by Maria Luis
Sure, they’d momentarily lost their minds, but she’d had a few hours to rethink her impulsiveness and, really, this was the right call. She had no plans to stay in New Orleans permanently, and he’d given her no indication that he wanted anything more than just a random hookup session.
Not having sex with Brady Taylor was the way to go.
Her phone vibrated, the light sensor illuminating the room like a poorly budgeted EDM show. When she heard her cell slam against the wall and drop to the floor with a hollow thud, she teetered off the side of the bed, fumbling for it on the ground.
Half hanging upside down, she turned her cell around so she could read the text.
Did you change your mind?
Heart thundering in her chest, Shaelyn didn’t bother hauling herself from her uncomfortable position. Her thumbs flew across the screen, and she hit the little arrow-send button before inhaling her first breath. No, have you?
His answer was just as quick. I’ve been sitting here at my kitchen table thinking about you since I got home. Another text came in, just behind the first: So, no, I haven’t changed my mind, sweetheart.
A silly, giddy smile spread on her face at the endearment. Dammit, she didn’t want to experience the happy, fuzzy feeling warming her body. She’d gone down the relationship path with Brady Taylor before and she’d been burned. Badly. This wasn’t about love; it was about attraction. Lust.
You’re not staying in New Orleans, she reminded herself sternly.
Her phone vibrated again. Did you fall asleep?
No, she typed out. At your kitchen table still? Reliving certain memories?
Maybe she shouldn’t have said that. What was the acceptable line between coy flirtatiousness and demanding to have his babies?
Tease. His following text read, The next time I see you, I fully expect to finish what we started, whether we’re on my kitchen table, the floor, or in a bed.
Her toes curled against the Egyptian cotton sheets. How could he heat her up when they weren’t even in the same room?
Still . . .
I can’t come tonight . . . . Meme will know, she sent off.
Are you working tomorrow?
A double. One of the other girls requested tomorrow evening off.
Shaelyn didn’t mind the extra hours. She liked helping women—and men—who came to the store to discover their sensual selves. She liked helping them to uncover who they wanted to be without feeling ashamed.
With her thumb hovering over the screen, it never went black and she read Brady’s reply as soon as it arrived. Ask Anna for an extra hour for lunch. Don’t say no. We both want this . . . . I want this and I know you do too. G’night, Shae.
She wanted this. Maybe it was a mistake, but her heart wasn’t involved. They could have uncomplicated sex. She was leaving soon anyway. Just as soon as Meme Elaine got the thumbs-up from her doctor, which would probably be any day now.
Sex with Brady had to be simple, clean cut. She wasn’t eighteen anymore. She had a job, and friends—okay, two friends, if you counted her crazy grandmother—and Freckles. Even if the cat had tried to maim her only hours earlier.
She didn’t need Brady Taylor for anything besides his fantastic, masculine body.
As she resettled herself in bed and listened to Freckles’s nails click across the hardwood floor before he jumped onto the bed, Shaelyn couldn’t help but wonder, what if.
Thankfully, she quickly fell asleep, saving her from pondering where that dangerous thought might have led.
17
“How much would you hate me if I asked for an extra hour today at lunch?” Shaelyn asked her cousin as she refitted a mannequin with a new satin thong.
Anna put down a pair of lacy underwear. “Is everything okay? Do you have a doctor’s appointment?”
Flushing at the memory of Josie Beveau talking about OB-GYN role-playing with her husband, Shaelyn gave a quick shake of her head. While she was eager to get Brady naked, she’d leave the role-playing to the professionals. Her days as a decoy were thankfully over, and the next time she got a guy into bed, she planned to do so as Shaelyn Lawrence, only.
“Um, not exactly.” Admitting that she was less than three hours away from sexy times with Brady was a whole lot harder than she’d thought.
“Is something wrong with Elaine?”
Shaelyn bit the inside of her cheek. “Meme’s fine. Cranky, wild, off her rocker, the usual.”
Anna laughed. “I want to be like her when I grow up.”
Recalling the previous night’s conversation with Meme Elaine at the helm, Shaelyn conceded that Anna had a point. Elaine Lawrence wasn’t scared to grab life with two hands. She was a woman who meant what she said, and said what she thought. Maybe she’d do well to take a few pointers from the Lawrence matriarch . . .
“I’m going to have sex with Brady today.”
Shaelyn clapped a hand over her mouth. Her cheeks burned with hot embarrassment, and she suddenly wished she had something to fiddle with, as opposed to just standing there with her hands at her sides, her defenses down.
And okay, it was just Anna but still. Shaelyn didn’t do girl-talk and she certainly didn’t spill secrets . . . . Come to think of it, she did feel kind of airy. There were no unicorns, no rainbows, no pots of treasure awaiting her at the end of this particular tunnel, but the anxiety cloaking her all morning was gone.
She wanted to have sex with Brady. She was going to have sex with Brady. She might as well own it.
“I was hoping, since I’m working a double, I could take off a bit early.”
Yup, she’d just crossed into Do-Not-Enter territory: telling your boss that you wanted to leave work to have sex.
This was a new low. Or a new high, depending on how you looked at it. Shaelyn laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation. She, the girl who had kissed so many people for the sake of a job, was finally going to get laid, and she was leaving work to do it.
The irony would have been funny if it weren’t so painful.
When her cousin did nothing but stare at her, open-mouthed, seeds of doubt wriggled into Shaelyn’s head. She was totally being judged. And that was okay, really. It was stupid, totally unprofessional, to even suggest such a thing. Lust had made her crazy—she hadn’t been thinking with her head so much as she had with her lady parts.
“No worries,” she said, awkwardness raising the pitch of her voice. “Oh, and I’ve already contacted the shipping company to tell them that they forgot one of our boxes of garter belts. I noticed we had a last pair in the back. I’ll organize a nice display; customers won’t even notice.”
“I’m so jealous.”
Shaelyn’s head snapped toward her cousin. “Of the garter belts? I mean, you can do the display if you want.” It wasn’t like Shaelyn was salivating to set that one up.
Anna waved her hand in the air. “No, Shae, that you’re about to do it with Brady.”
Calling sex “it” sounded so high school, but Shaelyn preferred it to her grandmother’s metaphors so she let it go. Not to mention . . . “Are you trying to tell me that you like Brady?”
Unfettered jealousy flared at the thought of her cousin and Brady together. Although Brady drove her insane that didn’t mean Shaelyn could deal seeing the two of them all coupled up.
Another bonus point to leaving New Orleans soon. If the beautiful blonde and the hotshot cop decided to hook up and make all the adorable, gorgeous model kids, Shaelyn wanted to be long gone by then.
Anna’s hand shot out and flicked Shaelyn square in the forehead.
“Ow!” Rubbing the sore spot, Shaelyn glared at her cousin. “What was that for?”
“For thinking that I wanted to bang Brady. Does it look like I want to bang Brady?”
From Shaelyn’s perspective, it didn’t not look like Anna wanted to bang Brady. What exactly did “wanting to bang Brady” look like, anyhow?
Maybe take a look in the mirror? she told herself.
No
thanks.
“I’m happy for you, Shae,” Anna said, leaning up against the display table. “Just know that you’re doing this for the both of us.”
“Are you sure you aren’t trying to tell me you’ve got this weird, unrequited love thing going on with him?”
“Good Lord, you’re so dense.”
“I’m not, really—”
“You’re right,” Anna said. “You’re just so in love with Brady Taylor that you can’t even imagine someone else not feeling the same way.”
Shaelyn’s mouth clamped shut, her teeth audibly clicking together.
Correction: she was not in love with Brady Taylor. She wasn’t even sure that she liked him most days. Anna was just complicating things, which was understandable. It was a little weird when you thought about it: they’d dated back in the day, he’d broken her heart, she’d run away, she’d returned, they still hated each other, and now they wanted to jump into bed together.
It sounded like some clichéd script ripped off from the Hallmark Channel—which Shaelyn only ever watched during Christmastime—but this wasn’t a Hollywood production. It was her life. Lucky her.
“I’m not in love with him.” Shaelyn folded her arms over her chest. Realizing that the stance only made her look more defensive, she dropped her hands to her sides. “It’s just sex.”
Anna arched one brow, and Shaelyn had the distinct feeling that it was the Mom-Move she used against Julian. “Can you do just sex?”
“Sure.”
“Have you before?”
Screw it. Shaelyn crossed her arms. “No, but there’s a first time for everything.” She raised her hand in the air, student-style. “Weren’t you just telling me that you were jealous?”
“Oh, I definitely said that. It’s been ages for me and you know—”
“Yep, gray pubes.” With a flash of her palm, Shaelyn signaled, stop-now-for-the-love-of-God. “Recalling the conversation vividly.”
Anna’s eyes closed as her palms kissed, fingertips brushing the underside of her chin in a prayer. “One day,” she whispered in a dramatic whisper, “One day my day will come.”
Resting one hand on her cousin’s shoulder, Shaelyn lowered her voice. “Patience is a virtue, young padawan.”
Her cousin blinked. “Did you just quote Yoda at me?”
“Maybe. How do you feel? Sensing the force yet? Ready to go knock some boots with the next guy you see?”
“‘Knock some boots?’” Anna’s brows furrowed. “Don’t ever say that again.”
“What about ‘going at it like rabbits’?” Shaelyn shuddered just remembering her grandmother’s conversation.
Anna’s blue eyes narrowed to slits. “What, are you twelve?”
“Thirteen, actually.”
“I think you’re deflecting.”
Shaelyn shot a wary glance at her cousin. “From sex?”
“From the reason why you want to have sex with Brady,” Anna amended, twisting away to move toward the window display. She motioned for Shaelyn to follow with a crook of her finger. “Tell yourself whatever you want, Shae, but we both know the truth.”
Shaelyn suspected she knew exactly what her cousin was implying.
Love.
Shaelyn had experienced love twice before—the first time with Brady, and the second time when she’d been twenty-three and living in D.C. His name was Connor and he’d been the sort of gentle soul who very rarely made demands. After the heart-wrenching dump fest with Brady, Connor had been exactly what she’d needed. So what if he hadn’t made her heart pound with excitement? He’d been nice.
Turns out Connor hadn’t been all that nice. Within months, he’d struck up an affair with a pretty yoga instructor, and Shaelyn had been left out in the cold. Literally. He’d stood her up in the middle of a winter snowstorm.
For days she’d hovered on a scale ranging from where’s-my-Cherry-Garcia-ice-cream? to yoga-pants-for-days.
But her current feelings for Brady . . . . Well, they felt nothing like her raging high school emotions nor what she’d felt for Connor.
Anna was just trying to mess with her head. It came with the territory of girl talk.
“If you’re going to get laid today, you’ve got to wear something that’ll knock his socks off,” her cousin said, her hands pulling at various hangers. “I’ll bet everything I own that you’re wearing a Walmart bra and underwear combo right now. Polka dots?”
Shaelyn scoffed. “I’m not a tween, Anna.”
“Horizontal stripes?”
Her shoulders slumped.
Anna tapped her nose and then pointed her finger at Shaelyn, murmuring, “knew it,” before she took a hanger off the rack. “This one. The green will make your hazel eyes pop.”
It was a forest-hued set, a demi-bra with a scalloped lace edge and matching cheeky-panties. Twinkling rhinestones were sewn into the fabric, scattered here and there like hidden gems glimmering in the woods.
The bra and underwear were beautiful.
They looked just like a set she’d worn a year ago during a decoy stint.
With one glance at her cousin’s hopeful expression, Shaelyn couldn’t find it in herself to turn down the offer. She trailed her finger over the lace bra strap, and pushed away the bad memories. “Do you think he’ll like it?”
Anna reached out and squeezed her hand. “Don’t you?”
“I guess this means I can have an extra hour for lunch?”
“Take two,” her cousin said with a wide grin. “It’s on the house.”
Laughing, Shaelyn hugged the hangers to her chest. It felt good to joke around. A little stab of anxiety pierced her at the thought of leaving New Orleans, and leaving this new friendship behind.
“Thank you,” she said, and meant it.
Anna swatted the comment away with a dismissive flick of her hand. “I’m just your average fairy godmother.”
“Somehow I don’t think Walt Disney envisioned this R-Rated version of Cinderella.”
“Then he should be thankful he never went down to Bourbon Street on Halloween.”
Shaelyn pretended to tip an invisible hat off to her cousin. “Touché,” she exclaimed, “Touché.”
As Anna moved past her toward the checkout desk, she bumped hips with Shaelyn. “Go get him, girl.”
She smiled. She’d get him, all right, but not before she let him catch her too.
Just one time.
18
Hours taken off for lunch? Check.
Sexy lingerie? Double check.
Old unmentionables thrown into the trash at Anna’s urging? Check squared.
Currently sitting in her car, trying to pull herself together—
Sir Mix-A-Lot’s classic pierced the silence, and Shaelyn leaned over the console to dig through her purse. “Julian, you’re killing me,” she muttered.
Her hand curled around her phone just as the one-hit wonder rapper reached the chorus. “Hello?”
Brady’s husky drawl filtered through the receiver. “How long are you going to sit in my driveway?”
Drumming her fingers against the steering wheel, she glanced over at his house. “You don’t have a driveway.”
He snorted, and the sound made her grin. “Same thing here in New Orleans.” He paused briefly, and Shaelyn had the impression that he had pushed away from whatever furniture he’d been leaning against. Brady paced whenever his nerves skyrocketed. “Are you comin’ in anytime soon or are you concocting another scheme with your grandmother about having my babies?”
It was her turn to scoff, as she ignored his reminder that Meme Elaine was up to no good. Instead she went in for the kill. “I think we need to establish some rules before we have sex.”
“You would,” came his sexy grumble.
She’d thought long and hard—no pun intended—about the intricacies of them having sex. Anna’s conversation had confirmed one thing: emotions made things messy. Rules safeguarded the possibility that either of them might get in too deep
. Even Carla had given her girls a contract listing acceptable interactions with a client’s significant other.
Conversations outside of the decoy setup were not allowed.
So were any physical interactions beyond the initial, choreographed flirting, so as to see if the alleged cheater fell for the ploy.
Rules established boundaries. She and Brady needed boundaries.
“I think they could help,” she told him. “There aren’t that many.”
“How many?”
“Four.”
“Four!” He sounded deliciously disgruntled.
“Yes. I wrote them down.” She hadn’t, but she had a sneaking suspicion that even the thought that she had would push him over the edge. Teasing him, driving him to that point of no return, had always brought a smile to her face. “I used my hot-pink pen,” she added, just to needle him further.
The front door of his house flung open and Brady stepped outside, his feet bare. He looked like a warrior ready to toss her over his shoulder and steal her away. Or, a cop with a no-nonsense attitude intent on getting what he wanted. His plain black T-shirt and faded jeans were as physically appealing as if he’d been naked. Okay, almost as physically appealing, because two weeks had done nothing to erase the memory of his hard chest, and years had done little to fade the equally satisfying memory of Brady Down Under.
“Forget the list, Shae. Come inside.”
She clutched the phone tighter. “I still want to discuss the rules.”
Despite the distance separating them, she felt the intensity of his gaze. “We can talk them over after you come inside.” She watched him subtly jerk his hand in the direction of the house next door. “Crazy Shirley is probably one hot minute away from calling the cops on you for loitering.”
“Crazy Shirley” turned out to be an elderly woman dressed in a Hawaiian shirt tucked into a pair of jeans that came up to her boobs. A pair of bright yellow crocks completed her ensemble. She stood on the sidewalk, sweeping leaves into the drainage pipe and glaring at Shaelyn in her car.