ve been too lost in her own memories because she didn’t even notice Shaelyn trying to snag the Malbec from her grasp.

  Another brownie it was, then. Her gym shorts were never going to fit again.

  “He wasn’t even good,” Anna was saying, “And when we were having sex, he did this weird thing where he didn’t even move.”

  Shaelyn lifted a brow. “What do you mean he didn’t move?”

  “Oh, I don’t even know.” Anna combed her manicured fingers through her blond hair, then seemed to remember that it was pulled back in a claw. She left it the way it was—messy and slightly crazy. “Anytime he tried to move, he made this awkward scooping motion with his hips instead.”

  “Scooping?”

  “Yeah, like . . . ” Lifting a hand from the wine bottle, Anna made a cupping motion. “I think he thought he was thrusting, and maybe my inexperience clouded the whole thing, but, girl . . . I felt like he was trying to decide how many scoops of ice cream he wanted. If you’re wondering, the answer was four.”

  Shaelyn tried not to laugh. She did, really, but— “Oh, my God.” She mimicked Anna’s hand motion and immediately dissolved into a fit of laughter that left her clutching her belly. “I can’t,” she exclaimed, “I can’t. My cheeks hurt.”

  Morosely, Anna muttered, “It’s just not fair.”

  “You’re right,” Shaelyn giggled. “No one should have to go through ice-cream-scooping sex.”

  Anna’s forehead dropped to the table with an audible thunk. “I’m going to die an old spinster with gray pubes at the age of thirty-one.”

  “Hey, I thought you said you only found one gray hair.”

  One hand tore away from the Malbec to flip Shaelyn the bird.

  “Maybe it’s time for you to get back out there,” Shaelyn suggested as she went for another brownie, officially having given up on limiting herself. “Shake off the old memories and branch out into different food groups.”

  Lifting her head from the table, Anna muttered, “I hate you.”

  “I would have thought so,” she said with completely honesty, “but then you spilled your darkest secrets.”

  The open expression on her cousin’s face shuttered, and Shaelyn had the sneaking suspicion that Anna was hiding something, and whatever that something was, it was pretty substantial.

  Did it have something to do with Julian’s dad, Tony?

  Julian’s request to have her find his father hit her square in the chest, reminding her that she had her own secret to hide.

  Only, she didn’t want it to be a secret. She didn’t want to lie to her cousin, her only real friend. And yet, you don’t want to hit her with such a big whammie after she’s already spilled her guts.

  All true. The way she saw it, she could either work Tony into the conversation real slow, or she could pop him in like she was ripping off a bandage. No option was the better option, and Shaelyn decided to just get it over with.

  “Listen,” she started slowly. Anna seemed to realize that whatever Shaelyn was about to say held some level of importance because she placed the Malbec bottle on the table.

  Shaelyn grabbed the plastic cover from the brownie container, fiddling with it so she had something to keep herself preoccupied—a nervous habit she’d developed in the last few years.

  “When Julian and I were at the tour the yesterday, he asked me about something.”

  Dread entered Anna’s gaze. “He wants to have sex, doesn’t he?” she whispered. “He’s only thirteen. He hasn’t asked about the birds and the bees but—”

  “Does anyone even call it the ‘birds and the bees’ anymore?”

  “It’s only a matter of time. He’s got some older friends on his football team. Maybe he feels like he’s got to act like he’s older and hook up with different girls? He hasn’t even had his first kiss yet, I don’t think.” Anna stopped, her palm jumping to cover her mouth. “What if he wants to try drugs, Shae? What if he’s— I’ll kill him.”

  Good Lord. Shaelyn hadn’t wanted to throw the dreaded F-word around like this, but no way could she have her cousin thinking that her son was a thirteen-year-old delinquent.

  Holding up a hand, she ordered, “Stop.”

  Surprisingly, Anna’s mouth clamped shut on cue. Her blue eyes were wide and worried, and there was no telling what her next move might be if Shaelyn didn’t head her off.

  “Anna, Julian wants to know who his father is.”

  It was obvious that was the last thing Anna had expected to hear. Her mouth parted and she p
hysically crumpled. Blue eyes squeezed shut, shoulders drooping like a wilted flower, and the word “fuck” was exhaled on a loud and shuddered breath.

  Shaelyn hurried to add, “I’m sorry. I didn’t how to bring it up. I mean, is there a right way to bring something like this up?”

  “It’s okay. It’s . . . fine.”

  It wasn’t fine. Shaelyn could see that easily enough. For a split second, she wondered if she had made the right decision. Maybe she shouldn’t have said anything at all. Except that Shaelyn hated lying, and she’d done more than her fair share of it in the last few years. She’d hoped to come back to New Orleans and start over.

  Clearly she’d failed on that front with Brady, but with her own family? No, she had to stick straight and true.

  Anna inhaled, her shoulders inching up high, before she expelled all the tension in one breath. “Tell me what happened.”

  Shaelyn hesitated. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, just tell me.”

  So, she did. She left out no details, even rounding out the whole story by explaining how Julian had suggested that Brady help her.

  “Are you serious?” Anna demanded, a grin finally making its way back to her face. “You went to Brady and actually asked for his help?”

  Nodding, Shaelyn tossed the plastic container top onto the table. She’d crinkled it completely; it wasn’t even usable. She eyed the brownies and sighed. Guess she was gonna have to take one for the team and finish them off.

  “How was that?” Anna pressed. “Does he still think you’re engaged?”

  “Eh . . . Not quite.”

  With her brow arched and her chin resting on a balled fist, Anna was clearly intrigued. “So?” she prompted when Shaelyn said nothing.

  “Things got a little heated, all right? I mean, I may have let my mouth run a little bit, and I may have pretended Ben Beveau cheated on me, thus ruining our fake relationship.”

  Anna sucked a breath in between her teeth. “Ooh, low blow.”

  This time when Shaelyn reached for a brownie she did so to soothe her guilt. “I know.”