by Maria Luis
Jade grinned. Plucking her black shirt away from her chest, she teased, “I had to fit in. Didn’t want to blow our cover.”
His mouth twitched. “What makes you think we have a cover to blow?” Voice dropping to a soft caress, he added, “Maybe I just wanted to take you out for dinner. Show you around.”
Oh. Oh.
Do not blush, do not blush.
Her cheeks heated, and, Díos mío, this man had succeeded in doing what no man had done before him: make her feel the rush of giddiness. Which made no sense at all, because, sure, Danvers was attractive (highly so), but she wasn’t interested in him like that. She’d come to New Orleans for the job, and there was her rule about no dating to keep in mind . . .
In an attempt to rein in her hormones, she planted her elbows on the wooden table and leaned in. “I saw your bulge.”
His brows flew up. “Excuse me?”
“Your gun,” she said, waving a hand toward his half of the table. “I can see the outline under your shirt.”
The confusion eased from his expression, and he chuckled. “And here I was thinking you were talking about a different kind of bulge.”
She mock-frowned, even as her knees pressed together beneath the table. “Is your mind always in the gutter?”
“Around you, yes.” Then he winked, damn him, and reminded her that he was Mr. Flirtatious.
Tapping her fingers on the table, she said, “Can we get back to the gun bit?”
His smile never lost its luster, though she could have sworn the heat in his eyes cooled. Had he . . . wanted her to say that she liked him flirting with her? She did, but that didn’t mean she should. She needed this time to be single, independent. Plus, now that she was getting to know him better, he didn’t seem the sort to settle in for more than one wild night in bed.
Although maybe that was exactly what she needed . . .
His arms crossed over his chest, biceps tightening under the short sleeves of his shirt. “I always carry. If I remember correctly, so do you.” He dipped his chin toward her purse. “Metal detector ringin’ any bells, Jade?”
The blush was back again, but gracias al cielo, she was saved from answering with the arrival of their server. They both placed an order for sweet tea, extra lemon for her, and settled on classic Louisiana po’boys for dinner.
She waited until they were alone again before jumping back into action. “You didn’t say why we’re here.”
“You’re tenacious.” He didn’t say it like it was a bad thing.
She held up a finger. “I prefer ambitious.”
“That too,” he said, flashing a quick grin.
“So, are you going to tell me what we’re doing here? Not that the atmosphere isn’t gorgeous and everything . . . ”
“Would you believe me if I said it was NOPD business?”
Jade clapped her hands together. “Brilliant! Because now I’m employed by the NOPD, so technically you can tell me everything.”
A corner of his mouth hitched up. “You’re tenacious.”
“Ambitious,” she replied, with a mock bow. “Seriously, Danvers. You can’t bring me here and then just not say anything. That’s like giving me a spoon but not the gallon of ice cream, or like bringing me to the airport but not handing me a ticket to paradise. You can’t just not—”
“Jade?”
Her heart gave an extra thump at the sound of her name from his lips. “Yes?”
“Stop talking for a minute.”
“Well, that’s not—”
“Now, Jade.” His foot connected with hers under the table, and then she noticed the intensity lining his features. Danvers always looked intense, but this was different. This was . . . She followed the line of his gaze to where it rested on a female server delivering drinks at the opposite side of the courtyard.
The woman’s figure was trim, her red hair pulled back in a messy bun. With a black tray clasped in one hand, she pointed to a customer’s menu with the other. She was beautiful, in an understated sort of way, and Jade couldn’t stop her surge of curiosity.
She kicked Danvers’ foot right back. “Who is she?” she whispered. “We’re talking about the redhead, right?”
Danvers’ brows pulled low. “Jade.”
“Yes?”
“You would make an awful detective.”
For some reason, she didn’t think he’d meant it as an insult. “I like to talk things out.”
“You talk too much.”
“This from Mr. Chatty himself? I’m pulling the hypocrite card.”
That earned her a smile, though it quickly dimmed. “Damn it, she’s leaving.”
Jade checked over her shoulder, just in time to see the woman grab both menus and step away from the table. She turned to Danvers. “What do we need to know?”
“What?”
She waved a hand toward the woman. “That server. You need to know something—what is it?”
“Her name.”
“Done.” Jade’s chair screeched across the stone floor as she scooted back and rose to her feet. “Don’t eat my po’boy if it comes out.”
“Jade,” Danvers muttered, his hand coming down on the table as he began to stand, “what are you doing?”
“Proving to you that being chatty works.”
And with that, she swept past him and headed for the front of the restaurant. Make an awful detective?
Unlikely.
Jade had learned from the best—her father.
Shit.
It was the only thought to cross Nathan’s mind as he watched Jade stalk off to find the unknown woman from the photo. He wanted to chase after her, but the rational part of his brain knew that wasn’t a solid decision. Doing so would only attract attention, and since he had no idea who the lady even was in relation to Shawna Zeker . . .
Nathan’s hand balled into a fist against the table.
“Lover’s spat?”
He flinched at the female voice, his gaze flitting to the table next to his. “What?”
Dressed in a Hawaiian T-shirt that practically screamed “tourist,” the woman pointed in the direction Jade had taken. “You. Her. Honey, allow me to let you in on a little secret—women don’t like to be questioned.”
Now, hold on a minute. He opened his mouth, but was soundly cut off when she continued, “Women are always right, honey. Always. Ever think about why wives are buried to the right of their husbands?”
Was that even a thing? He shook his head. “Not really, no.”
She went on as if she hadn’t even heard him. “Because they are right, even after death.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works.”
“Of course it is.” She lifted her drink—a Pimm’s Cup, if he wasn’t mistaken, by the large quantity of fruit and veggies stuffed into the glass—and saluted him. “Now, your woman? Don’t tell her that she’s tenacious. It’s rude.”
Nathan glanced over his shoulder, just to see if he was being pranked. “I was only teasing her.”
“Women like to be wined and dined, honey. Wined and dined. Tell her that she’s beautiful.”
Okay, this was getting out of control. From the red-tint to the woman’s eyes, she was either high or drunk off her ass. Maybe both. “Ma’am, I think that maybe you should lay off the—”
She pointed her drink at him, and the liquid sloshed over the rim. “Do you or do you not tell your wife she’s beautiful every day?”
“You’re married?”
Nathan’s eyes fell shut and he counted to ten. Slowly. Pretended that it was all a dream.
“Danvers?”
Yep, this was real life. Wonderful.
Climbing to his feet, he cranked his eyes open to stare down at Jade. Her lips were pursed, her dark eyes fixed on his face. “I’m not married,” he said.
Her lips parted. “Oh.”
He tilted his head to the lady in the Hawaiian shirt, who was watching them avidly. “She thinks I’m married to you.”
“Oh.”
Nathan kept his hands by his sides, though he was tempted to reach up and tap her chin, a subtle reminder that she was gaping at him like a fish. “She says a woman is always right.”
“Well, a woman is always right,” Jade said with a husky laugh. “That’s why the woman is always buried to the right of her husband.”
“What, is this like some women-tribe thing that y’all only know about? I’ve never even heard of that.”
“Yes,” Jade and the stranger said at the same time.
Nathan plowed his fingers through his hair. Twenty. He needed to count to twenty.
“Make it up to her, honey,” the woman urged. “You called her tenacious.”
God save him from crazy, drunk— “It was a joke,” he bit out.
The woman wasn’t satisfied. She threw up her glass, exclaiming, “Kiss her, honey! I want to see a kiss.”
This time, it was his mouth that hung open. “We aren’t—you know what?” He turned to Jade, his gaze falling to her flushed face. Call him crazy, but he’d wanted his mouth on hers from the first moment they’d met. He wanted to taste that vivaciousness for himself. To store it away for days when the past threatened to drag him down. If he had to go along with this nutty woman’s scheme to make it happen . . . Well, that just made him a smart opportunist.
His hand went to her wrist, softly, easily, so as not to turn her skittish. “You up for making this woman’s trip to N’Orleans?” he asked, playing it cool, playing it flirty, like his lungs weren’t pumping, fighting for oxygen, like his heart wasn’t two beats away from bursting from his chest.
Like he didn’t want her kiss more than anything he’d ever wanted before.
Her dark eyes went to his mouth and stayed there. “Do you think we’ll really make her trip?”
“Hell yes.”
“I should probably tell you that the woman’s name is—”
“Jade?”
Her tongue touched her bottom lip. “Yes?”
“Stop talking for a minute.”
“Okay.”
He lifted his hands to the base of her neck, his thumbs flirting with her collarbone. He met her gaze head-on, because he’d never been the sort to push when the pushing wasn’t wanted. But there wasn’t any mistaking the desire in her eyes, and Nathan gladly took what she offered.
His mouth came down on hers, gentle, coaxing. With a surprised gasp, her lips parted and he took advantage—hands sliding up to hold the weight of her head, deepening the kiss until her sigh matched his groan of approval. Her fingers found his biceps, digging into the muscle, nails scraping his skin.
“Now that’s a kiss!”
Jade lurched back, breaking the contact. Her eyes were huge in her face, and Nathan nearly pulled her back for more. It was the hesitancy in her eyes that stopped him, the way she put her hand to her heart and avoided meeting his gaze.
Damn.
He hadn’t meant to make her uncomfortable, to push her for something that she hadn’t wanted. Hell, it’d certainly seemed like she wanted his kiss. That she wanted him with the same desperation he had for her.
“Jade, listen, I’m—”
“Smiley,” she said, jumping in.
“What?”
“Miranda Smiley, that’s the woman’s name.”
Right. The woman from the photo. At this very moment, he frankly didn’t give a damn. “Jade,” he tried again, “I’m sorry. I crossed a line.”
She shook her head, and that one movement stopped him in his tracks. “I-I have to go. Thank you, you know, for tonight. I just forgot that I have something to take care of. At home. Okay.” She stepped back. “Have a good night, Danvers.”
He watched her leave, completely at a loss for whatever the hell had just gone down.
Their server pulled up, two plates in hand. “Two po’boys?” he asked.
Nathan sighed. “I’ll take them to go.”
“Now, honey, that was one helluva kiss, but, if you ask my opinion, you needed more of that tongue action.”
He twisted to stare at the Hawaiian T-shirt lady. “Haven’t you done enough already tonight?”
She, in turn, pointed at her mouth. “More tongue, honey. I promise you—it’s all about the tongue.”
Sure, it was.
If there was a day where he missed cigarettes, today was it. Talk about it being a shit show.
12
New Orleans, Louisiana
Jade had regrets. To name a few (in no particular order):
a. She regretted turning down Joey Hernandez for senior prom. Not necessarily because she’d thought a different invitation was on its way, but because if she’d gone with Joey and danced all night at Miami’s Vagabond Motel (which was like no motel she’d ever seen before), then Jade would not have walked in on her parents having sex on the kitchen table. What had been seen could never be unseen.
b. Jade also had a few misgivings over spending thousands of dollars on a degree she had never put to use. When high school advisors told their students to “reach for their dreams,” she’d done so. Indiana Jones was fictional, and at the age of twenty-seven, so was Jade’s archaeology career.
c. But what she regretted most was staying with John Thomas for as long as she had. She’d done so because Lucia had expected it of her, and, if she was being honest, she’d maybe worried that John Thomas was “it” for her. She’d never been particularly inclined to date (see the Joey Hernandez fiasco above), preferring instead to work or to hang out with her family.
But Jade had a few new regrets, the first being that she had run away from Danvers after their kiss like an absolute idiot. Who did that? Seriously. There she’d been, lip-locked to the sexiest man she’d ever met, and she had run. Run!
As she’d trucked it back to her car, she hadn’t known whether to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of her exit, or cry because she’d potentially rejected the best kiss she’d had in years—if ever.
The last two days of radio silence from Danvers had proven to be even worse. She felt lonely.
Lonely in the “I might just go adopt five cats today” way, even though she hated cats.
Lonely in the sense that she’d written out numerous text messages to Danvers, apologizing for literally jumping ship, and yet she hadn’t sent a single one.
Jade was in a rut. And it didn’t help matters that Tanya Smith was enjoying the process of digging Jade an even deeper hole.
At the sight of the traffic light switching from yellow to red, Tanya slammed on the car brakes and nearly sent Jade flying into the dashboard. Thank God for seatbelts.
Narrowed blue eyes turned to look at her. “Let’s get real here a second,” Tanya said with an upward tilt of her chin, “You aren’t ready to be on your own. I talked to your superiors today to let them know that you need more training.”
Another week of sitting in a car with the combative Tanya Smith sounded like Jade’s new version of hell.
She sighed, turning her attention to the duffel tucked between her legs. Legs, mind you, which were shoved up near her chin, because she still wasn’t allowed to adjust the seat.
Oh, yeah.
One more week with Tanya, and there was a good chance one of them wouldn’t be making it out alive.
“You heard me?” Tanya snapped. The sneer on her otherwise pretty face didn’t help any. Neither did the fact that she had something stuck in her front teeth. “I said that—”
“You should look in the mirror.”
Those narrowed blue eyes opened wide, deer-in-the-headlights style. “Excuse me?”
“Yeah, right”—Jade gestured at her front teeth—“here. Turkey? Canadian bacon? Satan?”
The traffic light turned green and Tanya released the break, swerving between two cars and a bicyclist like a mad woman as she cut to the shoulder of the road and threw the gear into park. Down went the driver’s side visor. Up went Tanya’s face as she flashed her teeth at the mirror.
Furtively she scraped at
the piece of food with her fingernail. “Why didn’t you tell me I had bacon stuck in my teeth earlier?”
“When did I have the time?” Feeling very much like she had the upper hand for once, Jade propped her feet on top of her duffel and folded her arms across her chest. “Oh, wait! Maybe when you were flirting with the security guard at the hotel? Or when you were just lecturing on me being a Class-A Failure?”
Tanya froze. Very slowly, as though the shock was like ice in her veins, she lifted a hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God. I flirted with that guy three hours ago.”
“Time just flies when you’re having fun.”
Normally, Jade wasn’t the sort of woman for pettiness or extreme snark. But after a whole week with Tanya at her side, well, the gloves were ready to come off. Lucia would say it was Jade’s hot Latina blood glimmering through. Jade didn’t think her Cuban heritage had anything to do with it. Instead, she figured that she’d had the misfortune to inherit her father’s infamous temper. Slow to rise, even slower to boil—then, pop! Off came the lid like a champagne cork going airborne.
“Three hours, Harper.” Tanya said this with her hand covering her mouth, and the words came out muffled. “Three. You don’t leave people hanging like that.”
Jade held up a finger. “Correction. You don’t leave friends hanging like that, but you’ve made it very clear that we are not friends.”
Flipping up the visor, Tanya curled her hands around the steering wheel and stared straight ahead. From her angle, Jade noticed the pulsing tick in the other woman’s jaw. Softly, so low that it was a mere whisper of drums and guitar solos, U2’s old classic “Bloody Sunday” crooned on the radio. It wasn’t a Sunday, but it sure felt as though things could turn bloody any second now.
Be a Harper, girl, just smooth the problems away.
Disregarding Tanya’s precious car rules, Jade reached forward and disobediently turned the volume dial to cricket-creaking silence. She resettled herself in the seat, crossed her arms, and prepared herself to make “nice” with the Wicked Witch of the West. Like real adults.
“We could be friends,” Jade said bluntly. “Grab coffee, paint our fingernails.”