The NOLA Heart Novels (Complete Series)

by Maria Luis

  He heard her swallow. Saw the way she readjusted her stance against the glass. “Café du Monde.”

  Thank God. Her jeans were pushed down her hips, just far enough so that he could work his big hand into her cotton panties. “Widen your legs,” he ordered, satisfaction reeling through him when she complied immediately.

  He threw a wild glance at the French Quarter, internally berating himself for starting this game in the first place. He wanted his fingers playing her clit like a fine piano, wanted to feel her heat and . . . and now Nathan was stuck. He saw the flash of a streetcar rumbling down the tracks along the riverfront. “That,” he said, “the red trolley. What do they call them in N’Orleans?”

  Whether Jade cared that he’d practically given away the answer, she didn’t complain. If anything, her answer came quick, hastily, as though she also wanted the game to be over, too. “A streetcar.”

  Nathan knuckled the band of her panties to the side and went for Ace. She was wet, so wet— “Jesus, Jade.”

  Her whispered, “I’m sorry,” threw him. She was sorry? For what? Being the hottest woman alive? The most beautiful person he’d ever touched?

  His fingers pressed over her clit, rubbing in delicate circles he knew would drive her wild. “Don’t be sorry.” He increased the pressure, thrilling at the way her hips rotated to better meet his touch, the way she’d fallen back against his chest. Like she trusted him to take care of her. “Fuck,” he grunted, “never be sorry for this.”

  Her cries increased the moment he moved his fingers down, his thumb still working her clit, as he slid one finger inside. Then another. He curled them forward, pumping in and out the way he wished to with his cock.

  “Oh, my God.” Her ass came into contact with his hips and he let loose a deep hiss. “Danvers, please don’t stop.”

  “Don’t plan to, honey.”

  And he didn’t. He worked her until her first orgasm shattered, sending her hips fluttering against his fingers. And, because he liked the way her body tried to milk him for all he was worth, he continued, plying her clit until his name was the only litany she seemed to remember, until her hips moved in tandem with his thrusting fingers and she shattered for a second time.

  Slowly, he gentled the circles on her clit.

  Waited until her choppy breaths softened.

  Gently pulled up her jeans, redid the zipper and button, and then re-clasped her bra.

  He was throbbing so hard that he wasn’t even sure he’d be able to walk straight after. But tonight . . . tonight he hadn’t wanted it to be about him.

  “You’re an excellent tour guide,” she said over her shoulder, glancing up at him. The glittering city lights shone across her face and he stamped a quick kiss on her lips.

  “Now you know N’Orleans a little bit better,” he quipped easily, slipping out from between her body and the wall to lean against the glass.

  “I know something else too.”

  “Yeah?”

  The grin that split her face was all smug satiety. “I know you’re a bit kinky behind the frozen daiquiris.”

  Nathan didn’t consider himself kinky at all. He saw himself a bit more of an equal opportunist. If pleasuring her against the city skyline was what it took to touch her, then he was game.

  He lowered his face to hers, capturing her lips in a sweet, smooth kiss that threatened to rev his erection up to full staff again if he didn’t cool it. He pulled back, touched their foreheads together, and said, “Tell me again, Jade.”

  “That you’re kinky?”

  Laughter climbed his throat. “Not that. The part where you said you liked me.”

  A blush stained her cheeks as she tried to pull away from him. But he didn’t let her go, slipping his hand to the center of her back. “Jade,” he whispered, “say it.”

  Her eyes squeezed shut like she couldn’t bear to look at him when she replied, “I like you, Danvers.”

  The words alone were like a high he had no wish to come down from. He dropped a kiss to her forehead, tipped her chin up. “I like you too.”

  Such simple words, but ones he’d never uttered before.

  But when her dark eyes met his . . . Jesus. That fire was back, and even if it was just for a little bit, it belonged to him.

  16

  Central City, New Orleans

  “Harper, what the hell are you doing—”

  Tanya’s voice cut off at the sound of the car door slamming shut. Jade tugged on the front of her uniform shirt, flattening the wrinkles that didn’t exist, and stared resolutely at Ms. Beverly Hansen’s house.

  Her partner rounded the front of the vehicle, a ticked-off expression turning her complexion the same color as her hair. “Jade. Seriously.” Her finger jabbed in Jade’s direction, then swiveled toward the house. “This is not our job. We are not supposed to be here.”

  Jade kept her shoulders straight, and shifted the strap of her work duffel over her head to cross her chest. “You ever have a feeling, Smith? When you know that something doesn’t sit right and you’ve got to figure out if your hunch might not be a hunch after all?”

  Tanya dogged her heels. “It’s called constipation, Jade, and you’re gonna know that real well if you don’t cut the crap right now. If Mike finds out . . . ”

  Jade shook her head, dug into her duffel, and retrieved a document. She shoved it in the other woman’s direction. “I got him to sign this—we’re good.”

  The paper crinkled as Tanya peered down at it, flipping through the pages as though she were looking at something illegible. Then, flicking the front page with a manicured nail, she shook the stapled stack. “You got the boss to agree to this.”

  It had taken some convincing, especially as she was new on the job, but Mike Davis must have taken a liking to her—or perhaps he’d simply wanted her out of his office—because he’d signed off on the form she’d printed out, and shooed her away with an order to fetch him coffee.

  “Correction,” Jade amended with a finger in the air, “He agreed to nothing. He heard me rambling for ten minutes straight, signed the dotted line, and told me to get out.”

  Tanya lifted the packet, a dubious expression on her face. “And so this does . . . what, exactly?”

  Jade snagged the form that gave them leave to return to the house and shoved it into her bag. “Think of it as a security measure.”

  With a heavy sigh that bordered on the melodramatic, Tanya muttered, “This job was a lot easier before you started.”

  “Easier, maybe, but less exciting. There’s a reason you’ve stooped to flirting with the—”

  Narrowed blue eyes fixed on Jade’s face. “Don’t finish that sentence, Harper.”

  “Hmm?” murmured Jade, arching her brows in an innocent look she’d perfected on her police chief father years ago. “You mean, we aren’t supposed to talk about the way you spoon-fed Mike his breakfast this morning—with your boobs?”

  “What in the world does ‘don’t finish that sentence’ mean to you?”

  Rifling through her bag once again, she flippantly tossed over her shoulder, “I’m thinking of it as a guideline.” She shoveled through her belongings, pushing everything she didn’t need to the left. Had her duffel bag not been a ceaseless cavern this would have been—there it was.

  Wrapping a hand around Tanya’s elbow, Jade drew her to a stop and passed the badge over. “This is what I need you to do . . . ”

  Ten minutes later, Tanya was ensconced in Ms. Hansen’s house, chatting with the elderly woman, while Jade walked the perimeter of the house. Uncut grass tickled the knees of her slacks, and the chipped house paint crackled under the weight of her palm. What she needed was a miracle . . .

  Or rather, what she needed was the opportunity to prove her suspicion correct. Fact was, it hadn’t taken all that much to convince Mike to reassign Tanya and Jade to visiting Ms. Hansen’s property. After all, there wasn’t a single soul in New Orleans who hadn’t now heard of the Shawna Zeker case in the last t
wo days. Newspaper articles boiled down to the universal headline: Sweet Middle School Teacher Discovers Husband’s Adultery and Secret Family. Murders Him in Broad Daylight.

  The identity of the “secret family” had yet to be brought into the spotlight.

  But there was a different problem, because two days ago, DNA lab results had come back. There hadn’t been a single trace of Shawna’s DNA on the clothing, on the knife found at the crime scene, on anything.

  After that revelation, however, local newspapers went nuts:

  Middle School Teacher Acquitted before Trial! Innocent of Murdering Husband? Who to Blame?

  NOPD Bit the Bullet—But Did They Bite Too Soon When It Comes to Shawna Zeker?

  This just in: Police Wrongly Accuse Shawna Zeker of Murdering Her Husband.

  In the span of three weeks, Shawna Zeker had gone from unknown teacher to New Orleans’ most deadly killer to the city’s most beloved sweetheart. And the entirety of the case had fallen on the back of one unnamed homicide detective . . . Nathan Danvers.

  Jade cringed. Her heart hurt for the man who had only sought to do good, but was now silently suffering the media’s full throttle assault of his character, even though they didn’t know it was him, per se, running the investigation. Her two attempts to contact him since their moment in the glass room had gone unanswered.

  Which had led her to taking matters into her own hands. She was fully aware that so-called “detective” work did not fall onto her plate of responsibilities, but her nights were plagued by nightmares that she and Tanya had missed some integral piece of evidence at Ms. Bev’s house.

  Jade just knew that the break-in and the murderer had a common denominator. She glanced up at Ms. Hansen’s house. Danvers might not want her help. He might have shut her down the moment she brought up her suspicions, but she’d watched one too many crime TV shows, listened to one too many of her father’s rants about work, to let her personal feelings lower a veil over her eyes.

  If there was even a chance that she had missed something during the sweep of the place . . . well, she had to find it. The photograph was front and center in her thoughts. Did Miranda Smiley know they’d been captured? Who was she? For days now, Jade couldn’t help but wonder if it was Miranda who had perhaps stolen into the house. Perhaps the break-in had been less of a staging, as Jade originally suspected, but rather an attempt to steal back something that had belonged to her.

  At this point, Jade returning to the house had everything to do with a woman, Shawna, who had been wrongly sent to jail and nothing to do with her growing feelings for Danvers.

  At the thought of him, though, her cheeks burned at the memory of what they’d done up in the glass room.

  Do not think about his magic hands, Jade.

  Right. Right. She shook her head to rid herself of the naughty images running wild in her mind’s eye and got back to work. Over the next twenty minutes, she tracked the entire property and came up with . . . nothing. Again.

  Windows were fully intact; no shards of broken glass were hidden amidst the grass. The back door leading to a small-bricked courtyard remained untouched, with no scratches or obvious signs of breaking and entering. Along the sides of the house, Jade even dropped to her stomach and checked under the raised property, running her gaze along the shadows and pillar foundation for anything out of the ordinary.

  Mierda. She needed something to work with right now. It was clear to her that the intruder hadn’t been an intruder at all . . . but what was the truth? Jade had heard the latest gossip at the office, that Zeker’s murderer had been his lover. Even that argument felt too contrived.

  Angry Mother Grows Furious over Lover’s Refusal to Leave Wife—Kills Him in Broad Daylight—how was that headline any less cliché than the ones actually making their way around the circuit?

  The photograph of Miranda Smiley and Shawna from Ms. Hansen’s pantry now felt less coincidental and more sinister. Had Miranda been Charlie’s lover? It seemed likely at this point. Maybe the latest theory in the rumor mills wasn’t contrived at all. Maybe something had gone down between Miranda and Charlie, and she’d simply lost it. Jade had seen enough shows, heard enough stories, to know that simply “losing it” was as uncommon as many people thought.

  Jade crawled out from under the house, her steel-toed boots scraping against the concrete foundation. She refused to accept defeat.

  “I got nothing,” came Tanya’s voice from ahead.

  Jade snapped her head up, throwing out a quick hand to shield her eyes from the blinding, early morning light. “I know what you’re thinking,” she grunted, swinging her legs out from beneath the house and climbing to her feet. “It wasn’t a waste of time. Did you ask about Miranda Smiley?”

  Tanya held out the duffel by the strap, a silent offer for Jade to take it back. She did so, hooking the strap over her shoulder.

  “I did, yeah. Old lady didn’t tell me anything. She went on a rant that she just wanted her peace and quiet. Didn’t understand why we’d need to come back.”

  “Don’t you find it a little odd that the burglar was able to sneak in and out of her house without causing a stir?” Jade asked as they trekked it back to the van.

  Tanya let loose an annoyed groan. “Are we back to the key thing again?”

  “Yes.” Flinging open the van’s trunk, Jade tossed her workbag in, letting it land with a heavy thud. She crossed back to the driver’s side door and climbed in, waiting for Tanya to get in before she launched into her defense argument. Someone had to see what she was seeing—right? Why didn’t anyone else see that this Miranda Smiley thing was weird? The moment the passenger’s side door shut, Jade continued. “Unless you have one to begin with, who uses a key to break into a home?”

  Tanya folded her hands in her lap. “A N’Orleanian with class.”

  “Does such a thing exist?”

  For that sarcastic comment, all Jade got in return was a middle finger and the noncommittal comment, “Don’t make me send you back to Ft. Lauderdale.”

  “Miami.” Jade threw the gear into drive and merged into traffic. “I’m not a New England snowbird.”

  “Point is, we don’t know who broke into Ms. Hansen’s house, and whether they used a key or not is not our business.”

  Jade’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. Her gut had never lied to her before, and right now? Right now her gut was shouting that they were closer to discovering the perpetrator than either of them suspected. She tried again. “Tanya, would you just hear me out?”

  “Not. Our. Job.” Then, she leaned forward and cranked up the music’s volume, leaving Jade to realize that she was on her own.

  17

  Mid-City, New Orleans

  “Are you banging my brother?”

  Ah, crap—Car horns erupted all around as Jade slammed on the brakes.

  “You all right?” Lizzie asked in her ear. “It sounds like you’ve pissed off all of N’Orleans over there.”

  “Don’t hang up!” Jade shouted into the receiver. “I need you for directions to your brother’s house.”

  There was a small pause. “Are you sure the two of you aren’t hooking up?”

  Yes. No. Did one hot-as-hell moment constitute as “hooking up?” Jade had no idea. She’d never been the type of girl to throw herself into casual flings—though this had more to do with her history with John Thomas than anything else. Perhaps the better question was: did she want to hook up with Lizzie’s brother on a more permanent basis?

  The answer to that question was yes.

  “I like you too.” His words from the other night still haunted her every night. She wanted more of him.

  “I’m taking your silence as a confirmation that y’all are doing the nasty.”

  “We aren’t—”

  “Then why else are you going to his house at nine on a Friday night?”

  Jade’s mouth clamped shut. She didn’t have a solid answer to that question, other than the fact that she hadn’t see
n him all week. Not to mention that the media had discovered his involvement in the Zeker case, and now it was his name being dragged through the mud.

  Even if they didn’t see eye to eye on the Zeker case, she just wanted to . . . Jade swallowed over the growing lump in her throat as she pulled up to a stop sign. “I just want to make sure that he’s okay.”

  “You could text him.”

  Jade cringed. She could text him, but, well, was it wrong that she would rather see him in person? “I’m worried, that’s all. I’ve got pizza with me, in case I need an excuse.”

  There was no mistaking the sigh on the other end of the line. “I really don’t think you need an excuse to see my brother.”

  “We’re friends.”

  “That’s not the reason why, Jade, and you know it.”

  Worrying her bottom lip with her teeth, Jade glanced into the rearview mirror for oncoming traffic and merged into the right lane. The urge to ask Lizzie what she meant was terrifyingly strong. Had Danvers mentioned Jade at all? Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel. No, Lizzie was probably just fishing for information. Danvers didn’t seem the sort to spill his guts to his sister.

  “You said right by Bayou St. John?” she prodded, ignoring the sliver of disappointment that Lizzie probably didn’t actually know how her brother felt about Jade. “Where do I go from here?”

  Lizzie delivered the instructions and stayed on the line until Jade pulled up to the two-story Victorian gingerbread house. It looked incredibly out of place among the single-story double shotgun houses on either side. Small lights lined the short walkway to the front steps, and a live oak’s branches stretched up to the top of the house, concealing most of the second-floor balcony.

  “Danvers lives here?” she asked in awe. “This place is gorgeous.”

  All Jade got in return was a snort. “Yeah, that’s his house. Pretty, I guess, but I’d never live there.”

  She turned her gaze to the upper floor and the stained glass that formed a bay window within the gingerbread-styled turret. “Why do you say that?”