The NOLA Heart Novels (Complete Series)

by Maria Luis

  Although he couldn’t make out the direction of her gaze, he had the gut feeling that she was watching him closely. “Is that why you’re getting promoted?”

  He wanted to laugh at the irony. Through no fault of her own, Shaelyn had no idea that there wasn’t a promotion coming his way. He’d screwed up big time with his inability to find Julian’s father, the suspected accomplice of multiple first-degree murders. “I don’t think the promotion is happening.”

  He heard her hip pop as she dropped her knees wide and planted her hands on her thighs. “What?” she demanded. “Why not?”

  Brady threaded his fingers through his hair, tugging at the strands. “It’s complicated.” Dropping his hands back to his chest, he stared hard at the paused image on the TV. “I’ve done what I could. If they don’t want me, I’ll know soon enough.”

  “How soon?” came her immediate question, and he could hear the concern in her voice.

  As soon as this Kemper-Mardeaux case is put to bed. Which, from the way things were going, could be anywhere from tomorrow to when pigs actually learned to fly.

  “I don’t know. We’ve got some guys retiring, some guys transferring. The department has known for months that it would need to fill those empty slots. When they decide to do that, though, is anybody’s guess.”

  The couch creaked as she shifted close to him. He sensed her reaching for him even before her hand went to his knee and she settled by his side. “Are you nervous?”

  He shrugged. “I can’t make them want me.”

  I can’t make you want me.

  Brady swallowed the words. He needed to take it slow, earn her trust—he mentally spat out every four-letter expletive he could think of. How could he expect her to trust him when he’d been lying about Mardeaux for weeks now? Sooner or later they’d find him, clap him in cuffs, and book him. Brady could tell her now and risk angering her for having pretended that he hadn’t found anything. He could tell her later, when Mardeaux was in jail, and he’d face the same exact situation.

  Either way she was going to realize that he’d known about Julian’s father for far longer than he’d let on, and either way there was a solid chance she’d never want anything to do with him again. Their relationship was fragile already without adding more deception to the mix.

  He watched as her fingers played with the hem of his mesh shorts.

  “I think you’d make an excellent sergeant,” she said softly.

  Brady smiled at her encouragement. “Thanks, sweetheart.”

  “And I know that”—she inhaled sharply, her fingers working the hem in that nervous, fiddling way of hers—“you might not feel comfortable doing so, but I just want you to know that you can talk to me. About anything. Even if you think it might be too gruesome or rough for me.” Another intake of breath, which she released almost in the same moment. “I want to be your rock, Brady.”

  In any other moment he would have shouted with joy. Fuck, he probably would have thrown her over his shoulder and brought her to bed just to show that he wanted to be her rock, her everything, too. But on the heels of his already deepening guilt, her comment felt like a warrant for his arrest. This case with Anthony Mardeaux was going to execute him—professionally, emotionally.

  An image of Julian popped up in his head from that afternoon, of them throwing the football. The kid had “hero worship” written all over him whenever he glanced at Brady. The minute that Julian realized that Brady had withheld such pertinent information . . .

  He rubbed his chest, surprised by how much the thought of Julian’s hatred bothered him. While Brady didn’t even know the kid well, Julian’s happiness mattered to Shaelyn, and Shaelyn’s happiness was . . . it was everything to him.

  He needed to tell her. Right now with the TV on pause and the filtered light creating shadows all over the room. Right now when he still had the balls to man up and say that he’d lied big time, and that he would do everything in his power to right the situation.

  “Shae, I—”

  “Yeah?”

  The reality of the situation came crashing down.

  His first mistake had been in not telling her about Mardeaux early on, but now that the NOPD was involved, Brady was sworn to silence. And if he were being honest, then yes, he was also scared shitless of losing Shaelyn before he even had her back, of disappointing Julian and Anna.

  He’d had the perfect opportunity that afternoon to sit down with Julian and his mother, and explain as much of the situation as he possibly could. He’d squandered the chance, and now he had to deal with whatever consequences came his way.

  “Brady?”

  Her palm landed on his chest, right over his heart. His eyes slammed shut, and he wrapped his fingers around her slim wrist and brought her hand to his mouth. Brady pressed a soft kiss to her inner wrist where her pulse beat frantically.

  “I’m really glad you’re here, Shaelyn.”

  It was the truth. Just not all of it, and certainly not everything he wanted to say to her. He worried that the whole truth would destroy everything, especially the happy glint in her hazel eyes as she climbed onto his lap.

  Brady had landed himself in this mess. He just didn’t know how to crawl himself back out.

  26

  “I think your ex-fiancé’s wife just walked through the door.”

  Shaelyn’s gaze shot away from Anna to the front of the shop and, sure enough, there was Mrs. Ben Beveau strolling into the boutique. The last time Shaelyn had seen Josie, the woman had been talking about playing patient-OB-GYN with her hubby.

  “Do you think she saw me?” Shaelyn asked pathetically, looking for an out. Okay, so the whole fiancé thing was still weird. “We need to restock in the back, don’t we?”

  Anna shook her head. “Finished it last night, remember?”

  No, not really. Then again, Shaelyn had been so exhausted when she’d fallen into bed that she’d skipped dinner in addition to missing Brady’s voicemail asking if she wanted to binge on Sons of Anarchy when he got off the clock.

  Working a double could do that to a woman, especially when it also happened to be that time of the month.

  As she watched Josie beeline toward her, Shaelyn whispered from the corner of her mouth, “Please. Give me something to do. Anything—”

  “Hi Shaelyn!” Without waiting for a greeting in return, Josie wrapped her arms around Shaelyn’s neck for a tight hug. “It’s so good to see you.” She turned to Anna and did the same. Shaelyn was just evil enough that she found great joy in watching Anna’s cornflower-blue eyes widen.

  Charlotte Lawrence would roll over in her grave if Shaelyn gave Josie the cold shoulder, so she smiled—wide, lots of teeth—and put on a Class-A performance. “It’s great to see you, too, Josie. How’s Ben?”

  “He’s great!” Josie leaned forward, somehow exuding lean-forward-with-me vibes without saying a single thing. She lowered her voice from a Level Ten to a Nine, briefly glancing over her shoulder at the only other customer who was skimming the racks. “Wants to try some new stuff, if you know what I mean, so I figured I’d come and see what y’all had in stock.”

  Shaelyn winced, and she swore she saw Anna do the same. “You know this isn’t the sex toy shop right? That bachelorette party was a joint effort with The Dirty Crescent.”

  Josie waved away Shaelyn’s explanation. “I stopped by there first. Did you know they sell this vibrating ring that goes around a guy’s—”

  “Yep! Yep, totally have heard of it.” Shaelyn could not un-see Josie’s sexual hand gesturing to where the ring might fit on a guy.

  “Did you?” Josie asked Anna, one brow arched high. Anna, bless her heart, nodded and smiled. Though saying that the thin-lipped movement of her mouth classified as a “smile” was a bit of a stretch.

  Mrs. Beveau seemed to ponder the fact that she was the last thirty-plus-year-old woman in New Orleans to know that cock rings did, sometimes, come equipped with vibration. “Anyway,” she said buoyantly a moment afte
r, “I need something to wear. The kids are with their grandparents, we’ve got new toys—we’re ready to go.”

  Shaelyn and Anna exchanged a quick glance at the determined note in the other woman’s voice. Silently Shaelyn gestured for Josie to follow her to the new selection that had arrived the other day. Still, she couldn’t but wonder . . . “Are y’all trying for another baby?”

  The sparkle in the woman’s eyes dimmed, just a little. She reached up to adjust the shoulder strap of her purse, and Shaelyn could have sworn Josie threw her shoulders back and tipped her chin up. “Oh, you know! Busy lives and all that.” Her fingers skimmed the black hangers as they stopped by a mannequin wearing a navy silk dressing gown. “Sometimes it’s hard to find the time to spend together.”

  “I’m sure,” Shaelyn murmured softly, wondering for the first time if Josie Beveau’s Level Ten happiness was all a front. Anna had moved off to help a new customer, leaving the two of them alone. “But y’all are in love. It’s just a matter of time before another child comes about.”

  Those straightened shoulders drooped, and this time Shaelyn knew it wasn’t just her imagination. “I hope so,” whispered Josie. “I . . . we—” Josie raised a closed fist to her mouth. “We’ve been trying a really long time. I actually meant to reach out sooner, but I wanted to ask you to thank your grandmother for me.”

  For auctioning your husband off to another woman? Somehow Shaelyn knew that wasn’t what Josie meant, which left her to wonder . . . what in the world did she mean? “I’ll, uh, be sure to tell her.”

  Josie offered her a rare, genuine grin. Not a happy-go-lucky grin but one that spoke of a deeper gratitude. “We’ve got an upcoming appointment,” she said with a delicate shrug. “But I figured one last try on our own, well, it couldn’t hurt, you know?”

  Everything clicked in that moment. The upcoming appointment, the sexy role-playing. Shaelyn didn’t know too much about infertility—never having had a kid herself, and having had Lady Flow arrive promptly every month since she’d turned thirteen—but she could read between the lines.

  Josie obviously thought Shaelyn knew what Meme Elaine had done. As for her and Meme Elaine? They were in desperate need of a heart-to-heart conversation.

  Snagging a hanger off the rack, she turned to Ben’s wife and held up the burgundy-colored fabric to her skin. “What look were you going for? Racy? Sweet with a bit of sultry?”

  Josie rubbed the soft material between her fingers, a thoughtful expression softening her features. “Like the best thing he’s ever seen.” Her gaze darted up to lock on Shaelyn’s. “I don’t want him to think about pregnancies or doctors—just me, sex, and that ridiculous cock ring he likes so much.”

  It was a tough thing to stifle a snort.

  “Sorry,” Shaelyn said, rubbing her chest even as her eyes watered with laughter. She’d never be able to look Ben Beveau in the face again. Seriously. “I think we can definitely make that happen. Come with me. I think I’ve got just the thing to knock your husband’s socks off.”

  Or make the cock ring unnecessary.

  Whichever.

  As luck would have it, Brady wasn’t the one to find Anthony Mardeaux. No, he was too busy slugging down coffee when shit went down.

  “Hold still, T,” Danvers said as Brady poured himself a cup of black coffee in the office’s kitchen. “I’ve got to take a picture.”

  Brady lifted the mug to his mouth. At nine in the morning, he was already on his third dose of the New Orleans chicory blend. He hadn’t slept the night before and, after giving up on any chance of it, had rolled out of bed and driven to Headquarters sometime around midnight. Brady had reviewed every scrap of evidence they’d come across tying Mardeaux to the Kemper case.

  Every.

  Single.

  Piece.

  Sometime around four in the morning, sleep had finally claimed him at his desk.

  “What the hell do you mean, you’ve got to take a picture?”

  “Don’t move.” Danvers framed his hands as if angling a camera to snap a photo. “You smiled just now, so I’m betting you finally got laid.”

  Sometimes, Brady wondered how Danvers had made it into the homicide department, never mind having lasted years in the military.

  “Do you want to die?” he asked the other detective as they moved down the hallway.

  Danvers drank his own coffee, which, true to character, was the color of caramel with white artistic foam decorating the center like a leaf. The side of the cup had “Nathan” scrawled across the side in black, feminine handwriting.

  “There’d be witnesses,” Danvers protested. “I’m not worth the risk of losing your promotion.”

  Brady winced as they banged a right and entered the homicide department. The promotion thing didn’t look like it was happening, especially not now that Summers had taken to running around the office like a busy bee pollinating every flower. Nice or not, the man was a suck up.

  Brady and Danvers sat at their respective desks.

  “I heard Summers has entered the ring,” Danvers said as he booted up his desktop, balancing the Styrofoam coffee cup on one knee.

  “Where are you receiving all this old news?” He trained his gaze on the computer screen as he roused the desktop from sleep mode. “But, yeah, he has.”

  “I’m betting on Summers having burrowed his way up Cartwell’s ass.”

  “Who’s found their way up my ass, Detective?”

  Oh, Jesus.

  Brady launched up from his chair, mug still clutched in one hand, as coffee spilled over the rim and splashed onto his white dress shirt. Fan-fucking-tastic. It was just going to be one of those days, wasn’t it?

  “Taylor!”

  Spine snapping straight, Brady concealed his grimace. Cartwell was a mean son of a gun, and definitely not the sort of guy you shot the shit with over coffee. Didn’t help matters that he was already on the man’s ever-growing shit list.

  “Yeah, L-T?”

  “While you’ve been baking cookies with the new missus, Summers has been busting his ass here.”

  Did everybody know that he and Shaelyn were together? And how had they known in the first place? Brady kept his personal life under wraps—

  He swung his gaze over to Danvers, who was very carefully staring at the computer screen—an online version of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, by the looks of it—like it was his job.

  Cops, seriously. They were worse than a group of retirees at Bingo, for fuck’s sake.

  The next time Danvers bought a Sex on the Beach, Brady was going to use that stupid, frilly umbrella and stab him with the pick.

  He dragged his attention back to Cartwell.

  “I thought you wanted this sergeant position,” the lieutenant was saying, eyes narrowed like he was one half-second away from grabbing Brady’s mug and smashing him over the head with it. Cartwell was old school like that.

  “I do,” Brady answered, sounding unenthusiastic even to his own ears. For the first time in almost a year, he wasn’t sure that he wanted the promotion. Not when it might be at the expense of—

  He swallowed, because since Shaelyn’s return to New Orleans, he hadn’t been able to cut her out.

  Niggling doubt reared its ugly horned head. The truth of the matter was that Brady had no idea where he stood with her. There wasn’t a ranking system in place like with the NOPD, and there was a very good chance that Brady was trekking down a road to nowhere when it came to Shaelyn Lawrence.

  The doubt dug a little deeper.

  His fingers tightened around the coffee mug, and he was slightly surprised that the delicate stem didn’t snap in his grip. He set it carefully on the desk. “I want it.”

  Do you, really?

  Brady squashed his conscience.

  Cartwell gave him a once-over that would have terrified lesser men into pissing their pants. Brady only eyed the lieutenant warily, his bowels unmoved.

  The man drummed his fingers on Danvers’ desk. “I
’ve got Summers in interrogation right now.”

  “For which case?”

  Cartwell’s guilty gaze was his tell.

  Oh, hell no.

  He’d spent hours holed up in the office trying to piece everything together, trying to unveil what they’d missed—and all the while, someone else had grabbed Mardeaux. And it hadn’t been him.

  He took a deep breath to stabilize his nerves. “Summers got him?”

  From the way Cartwell looked at him askance, Brady had the innate sensation that the older man was debating lying or not to him. “Mercey, one of the street cops you put in place, found him.”

  Relief silenced the thundering in his ears.

  “When Summers patted him down, he got a pocket knife, as well as .9mm Glock tucked into his goddamn tube sock. Whether he’s up to talkin’ though . . . ” The older man trailed off, clearly implying that this was where Summers and Brady came in. Especially Brady. Within the homicide department, it was a relatively well-known fact that if you wanted the perp to talk, you stuck Brady in there and gave him an hour.

  Brady fell into step behind Cartwell and followed him toward the ten-by-ten, whitewashed box that functioned as the interrogation room. When it came to interrogations, Brady never felt anxious. He knew the name of the game; and the suspect, who usually turned out to be the perpetrator, knew the score as well. It was hardly ever their first rodeo.

  As Brady entered the room, his body surprised him by sprouting unexpected nerves.

  Summers looked his way, nodded, and then Brady’s gaze fell on Anthony Mardeaux, Julian’s father. While the kid had been planning father-and-son time at football games, Mardeaux had been out on the streets and involving himself in a high profile case.

  It was all Brady could do not to leap forward, grab the collar of the man’s ratty shirt, and tell him that real men did not abandon their pregnant girlfriends.

  Fists clenching around the yellow legal notepad he held in one hand, he nodded hello to the other detective, and then settled his big frame onto the empty chair. Turning his attention to Julian’s sperm donor, Brady propped his elbows up on the table. His suspenders dug into his shoulders, and he felt naked without his Glock on his hip, but staring at Anthony Mardeaux effused him with a sense of calm.