by Maria Luis
That night with her had been the hottest and most sensual in his entire life. His former, high school self had desired Shaelyn. How his body reacted to her now completely blew their past out of the water. He craved the sounds of her heady moans and quiet whimpers; he craved the feel of her skin flush against his.
He craved more than she was willing to give, apparently, because while he’d been thinking that the feel of her in his arms felt a lot like fate, she’d turned cold on him so fast he’d suffered whiplash.
Brady stared at his beer, even as his mind’s eye brought forth the lonely image of Shaelyn huddled in his living room on the phone. In almost the span of a single breath, he’d watched her deflate before his very eyes. And in her eyes, well, he’d seen nothing but pure, undiluted panic.
Before he could offer comfort, she’d shut him out. Shaelyn was a shitty actor, and he hadn’t believed her lame “this is a mistake” excuse for even a minute. He might have, if she hadn’t sunk into his touch by the front door.
Either way, he meant what he’d said—he was done playing her games. Her wishy-washy, back-and-forth shtick had gotten him nowhere. He was over it, while not exactly over her. It seemed that with Shae, he was destined to have the equilibrium of a Jenga puzzle. Brady frowned and took a drink of his beer.
“Hey! Y’all got started without me?”
Brady glanced over his shoulder to see Danvers picking his way through the tables. When he reached the bar, the younger detective dropped into the empty seat beside Brady. “What are you drinking?”
“Irish Channel.”
Danvers nodded in apparent approval. “Good choice. How ‘bout you?” The question was directed at Luke, who sat on Brady’s other side.
Luke looked down at his whiskey and then up at Danvers. “Who are you?”
Brady rolled his eyes at his best friend’s inability for basic social interactions. Luke didn’t have to try much with women thanks to his good looks, and Brady suspected that Luke got along with his brothers-in-arms thanks to living together for so long, but otherwise? Luke had all the social graces of a rampaging bull, with much less enthusiasm.
“Luke, this is Danvers. We work together in homicide. Danvers, this shithead is Luke. Don’t expect decent conversation out of him unless a woman with breasts magically appears. He’s on leave.”
As Danvers hailed down the bartender, he turned to Luke and Brady and deadpanned, “How ‘bout a man with breasts? They acceptable too?”
Out of his peripheral, Brady saw Luke slam down his whiskey glass and then point his finger at Danvers. “You know, I like you.”
Danvers nodded, handing over his credit card when the bartender passed him a drink. “I’m contagious.”
Brady held up his hands in a universal hold on now gesture. “Before y’alls bromance blossoms and you start picking out wedding invitations . . . what the hell is that?”
Luke shoved Brady back slightly with a palm to the shoulder so that he could see, too. When he noticed the cocktail with the rainbow-colored papier-mâché umbrella bobbing in the pink liquid, he said, “Bromance is over. What the fuck is that?”
“This?” Danvers plucked the mini umbrella out of the drink and placed it on his black napkin. “It’s a Sex on the Beach.”
“I’ve had sex on the beach,” Luke said, “and there was nothing but sand in awkward places.”
Lifting the girly cocktail to his mouth, Danvers tipped his head back and drank a healthy swallow. Resetting his drink back on the napkin he’d been given, he offered, “You did it wrong, then. You’re supposed to have sex in the water. The sand is abrasive to the skin.”
Luke swiveled his head to stare at Brady. “Where did you find this guy?”
Danvers picked up the umbrella and twirled it between his fingers. “Technically, the NOPD found me.” Leaning forward, he stood from the barstool just far enough to grab a packet of gum from his back pocket. “Before that, I guess you could say that the Marines found me.”
“You were in the Marines?”
“Semper Fi,” Danvers reverently murmured with a closed fist to his chest.
After that, Brady might as well have been invisible as his coworker and best friend debated whether the Rangers or Navy SEALs were the best special ops organization in the American military forces. Though he threw in random insults here and there to keep the conversation interesting, Brady couldn’t help but wonder what Shaelyn was doing at that exact moment.
At that exact moment, Shaelyn was contemplating different ways to murder her grandmother.
“Would you pass the cornbread, Shaelyn?” Mary Taylor asked from across the table. “I know I shouldn’t be having any more of this but I can’t help myself. It’s delicious, Elaine. Where did you buy it?”
Meme Elaine’s blue eyes squinted at her nemesis/best friend from behind her black frames. “Are you suggesting that I’m incapable of baking cornbread myself, Mary?”
Pressing a hand to her chest, Miss Mary exclaimed, “Why, of course not, Elaine.” She turned to her husband. “I would never. Right, Arthur?”
Brady’s grandfather made a congealed harrumph noise in his throat, and continued flicking off fried onions from his green bean casserole with his fork.
Apparently satisfied with her husband’s agreement, if one could call it that, Miss Mary shot Meme Elaine a triumphant look. “See? An honest mistake. I have no doubt that you spent all day cooking this entire dinner spread.”
Meme Elaine let out a similar-sounding harrumph as her old flame and then silence reigned over the dining room table.
“The dinner spread” had more selections than a four-person dinner party needed. There were sweet rolls and cornbread, green bean casserole and pasta salad, blackened red fish, roasted chicken, and pecan pie.
Not a single bit of it had been cooked by Elaine Lawrence. Nope, Shaelyn had done the dirty work, hitting up three different grocery stores to complete the list Meme had thrust at her.
After returning, she and her grandmother had spent the next hour and a half turning the ovens on—for heat effect, Meme Elaine explained—and re-plating every dish from their original plastic containers. Meme Elaine had then shoved a black trash bag in Shaelyn’s direction with the strict order to “destroy the evidence.”
So long as the Taylors decided to stay out of the city-issued garbage bins at the end of the driveway, they would never know that Elaine Lawrence was a cooking fraud and Shaelyn her accomplice.
Shaelyn felt Freckles rub against her leg, his fluffy tail swishing around her calf. Gently, she edged the cat away, only to feel sharp little claws sink into the top of her foot.
Holy—
She lurched up in the chair, biting back a curse that would horrify the Taylors.
She cut a piece of the salmon with her fork and, with a quick peek at their guests, Shaelyn dropped the fishy meat to the floor. An excited meow greeted her before she saw Freckles scamper into the kitchen, his tail wagging in the air.
Even the cat was plotting against her.
“It’s unfortunate that my dear Brady wasn’t invited to dinner,” Miss Mary said after sipping her champagne. “It would have been like the old days when the two of you were courting and we were all one big happy family.”
Arthur Taylor starting making his harrumphing noises at rapid speed; Meme Elaine looked on the verge of stabbing her old friend with the antique silver fish fork; as for her part, Miss Mary looked pleased.
Everyone at the table recognized the jab for what it was: Mary Taylor blamed the breakup on Shaelyn, as her own grandson was “infallible.”
Ha. If only she knew.
Shaelyn grabbed the stem of her own champagne glass and unceremoniously gulped half of the bubbly. “It’s been a long time.”
“Not so long.” The older woman tipped her head to the side as if in deep thought. “Your grandmother informed me that you were at his house the other night?”
Murder suddenly seemed too quick a fate for the matriarch of th
e Lawrence family. Shaelyn sent her grandmother a dirty look over the rim of her glass. In turn, the older woman lifted her shoulders in a helpless what can you do shrug.
“I had to discuss something with him, Miss Mary. I wasn’t there for long.”
Lies.
Better to lie than to admit that Mary Taylor’s grandson had been minutes away from fucking Shaelyn on top of his kitchen table.
She made a show of heaping more pasta salad onto her plate. “Delicious, Meme,” she said around a forkful of food. “Never would have known that this was store bought if I hadn’t picked it up myself.”
She watched as Meme Elaine’s mouth dropped open at the time Mr. Arthur pulled his white linen from his lap and began coughing uncontrollably into the fabric. If the dinner table had been the Cold War before, it definitely was WWIII now. She should have felt bad for throwing her grandmother under the bus, but . . . nope, not a single trace of guilt.
“No secrets between family, right?” Shaelyn said, smiling warmly at her grandmother and shifting forward to pat her sunspotted hand.
Meme Elaine yanked her hand away and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Grabbing the vodka by the handle from the center of the table, she popped the lid and made a new glass of her sweet-tea concoction. “If that’s the case, I should probably tell you that I invited Brady over for dinner.”
Shaelyn’s fish fork clattered to the porcelain plate. “You did what?”
Gesturing to the Taylors with her fork, Meme Elaine stabbed a piece of roasted chicken and shoveled it into her mouth. “Well, cher, you happened to come in a bit late—”
“I was working,” she ground out.
“So you missed a very heartfelt conversation between Mary and I—”
“I’m surprised you’re both still breathing.” At this, Mr. Arthur lost his composure and promptly excused himself from the room.
“And Mary hasn’t seen her grandson in weeks, not since their BBQ. So, I thought, why not invite him over for a late dinner? So we can all be a family again.”
Miss Mary nodded, murmuring, “Such a lovely, lovely surprise.”
The two women exchanged an unreadable glance. Shaelyn didn’t trust either of them. They were obviously in some sort of strange senior citizen cahoots plan, a plan that did not include anyone under the age of sixty-five.
Miss Mary grabbed another piece of cornbread from the woven, faux-bamboo basket. After slicing it in half and slathering it with a garlic-butter glaze (perhaps the only thing on the table Elaine Lawrence had prepared herself, save for her sweet-tea-vodka mix), Miss Mary fixed her attention on her friend. “What time did you say my grandson was arriving?”
Meme Elaine grabbed her cell phone off the table and waved it around. “Cher, how do I make it tell me the time again?”
“Do you have yourself an iPhone?” Miss Mary asked as she munched on the cornbread. “Brady purchased me one. Press the circular button.”
Clearly Shaelyn had taken a wrong turn somewhere and had ended up in an alternate universe. Then again, had anything been normal since she’d returned to New Orleans? It sure didn’t feel that way.
While the older women discussed the advantages of “cellular devices,” Shaelyn mentally prepared herself for Brady’s arrival.
They could be adults about the situation, couldn’t they? There was no reason to freak out about seeing him, no reason at all. So what if he’d had his hands on places where no other man had touched her in years, even through layers of clothing? It was nothing. It meant nothing. And as for that phone call—
There was no way for him to discover Carla Ritter’s identity.
Shaelyn figured an apology would probably help to soothe any hurt feelings. Ironic, wasn’t it, that since they’d reconnected a few weeks ago, they each had apologized for anything and everything but the one thing that had torn them apart years ago.
The soft whisper of Freckles’s tail brushed her skin again, disrupting her thoughts, and she used the top of her foot to push him away gently. “No, baby,” she murmured below her breath as she nudged him away. A low-keeled meow reached her ears seconds before her beloved—scratch that—monster of a cat launched his small body onto her calf and clung like a stripper to a pole, Jerry Springer style.
Two pairs of eyes locked on her when she scrambled up off the chair, shaking her leg to loosen Freckles’s grip. Freckles hung on for the joyride. Then, no doubt having realized that there was nothing to be gained from maiming his owner (besides personal vendetta), he released his front paws and free-sailed through the air. Landing gracefully on all fours, he looked at Shaelyn over one slim shoulder and then flared his tail in the air as he pranced away.
Miss Mary looked appropriately scandalized, if not somewhat amused. Her own grandmother, on the other hand, sardonically supplied, “We wouldn’t have this problem if you’d fed him to Chow, cher.”
Shaelyn didn’t even have time to respond. Behind her, a male’s voice drolly asked, “Are you resurrecting your dead dog, Miz Elaine?”
At the sight of Shaelyn wiggling her leg to free herself from her (clearly) demented cat, Brady couldn’t help but think that she looked damn cute. Shaelyn, that is, not the cat. All that jiggling about did fantastic things for her breasts.
On the heel of that thought came another: he wanted to go to her and protect her, even if it was from a damn feline.
And then one more: it wasn’t going to happen.
Brady was a man who pushed until he got what he wanted. But he was human like everyone else, and—although he might only admit it to himself—her two rejections stung like a bitch. That he wasn’t willing to strike out on a third round? He saw nothing unreasonable about that.
So although his eyes hungrily tracked her movements as she finally de-clawed herself from the Devil Cat, Brady headed toward his grandmother as if he hadn’t been on the brink of getting on his knees and begging Shaelyn to give them a chance.
Like he’d already said—not gonna happen.
He’d barely bussed Mary’s rouged cheek before she broke into her favorite lecture with a pointed finger. “You haven’t come to see me in weeks.”
Brady stifled a sigh. This was a conversation they had more often than not. “I’ve been working, Gran.”
Her blue eyes—a color eerily similar to his—followed him as he kissed Miz Elaine’s cheek and then took the empty seat at the end of the table.
“You work too much, Brady,” his grandmother protested.
He had no doubt that if he’d become a lawyer like she’d wanted, he would have worked even longer hours. Not because his job as a homicide detective was any less stressful or time-consuming—it definitely wasn’t—but because he would have procrastinated so badly that what should have taken him twenty minutes probably would have taken him an hour or more.
His single year as a Tulane pre-law major had been painful enough to show Brady that his strengths blossomed when he was out on the field and not saddled to a desk or stuck in a courtroom on a daily basis.
Although she would never say so outright, he knew his grandmother was disappointed in his career choice. Introducing your grandson as a cop didn’t sound nearly as prestigious as boasting that your grandson was a partner in Whatever-the-Fuck Firm.
Attempting to lighten the situation and ease the furrow pulling at his grandmother’s forehead, Brady fixed a strained smile on his face. “Tell that to my boss, Gran. He thinks you raised a lazy piece of sh—bum.”
Out of his periphery, he saw Shaelyn roll her eyes and mouth bum as she chugged her drink. Champagne, if he had to guess. Miz Elaine knew that his grandparents were the nose-up-in-the-air kind and she had obviously poured her best. As for her own drink, Brady figured Elaine Lawrence was drinking some of that sweet tea and vodka she liked so much.
Shaelyn’s grandmother was a creature of habit.
“Dear,” his own grandmother started again, “why don’t you reconsider letting your grandfather—”
“No.”<
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“No” was not in Mary Taylor’s vocabulary.
“But he could help.” She looked over her shoulder and then at the empty chair across the table from Brady. “Where did he go?”
“He fled the mayhem,” Shaelyn said as she ran her finger down the stem of the champagne flute. He swore he could feel her touch running the length of his back, or the length of his . . . . Brady threw up a No-Go Zone sign at those Rated R thoughts. He did not need to get a hard-on at the same table as his grandmother and her best friend, although sometimes he thought the clichéd term frenemies was more appropriate.
“Shaelyn, get the boy a plate and some utensils.” Miz Elaine looked pointedly in his direction. “I’m sure you’re hungry.”
“I could eat.”
“Do you ever not eat?” Shaelyn huffed as she pushed back her chair.
He waited until she glanced his way, until he held her full attention, before he drawled, “I’ve got to try everything at least once.”
The blush that colored her cheeks was like a white flag thrown up in the air with the football at the five-yard line during the last fifteen seconds of the fourth quarter. He’d put up a good offensive play, she’d attempted a commendable sack of his QB, but he scored a touchdown anyhow.
Shaelyn muttered something under her breath and stalked out of the dining room.
The pathetic part of him liked knowing that regardless of whatever bullshit lines she’d handed him the other night, he still got under her skin.
“Your grandfather could help you, Brady. Don’t be a silly.”
Brady sighed. His grandmother had so many different ways of getting under his skin that he couldn’t keep track of them all.
“We’ve gone over this, Gran.” He glanced at Miz Elaine, who was listening for all that she was worth. With her chin propped up on her upturned hands, the older woman wasn’t even bothering to pretend to have her attention anywhere else. “I don’t want your help or Gramp’s or anyone else’s. Let me do my job.”
“Aren’t you still fourth in line for the promotion?”