The NOLA Heart Novels (Complete Series)

by Maria Luis

  “I’m sure that isn’t the case, Shae. They loved you.”

  “Loved,” Shaelyn said, putting blatant emphasis on the word. “To hear my mother tell the tale, I’m pretty sure that love shriveled up and died the moment she realized I wasn’t so good anymore. Not so innocent. And I kept working for Carla Ritter, my boss, because the money was too good to leave. So was I any better than the names my mother threw at me? I don’t think so.”

  When she tried to slip her hands from his grasp, he didn’t let her. “The night that you received that phone call when we almost hooked up,” he said slowly, “it was from Ritter, wasn’t it.”

  Not a question. They both knew that he was too perceptive for her to play dumb.

  “Yes. She’s been calling me on and off since I returned to New Orleans.” Shaelyn glanced down at their entwined hands. “She wanted me to know that a few of the other girls had quit, and she’d hoped I’d come back.”

  “You looked ready to vomit.”

  Her laugh was humorless. Brady’s bluntness was just so absolutely him. “I was ready to vomit. I’d fallen into complacency while I worked for her, even though I hated myself the entire time. I didn’t have many friends, in the worry that they’d find out what I did and think I was trashy. I didn’t date, for the same reason. The idea of a man touching me made feel . . . uneasy.”

  Brows knitting as if he were trying to solve a mathematical problem, he released her hand to slip her curls behind one ear. “When you said that it’d been a while for you—on the sex front—you really meant that it’d been ‘a while.’”

  “A while” was an understatement. “Oh, you know, about four years.”

  His gaze jumped to hers, and she truly felt in that moment that she could read his thoughts. Why had she slept with him, if she hadn’t had done so with anyone else? What made him any different?

  Those weren’t questions that she hadn’t already asked herself. The answer wasn’t something she was willing to admit to him, not just yet.

  “You push a hard bargain, Taylor,” she said, as if he’d spoken his thoughts out loud.

  Shaelyn suspected that he understood her need to lighten the conversation. Placing his hands on his knees, he pushed himself onto the balls of his feet and lowered back onto the tile. He sat with one leg bent, his wrist propped up on his knee.

  “Are you saying I’m irresistible?” he said, no doubt knowing that his position put his rock-hard abs on display. The man really was sex personified.

  Shaelyn snorted, tucking her legs in to sit cross-legged on the chair. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

  He flashed her one of his cocky grins—the one where the right corner of his mouth tugged up higher than the left. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “I don’t think I said that.”

  For a moment, he did nothing but look at her. Then, “Your eyes told me.”

  She wanted to laugh off his softly uttered comment. God, did she want to. But the words held her immobile, because if her feelings for him were transparent, what else did he see? Could he see that she was so close to falling in love with him again?

  He went on, using that same tone that reminded her of a cowboy reeling in a skittish colt. “Do you know what else your eyes tell me?”

  Her head jerked in a nod, even when her brain urged her to get up and leave before Brady laid her soul completely bare.

  “They reflect the fear and shame you felt, I’m sure, when you worked for Ritter.” His white-knuckled grip slid down to grasp his ankle, and she wondered if he held on tightly so as to keep from reaching for her. “We’ve all got secrets and guilt to shoulder, sweetheart, and no one has the right to pass judgment. The only person you’ve got to explain yourself to is you.”

  Shaelyn swallowed past the lump in her throat. Was it possible to fall back in love with a person? Or had she simply never fallen out of love with Brady Taylor to begin with?

  Licking her dry lips, she whispered, “So you don’t look at me differently knowing . . . everything?”

  He shook his head, his gaze never leaving hers. “I think you did what you had to do to survive. If you had to go back and choose whether to travel the same path . . . ” Brady shrugged his shoulders. “I hope you would. I like who you are, Shaelyn. If changing the past—and I mean any bit of it, even including our shared past mistakes—means changing who you are right now at this moment, then don’t you dare change a single thing from the last twelve years.”

  “I kissed a lot of people,” she felt compelled to tell him. “Girls, guys. It never went any further, and even the kissing only lasted seconds. Just enough to show a client that their significant other was willing to be unfaithful.”

  His big shoulders came up in another shrug. “I guess you had to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince.”

  If such a thing were possible, her lungs stopped pumping and the air in the room crackled with tension. “Are you saying that you’re my prince?”

  Blue eyes, as warm as the heated blue fire at the base of a candlewick, stared back at her. “Do you want me to be?”

  Without thinking, she knew that her answer was yes. Shaelyn wasn’t entirely certain the exact moment when she and Brady’s relationship had arrived at this point. What she did know, however, was that she’d spent years apologizing for her feelings, or pretending that they didn’t exist so she wouldn’t disappoint others.

  She’d hated working as a decoy, but in a twist of reverse psychology, she’d always hesitated in quitting because she felt that she owed Carla for picking her up at her lowest point.

  She didn’t want the responsibility of owning her ancestral home, but the fear of disappointing Meme Elaine kept Shaelyn’s mouth shut.

  For the first time since she could remember, Shaelyn wanted something for herself. She wanted Brady, and since he’d willingly posed that question, she had to imagine that he must feel something similar.

  Scraping her courage together, Shaelyn slid to the ground next to him. She bent both her knees, and wrapped her arms around her shins. With the fresh morning sun streaming into the kitchen, this moment between them felt like an equally fresh start. A chance to put the past and the anger behind them and to start anew.

  “I’d like it if you were,” she finally told him.

  If she’d thought the sun warming the tiles beneath her was bright, than the smile he gave her was even brighter.

  24

  “You’re staring again.”

  From behind her dark sunglasses, Shaelyn glanced at her cousin, who was setting the picnic table with cutlery. “How can you tell?”

  Anna snorted. “Who can’t tell, Shae?” Pointing a plastic knife in Shaelyn’s direction, Anna nodded to where Brady, Julian, and Meme Elaine were hovering over a grill under the branches of a live oak tree. They’d decamped to Audubon Park for a lazy Sunday BBQ.

  “I wasn’t staring.”

  Okay, so she had been. Dressed in cargo shorts, his standard black T-shirt, and a backwards Saints baseball cap, Brady was the perfect blend of confident and casual masculinity. His bare feet sealed the deal.

  Shaelyn wasn’t the only woman at the park noticing him, either. A group of women sunbathing not so far from the grill had sent one of their brethren over to him, but he’d been quick to send her on her way.

  Hell, one woman running past the grill had doubled back twice to ask Brady where she might find the restroom.

  Brady was a chick magnet—probably had been in high school, too, but Shaelyn had never noticed. Until those last few weeks before college, he’d never given her cause to be on the lookout.

  But now Shaelyn wasn’t really sure where they stood. They’d spent every single moment—when they weren’t working—together for the last week. But he hadn’t mentioned taking things any further than sex, and there was something about the way that he stared off into nothing when he didn’t think Shaelyn was looking that made her think he wasn’t being completely honest with her. Was he having second thoughts
about their relationship? Maybe Shaelyn was simply reading too much into his silence. Hadn’t they shared the same bed every night? Hadn’t he invited her out for drinks with his buddies, Luke and Danvers?

  Admit it, you just want more.

  She let out a heavy sigh. Since she’d opened up, she’d hoped that he would do the same. Aside from their conversation about their past, he remained as tight-lipped as usual.

  “If you say so,” Anna said, and Shaelyn mentally shook herself. She’d been staring. Again.

  “I say so.” She avoided catching her cousin’s astute gaze as she finished pouring fresh sweet tea into the final plastic cup. Diverting the conversation away from her love life, Shaelyn asked, “How’s Julian doing? I haven’t seen him in a few weeks.”

  “I don’t know.” Anna plopped down onto the wooden bench, a look of worry crossing her face. “He’s acting out a bit. Talking back, locking himself in his room more. I’m not sure where it’s coming from.”

  Shaelyn sank down on the bench across from her cousin. “You think it’s because of Tony?”

  They both paused to glance back toward the grill. Meme Elaine appeared to be bossing Brady and Julian around by stealing the silver tongs and flipping the burgers herself.

  Quietly, Anna murmured, “Has he said anything to you?”

  On the two or three different occasions that she’d asked Brady about Julian’s biological father, Brady had shut down. He repeatedly asked for a few more days. How many more days did he need? It had been weeks since she’d first approached him about Anthony Mardeaux.

  It was one thing if he hadn’t had any luck in finding him—as if the guy had fallen off the face of the planet—but asking for more time felt like a put-off.

  “No,” she replied in an equally hushed voice, “I’ll ask again, though.”

  Anna offered a hesitant smile. “I’ll admit that the selfish part of me is glad that Brady hasn’t come up with anything. It means that I can keep my baby boy to myself for just a bit longer. Then I hear myself, and I’m completely disgusted by my thoughts. Julian deserves to have a father who wants to be in his life.”

  Shaelyn place her hand over her cousin’s. “Don’t beat yourself up about this.”

  “It’s not just that—”

  Whatever Anna might have said was washed out by the sound of male voices approaching. Shaelyn could have picked out Brady’s voice out of a crowd. No matter the time of day, his voice carried a perpetual husky timbre, like he’d just woken up or was thinking of ways to rid Shaelyn of her clothes. Waking up in the middle of the night to hear him whispering naughty things in her ears was a turn-on she never wanted to do without.

  Julian’s voice, on the other hand, crackled with teenage excitement.

  “I can’t believe you just told an old woman that she could out-drink you!” he was saying, thin arms flapping as the two approached the picnic table. One older, one younger. One dark-haired, one fair-haired. The two couldn’t have been more opposite, except that they seemed to have become fast friends.

  Clutching the heels of his tennis shoes in one hand, Brady headed straight for Shaelyn. Her heart thumping wildly at just the sight of him, she barely registered Brady’s response. “Have you ever seen Elaine Lawrence drink? She’d have me crying into that garbage can over there before the hour was out.”

  Julian ground to a halt. “I could take her.”

  “When you’re twenty-one, maybe,” Brady teased over his shoulder as his muscular thighs straddled the bench and he sat down beside her. His hand went to the dip of her waist, and Shaelyn instinctively reclined into his touch. Leaning forward, he cupped her chin with his other hand and drew her in for a brief kiss.

  Brief, maybe, but no less earth shattering.

  She fought the urge to grasp his T-shirt and yank him in for another one when he pulled back. It was probably for the best. There were impressionable children around. She reached for a cup of sweet tea, taking a small sip even though she reckoned she’d feel much better if she just went ahead and dumped the damn iced tea on top of her head.

  Brady’s hand tightened on her waist, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.

  She chugged the rest of the cool drink and then turned to face the man who wasn’t her boyfriend but who wasn’t just a hook-up either. “How’d you end up in a potential drinking war with my grandmother?”

  Lifting both hands in the air, Brady said, “Whoa, now. I didn’t do anything.”

  From beside his mother, Julian piped up: “How does ‘I wouldn’t count on a win, Miz Elaine’ sound to you?”

  “It sounds like a valid point.” Brady snagged an unclaimed cup of sweet tea. “But I was referring to myself. She’ll outdrink me till my very last breath.” He paused, blue eyes twinkling as though he’d just realized something. “You know, this might be her plan.”

  “Plan for what?”

  “To touch his abs,” Julian supplied as he rifled through the brown paper bags filled with food. He pulled out a small bag of chips with a triumphant “boo-yah” and then ripped them open. “She gave him the choice of letting her grill or removing his shirt.”

  Shaelyn looked at Anna helplessly, who seemed to be on the verge of some sort of conniption. “She does realize that she’s known you since you were in diapers, right?” she asked Brady.

  Brady shifted closer. “Do you realize that you’ve known me since we were in diapers?”

  “That’s different.”

  One dark brow arched high. “How?”

  “We’re the same age, for one,” Shaelyn said pointedly.

  His fingers danced up the ridges of her spine. “There’s a photo of us in the bathtub together, Shae. Naked.”

  “Do I need to cover my ears again?” Julian asked, shoving a handful of Zapp’s Voodoo potato chips into his mouth. “I feel like things are about to get good.”

  “Go see if Miz Elaine needs anything,” Anna told her son with a gentle push at his shoulders. “I’m worried she might take her cane to the next woman who strolls up to her ask about Brady.”

  Julian’s neck popped as he swiveled to look toward the grill. “How do you know they’re asking for Brady?”

  “Because they’re eying me as if they wouldn’t mind throwing me into the pond with the gators,” Shaelyn murmured.

  There actually weren’t any alligators in Audubon Park—that she knew of, anyway. Still, she couldn’t help but grin. She felt happy, crazy emotion that it was. She was happy that Brady was touching her and not looking at other women, happy that Anna and Julian were here, and that they truly had become her family and not just in name.

  And, yes, happy that her grandmother was as crazy as ever and who appeared to be feeling much better.

  “I’ll go help her out,” Shaelyn said, extricating herself from the bench. “Why don’t y’all throw the football around or something?”

  “What about Mom?” Julian glanced at Anna, doubt flickering over his expression. “The last time she tried to throw the football she fell in dog poop.”

  The image of perfect, blond willowy Anna landing in any sort of crap was so outrageous that Shaelyn clapped a hand over her mouth to contain her peel of laughter.

  “It wasn’t our dog either,” Julian added, even as his mother’s blue gaze turned to him in warning. “Sometimes I think she did it on purpose, so that way, whenever I ask for a pet she can bring it up as a reason for why dogs aren’t allowed in the house.”

  Poor Anna seemed utterly incapable of moving past the “landing in dog poop” comment, because she only managed to grate out, “You have a fish, Jules.”

  “Had.” Julian stuffed another handful of Zapp’s into his mouth. “A fish isn’t the same thing as a dog, Mom. I can’t teach it tricks.”

  “You taught Nemo to play dead.”

  Julian’s blue eyes narrowed. “That’s because Nemo was dead.”

  Brady and Shaelyn shared a commiserating glance. In that moment, Shaelyn felt like they were a team. She reach
ed for his hand before tackling the bigger issue. “You killed Nemo, Jules? Really?”

  “I forgot to feed him.”

  Anna lifted a cup of sweet tea in salute. “Hence, why he’s not allowed to have any more pets until he gets the feeding thing down.”

  Brady lifted a finger. “Is it too soon to make the comment that at least Nemo was found?”

  “Too soon,” was Julian’s only response. Shaelyn suspected that poor Nemo hadn’t been Julian’s only attempt at having a pet fish before Anna had decided enough was enough.

  “I’m sorry, buddy.” Brady leaned over to drag his duffle bag up onto the bench. He drew out a football, tossing it from one hand to the other. “Wanna play?”

  “Okay.” After a slight hesitation, Julian nudged his mama in the side. “Want to join?”

  An exuberant smile spread across Anna’s face.

  Shaelyn bit her lip as a question she rarely let herself think about punched its way to the front: would she make a good mother? Clearly Anna possessed excellent mother genes—genetics that Shaelyn wasn’t all too sure she’d inherited.

  As subtly as she could manage, she snuck a glance in Brady’s direction. If they ever had children, would she be like Anna or her own mother, who’d rarely shown her any affection as a child and even less so as an adult?

  “Are you okay?”

  Shaelyn looked up at the man who made her think about things better left buried. He was watching her closely, his perceptive blue eyes no doubt noting the pinpricks of sweat dotting her forehead and the way she avoided making eye contact. “Absolutely,” she lied.

  “Shae.” He said her name like he didn’t believe her, then sighed. Swiping his baseball hat off his head to settle it on hers, he murmured, “Your nose is crisping.”