The NOLA Heart Novels (Complete Series)

by Maria Luis

  Shaelyn had let the floods spill forth. After all of it, Meme Elaine had done nothing but wrap a comforting arm around her granddaughter.

  On the other hand, it was clear that Meme Elaine had had about as much as she could handle of Shaelyn’s “wallowing.” Shaelyn didn’t blame her grandmother. She was rather sick of herself.

  “I can’t call him,” she muttered glumly. “I shouldn’t call him. Right?”

  He’d told her that she was running, but she wasn’t . . . was she? The situation felt different—he’d lied to her—but also not so different than when they were young. She didn’t know what to do.

  Meme Elaine looked up to the ceiling, and Shaelyn had the distinct feeling that her grandmother was praying for strength. “Shae, my girl, either call him or don’t call him. It doesn’t bother me one way or another, but you have got to get out of this house.”

  Shaelyn felt compelled to throw some humor into the otherwise depressing conversation. “The house is mine, isn’t it?”

  “Well, it would be if you had any ounce of sense in that stubborn head of yours,” Meme grumbled. “But I’ve got my own secret to share, you know.”

  “Oh yeah?” Lifting one brow in question, Shaelyn waited. She wasn’t sure she could take any more secrets. Her lifetime quota had been maxed out already.

  She waited, and then waited some more, until her grandmother muttered, “Oh, hang it,” and then reached for Shaelyn’s cocktail. The rest of the amber liquid disappeared in three gulps. Shaelyn was impressed, despite the fact that she was now liquor-less. Just as well. Her head was pounding like the devil.

  “What’s this super big secret of yours?” she pressed. “Don’t tell me you’ve followed in my footsteps and have decided to help expose the world’s cheaters.”

  Two months ago Shaelyn would never have been able to make a joke out of her old career. Two months ago, she also wouldn’t have voluntarily called Carla to apologize for the rude way she’d finished their call, and to reestablish the fact that she was never coming back. Carla had wished her well. Shaelyn had done the same. The whole situation felt a bit like an alternate universe, to be honest.

  “Meme?”

  “I was never going to give you the house.”

  The words sank in through the haze of the alcohol. “What do you mean, you never planned to give me the house?”

  “Just like I said. You wouldn’t come home otherwise, and I needed a way to lure you in.”

  “So you decided to claim that I was inheriting this monstrosity?” Shaelyn paused as a wild thought hit her. “Are you even sick?”

  Suddenly Meme Elaine seemed way too concerned with staring at the empty tumbler. She switched her attention to her nails, which were painted a taxicab yellow. “Common colds can often kill folks my age. I could have been on my deathbed.”

  “But you weren’t.”

  Meme shook her head slowly, allowing time for that truth bomb to settle over Shaelyn. “No. I wasn’t.”

  She glanced askance at her father’s mother, who was living up to her nickname of “Batty ol’ Laine.” “You aren’t sick now?”

  “Hearty as a horse.”

  Shaelyn had no words. Had her grandmother been so desperate for her return that she’d willingly made up whatever tall tale she needed in order to reel her back to New Orleans? And what did that mean for Shaelyn . . . had she neglected her grandmother so much that the woman felt it was necessary to start scheming?

  Her head pounded furiously. It was too much, all of it. “Is there anything else I need to know? Any other transgressions you want forgiveness for which are just eating you up on the inside?”

  Her grandmother glanced up at the ceiling again, and this time Shaelyn didn’t bother letting her frustration show. “Seeking penance for your sins?”

  “I’ve got Father Andres for that at church, Shaelyn. But thank you for worrying about my possible delivery to Hades.”

  Shaelyn wasn’t worrying about anything and they both knew it. “Spill it, Meme.”

  The older woman threw her hands up in the air. “Oh, all right. I purposely set you up with Ben and Josie Beveau.”

  “I know. If you recall, Ben and I were engaged for all of two weeks.”

  Meme Elaine winced. “I mean, I chose them for a reason. Make that two reasons.”

  The doctor’s appointment. Josie and Ben trying one last time for a natural conception. The five thousand dollars her grandmother had paid him. Shaelyn narrowed her eyes. Was there any level that her grandmother wasn’t willing to drop to, to get what she wanted?

  “You knew they were trying for a kid,” Shaelyn said pointedly.

  A thin-lipped smile flashed her way. “Guilty. Mary knows them from church. She’d overheard them talking to friends about trying for another baby and we needed a . . . ”

  The older woman shifted on the chair, for once avoiding conversation as she also avoided eye contact.

  Something was not adding up.

  “Meme,” she said slowly, “What did you and Mary Taylor do?”

  Blue eyes flicked to her. The cane snapped in a thump-thump-thump staccato against the wooden table leg. Her grandmother was nervous. The woman who wore lacy Victoria’s Secret bras at the prime age of seventy-something was nervous. If Shaelyn weren’t witnessing the momentous occasion for herself she never would have believed it.

  “I think I need another drink.”

  Shaelyn lifted an eyebrow to really-didn’t-you-just-lecture-me heights. “Don’t change the subject.”

  “Oh, all right!” Meme Elaine’s hands flew up into the air. “We wanted you and Brady together again. Except that you’re both so stubborn, so we knew we had to come up with a game plan.”

  Something twisted in Shaelyn’s stomach. Anger. Annoyance. Misplaced humor. She wasn’t sure what, but it was there, and she felt the strangest urge to laugh because this sort of scheming was just so Elaine Lawrence. If she didn’t laugh, there was a good possibility she might strangle her grandmother, and she had no wish to end up in jail. “So you set me up with a married man?”

  Meme Elaine tapped her nose with her finger. “But Brady didn’t know that you weren’t engaged. We felt tremendously bad about Josie and Ben not being able to have children, though, so we offered to help them with some of the fertility costs in return for helping us.”

  A pressure started pounding in Shaelyn’s head. “Y’all blackmailed them.”

  “No,” her grandmother retorted, “we offered them a trade that they desperately wanted.”

  “I’m sorry, but that sounds like a good case of old-fashioned manipulation. And you manipulate Brady and me, too.” She didn’t know whether to be impressed or disgusted by her grandmother’s and Mary Taylor’s antics. Mixed in with everything that had gone down with Brady, all Shaelyn felt was confusion. “I thought you and Miss Mary were frenemies.”

  “What’s a frenemy?”

  “A friend that’s . . . ” Shaelyn shook her head. No point in explaining lingo that her grandmother wouldn’t understand. “What I’m trying to say is that I was under the impression that you and Miss Mary no longer got along. You’re always snipping at each other.”

  Meme Elaine shrugged. “We’re old, cher. That’s what we do.”

  “So she didn’t steal Mr. Arthur from you?”

  “No, she certainly did that.”

  Shaelyn threw up her hands. “I don’t get it. You aren’t friends but you are friends. You loved Mr. Arthur and now you don’t love Mr. Arthur.”

  “We’ve been in each other’s lives since I had my first period. Yes, she snatched Arthur away—but, look here, she’s still putting up with the dratted man this many years later. I suspect she’s actually jealous of me. I can do whatever I want!”

  Shaelyn stared at her grandmother, not so willing to let her off the hook so quickly. “Does ‘whatever you want’ include throwing Brady and I together, no matter the costs?”

  Meme Elaine had the good grace to blush. The wrinkled
skin of her cheeks bloomed a rosy pink and her lids dropped as she looked down at the table. “Cher, we just wanted to see our grandkids happy. Y’all were inseparable once before. We thought you might need a push to help get you back there.”

  The pressure had increased to an incessant throbbing, and Shaelyn brought the heel of her palms to her forehead. Although a part of her was totally considering granmatricide—is that what one called the act of killing a grandmother? Shaelyn didn’t know—there was the other part of her, the part that still wished for a close-knit family, which heaved a sigh of contentment. Not because she supported her grandmother’s manipulation of the Beveaus, or even the manipulation of her and Brady, but because her grandmother’s actions demonstrated—in a weird, convoluted way—that she cared.

  She cared about Shaelyn’s happiness and, for an individual who’d felt that her happiness was inconsequential, that was everything.

  Shaelyn drew her fingers down her face, surprised to find streaks of tears had entered the world without her even noticing. Quickly she wiped them away, rubbing the wetness off on her jeans.

  Hesitantly, as though she feared the worst, her grandmother asked, “Are you mad, cher? We only wanted to help.”

  Thing was, Shaelyn did see. The threat of inheriting the Coliseum Street mansion, and even the ridiculous fake engagement to Ben Beveau, had all been done because she hadn’t given her grandmother a reason to believe that Shaelyn was anything but a shell of a person. She’d existed for years but hadn’t started living until she’d returned to New Orleans with the plan to get the hell out . . . and found herself enjoying life instead.

  If that sounded stupid or cheesy, Shaelyn just didn’t care. She reached for her grandmother’s hands, taking them within hers. “Can’t say that I support your matchmaking ways, but”—she drew in a deep breath—“I’m not mad. Okay, I am, just a little, but I’ll get over it.”

  Her grandmother’s smile was just a little bit wobbly, just a little bit grateful. “We’ll figure out a way to get you and Brady back together. I promise. Mary and I, we’ve come up with some more plans—”

  Shaelyn took her right hand back and held it up, palm faced out. “No. No more plans.”

  “But you and Brady are meant for each other!”

  The headache was back and this time Shaelyn knew the exact reason for it. The “reason” was a man with hot-blue eyes, an even hotter body, and a slow smile that could melt her bones with single touch. She shoved Brady’s image away.

  No more thinking of Brady Taylor. No more dreaming of him holding her as she slept. No more feeling lonely when she went to bed at night, watching stupid Sons of Anarchy episodes by herself on her laptop.

  “That ship has sailed, Meme. Brady and I are over.”

  “Cher,” Meme Elaine said in her I’m-still-your-elder-listen-to-me voice, “don’t be silly. You just have to learn to trust him, that’s all.”

  The irony wasn’t lost on her. It was because Shaelyn had placed her complete trust in him that she was heartbroken and shoving her face with ice cream and Jose Cuervo on a nightly basis. But there was more—because he had pretty come straight out and asked her to trust him, to fight for him, and she had run away.

  Like always.

  29

  “You look like shit.”

  “Danvers, that might be the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  Brady fell into step with the other detective as they left Headquarters for the night.

  Truth be told, Brady didn’t only look like shit, he also felt like it too. The past two weeks since that fateful argument with Shaelyn had done something to him. Numbed him. Torn him apart.

  “Not true,” Danvers replied as he spun his car keys around one finger. “I told you that you looked like death the other day. Actually, I’m pretty sure I mentioned something along the lines of the plague and returning from the—”

  “Shut up.” He knew that Danvers was only trying to help. And it helped, sort of, in the sense that Brady cracked a weak smile.

  “I know shit hit the fan with your girl, but you need to get out. Live a little.”

  Your girl. Ha.

  Brady wasn’t all too sure that Shaelyn had been his at all. For all her talk about her being his rock, she hadn’t trusted him when it mattered most. And now that he’d successfully screwed things up beyond repair, he highly doubted she ever would be his. “I’m living,” he muttered, even though he was pretty sure that if Merriam-Webster had a slot for his definition of “living,” there’d just be a blank space. “I went out for a drink yesterday with my buddy.”

  As they neared their cars, Danvers rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure you did. Only Luke told me that you drank too much and he had to take you home.”

  Danvers had spoken to Luke? Brady shot the other detective a suspicious glance. “You talk to Luke?”

  Brady heard the beep-beep of a nearby car locking, followed by the hushed rasp of shoes moving over gravel, just before a muscular arm wrapped around his stomach from behind.

  It happened fast.

  One minute Brady was reaching for his gun, and in the next he’d been bodily shoved into Danvers’ truck, sprawled on his side as the truck rumbled along.

  “Jesus!” He latched onto the back of the driver’s side seat and hauled himself up into a seated position. “What the fuck is wrong with you two? And you, Luke—seriously?”

  His best friend turned around, his eyes shrewd but twinkling with sadistic humor. “Untwist those lace panties of yours, Taylor.”

  “I’m not—” Brady pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to count to ten. He didn’t even make it to five. “Y’all kidnapped me in the middle of the NOPD Headquarters parking lot.”

  Danvers—the dick—held up one finger in the air. “Technically we borrowed you.”

  “Technically I could have shot Luke because y’all can’t even invite me to dinner like civilized people,” he snapped.

  “Technically your head is too far up your ass for less extreme measures.”

  For a moment, no one said anything. Heavy metal music drowned out the silence. Then, Danvers continued, “Are y’all feeling more Italian or Thai? I could really go for some drunken noodles right now.”

  Luke thunked his head against the headrest. “Dude, you don’t ask your kidnapped-ee what they want for dinner. You just take them there.”

  Bracing his hands on each headrest, Brady leaned forward to shut off the music. “How about you two stop squabbling like an old married couple and explain why you ‘borrowed’ me.”

  “You need an intervention.” This from Danvers. Luke only nodded, even as he caught Brady’s glance in the rearview mirror. Brady hated what he saw there: worry and pity. It was an awful combo, made worse by the fact that Luke’s usual mask of detachment was missing.

  All because of him.

  He scrubbed his face with his hand. He and Luke had been best friends since the age of eight. Luke had taken on the daredevil persona while Brady, though technically not that much better, wore the title of “the careful one”—the friend who worried more, the one who never stepped outside of the established boundaries.

  Except for one other time: when Shaelyn had skipped town and left Brady half the person he’d been before. Then Luke had stepped up—drawing Brady back to the land of the living.

  He was doing the same thing all over again now.

  Softly, he murmured, “I’m good, guys. Promise.”

  “You’re not,” Danvers said as he banged a sudden right and nearly threw Brady into door. “When my”—he coughed—“when Cartwell asked you to sit down and talk about the sergeant position, you turned him down.”

  Brady looked out the window. Apparently Danvers had decided on Thai. Or Italian. It was tough to tell because the two restaurants sat next to each other.

  “Hey, hey, hold up now.” Luke threw up his hands in the shape of a T. “You said no to the job?”

  Danvers muttered out of the corner of his mouth, “T
echnically it’s not his yet. But L-T was all but offering it to him after the whole Kemper-Mardeaux stint.”

  “Whatever,” Luke said. “Point is, you said no, Taylor?”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “What?”

  Brady spared them both a glare. “I said that I don’t want it.”

  Danvers slammed his forehead into the steering wheel—thank God they’d parked already—and Luke was very un-Luke-like when he threw his hands up in the air and showed emotion. He twisted in his seat and pointed at Brady. “See,” he snapped, “this is why you needed an intervention.”

  How could he explain to them that the craving he’d had for the promotion had left around the same time Shaelyn had come back into his life? It wasn’t as though he’d necessarily been forced to choose—Shae or the job—but he’d be lying if he said he felt as passionate about the promotion now as he had two months ago.

  Hoping to change the topic back to Danvers’ endless stomach, Brady muttered, “Food, guys?” and went for the door.

  The locks clicked into place.

  Brady met Danvers’ gaze in the rearview mirror, just as he had Luke’s only minutes earlier. Whereas Luke had seemed worried, Danvers’s expression appeared only exasperated.

  “Discussion now,” Danvers said, “food later.”

  “Et tu, Danvers?” Brady crossed his arms over his chest and slumped back against the middle seat. Frustrated, he ran a hand through his hair. “All right, let’s get this over with.”

  He didn’t want to “get it over with.” Hell, he didn’t even want to talk about Shae or Julian or Mardeaux. His thoughts went there often enough, keeping him up all night and plaguing him throughout the day. If anything, he couldn’t stop thinking about the mess he’d created.

  “You miss her.”

  Brady flicked his gaze toward Luke. “What do you know of it? You didn’t even want me to start talking to her again.”

  For a second, Brady thought Luke might reach out and strangle him. But alas, he only looked heavenward. “Because I was scared that this might happen again.”