by Maria Luis
“Y’all,” Lizzie said loudly, “I do not have fake boobs.”
“Huh. I couldn’t tell.”
Lizzie twisted to look at Tanya, who was theoretically the newcomer to the group, although Jade wasn’t so much ahead of her. “What do you mean, you couldn’t tell?”
Tanya shrugged. “You’re obviously wearing a great bra.”
“It’s one of mine,” Anna pointed out. “We sell everything from crotch-less panties to push-up bras.”
“Also, sometimes sex toys,” Shaelyn murmured, “depending if we’re working in collaboration with The Dirty Crescent for an event.”
Tanya’s blue eyes went wide with awe. “The sex toy shop?”
Shaelyn nodded. “The very one.”
“Love them.” Tanya exchanged her watered-down cocktail for the new one. “I wish I had known about y’all when me and my ex were on the fritz and ‘makeup sex’ was our motto.”
Lizzie elbowed Jade in the side. “Maybe you should give that a go.”
All eyes flew to Jade, who, in turn, glared at Lizzie. “Don’t you have a filter?” she hissed.
Danvers’ sister grinned saucily, throwing a wink in for good measure. “Nope.”
Figures.
As Jade mentally catalogued all the ways she could get away with murder, Shaelyn tapped her wine glass with a silver knife until everyone quieted. She cleared her throat with a loud ahem. Then, “Are you telling me that you are in need of makeup sex lingerie?”
Jade cast a beseeching look about the table. There she’d been, minding her own manners, doing her own thing, and now . . . “I plead the fifth.”
“Guilty!” Tanya thumped her fist on the table. “No one ever pleads the fifth unless their asses are steaming.”
Shaelyn paused in her interrogation. “I like you,” she said to Jade’s coworker. “I don’t know you, but I like you.”
Tanya flashed a smile. “Thanks.”
Jade wondered if she’d stepped into an alternate universe. She placed her linen cloth on the table. It was time to escape. Now. “I think I’m going to use the restroom.”
A hand yanked on the back of her shirt and Jade’s ass hit the leather bench. Lizzie shot her an innocent smile. “We’re talking about you sexing with my brother.”
“Oh, my God,” Anna exclaimed. “You and Danvers?” She jerked forward in her chair, instantly killing the image of smooth, unfazed entrepreneur as her elbows hit the table, hard, and rattled all the drinks. “How was it?”
“Wait,” Tanya said, hand up in the air, “Who are we talking about here?”
“Nathan Danvers” came from three different mouths, none of them Jade’s.
“Oh, my God.” This now from Tanya, her blue eyes opened wide in shock. “Oh, my God. You did the no-no cha-cha with Danvers? Every time I see him out in the field, I just want to lick him.”
“Who says that?” Shaelyn asked. “Horizontal tango, I can see. The naughty dance? I’m still following. But the ‘no-no cha-cha’ can’t count.”
“It can.”
“It really can’t,” retorted Shaelyn. “Call me old-fashioned, but when I’m getting down and dirty with my boyfriend, doing the cha-cha is the last thing on my brain.”
With a mischievous glint in her gaze, Anna reached out to give her cousin’s hand a sympathetic there-there pat. Then, she went in for the kill. “That’s because you and Brady lack imagination. Very orderly sexy times.” She covered her mouth as if imparting a deep, dark secret and leaned in toward Jade. “So . . . you had sex with Danvers?”
Jade dropped her face into her palms. The lot of them were worse than Rita and Sammie put together, and that was saying something. Her private life would never be private again if she kept up these budding friendships. Strangely, or maybe because she was secretly a masochist, she couldn’t imagine being anywhere else than at this table, in a strange dive-y bar, with a group of women she didn’t know but strangely liked.
Except, maybe, for Lizzie Cartwell, the Spiller of Secrets.
Lizzie clapped her on the back. “The answer to your question, Anna, is yes, they did.”
“Wow.” Tanya sat back, a surprised expression on her face. “I’ve been trying to achieve that for years now. I’m with Anna; tell us how it was.”
The women waited in silence as Jade tried to summon the words to explain the best experience of her life. Admitting too much wouldn’t do. Since stalking out of his bedroom three days ago, she hadn’t heard a single thing from him.
Sure, she could chalk up his avoidance to masculine stubbornness or even immaturity. But she had a sneaking suspicion that wasn’t the case at all. Instead, she couldn’t help but wonder if her words had struck a chord with him. If her lengthy speech had resonated a whole lot more than he’d shown when she’d walked out.
And then, of course, there was the Zeker case. Shawna had been released from jail yesterday. No one had been announced as her husband’s murderer. She knew that all the missing blanks in the case had to be driving Danvers crazy.
She only wished that he’d realize that asking for help when things got tough wasn’t a sign of weakness.
“Jade?” Shaelyn pressed.
Wrapping her fingers around the wine glass, Jade stared down at the burgundy liquid. “Hot,” she admitted. “Melt-your-pants-off hot.”
Breathlessly, Anna said, “And the panties?”
Jade slid a knowing glance toward the fashionable blonde. “What panties?”
Aside from Lizzie, who looked simultaneously pleased and revolted by the admission, every woman at the table sighed. This even included Shaelyn, who was apparently obsessed with her hotshot boyfriend, Brady Taylor, who was Danvers’ best friend.
“So, if it was that hot, why the sad face?” Anna asked.
Lizzie sucked on her straw. “Because my brother is an idiot.”
Jade hated the idea of someone speaking badly about Danvers, even if that someone was his sister. “He’s not an idiot,” she said, “It’s just that he needs some time to . . . think things over.”
Lizzie nodded as though Jade had proved her point. “Like I said, he’s being an idiot.”
“How do you know all of this?” asked Tanya.
“She told me.”
Jade narrowed her eyes on her friend. “Which I won’t be doing again.”
“Utterly. Heartbroken.”
Was it wrong to wish for someone else’s demise? Jade had never been the sort to do so, but she was quickly coming to realize that Lizzie Cartwell was just as much of a pain in the rear-end as Danvers claimed her to be.
Granted, it was part of her charm.
Jade contented herself with flipping Lizzie the bird. To the table, she said, “He’s not an idiot. We had some differences.”
“Maybe you need to seduce him,” suggested Tanya, which earned nods from everyone else. “Give him a ring and get him into bed. Differences are overrated when you’re too busy getting it on.”
Raising her wine glass into the air, Shaelyn added, “I second that. I seduced my boyfriend—before he was my boyfriend.”
“I wouldn’t call scheduling sex ‘seducing,’ Shae.” Anna glanced conspiratorially at the table, her blue eyes glittering with laughter. “They’re not a very spontaneous couple.”
“What? We’re totally spontaneous.”
“I seem to recall someone mentioning vanilla sex . . .”
Shaelyn’s hazel eyes narrowed to slits. “It was an inside joke, Anna.” She turned to the rest of the group with an air-jabbing finger. “For the record, we’re plenty spontaneous.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m sure,” Jade hastily muttered at the same time Tanya nodded enthusiastically and Lizzie quipped, “Non-vanilla sex, got it.”
Satisfied, Shaelyn delicately sipped her wine. “So, back to more important matters . . . I’m guessing sex with Danvers was non-vanilla?”
Seeking coolness, Jade pressed her ice water to her forehead. “So not vanilla. And considering . . . ” She trailed
off, the words I’ve only ever known boring sex hovering on the tip of her tongue.
Fact was, she might not have been a huge fan of John Thomas, but she didn’t enjoy bashing the man. But how did you go about admitting that one sexual experience trumped all the others, not because the others were bad, necessarily, but because the latest one was just so good?
Somehow, almost without quite having realized it, Jade found herself spilling her guts to her new friends. Maybe it was the liquid courage speaking, but she found herself admitting how her relationship with Danvers was terrifying, soul-frightening.
Quietly, so quietly that Jade saw the words form on her lips rather than heard them, Shaelyn said, “You love him.”
Jade’s head snapped back so fast that she could have sworn she heard a creak of her neck. “I don’t,” she emphatically told the group. “We aren’t talking love. It’s not on the table.”
“Doesn’t matter if love isn’t on the table if you’re still feeling it.”
But she wasn’t “feeling it” . . . was she?
20
Carrollton, New Orleans
“I have a problem.”
From Jade’s 13-inch laptop screen, Sammie’s face stared back at her. “Are we talking about a major problem? Or about how those shorts you’re wearing should have been thrown out in high school? And burned, definitely burned.”
Jade glanced down at her—admittedly—threadbare cotton shorts. “I’m in my apartment. No one can see me.”
“I can see you.”
“You don’t count,” Jade said. Gripping her hands around the broomstick, she eyed her kitchen objectively. The countertops glistened as much as old countertops possibly could. If she wanted, she could have eaten off the floor, the tiles were so squeaky clean. And, in a moment of self-induced panic, she’d even climbed up on a chair and scrubbed down the top of the fridge.
Simply put, Jade was stressed.
“Girl,” echoed Sammie’s familiar voice from the laptop’s speakers, “don’t you dare do another pass of the kitchen floor. Watching you clean is making me want to throw myself off the second floor of the house.”
“Mom will be pissed.”
Sammie snorted. “Are you kidding? Lucia Harper would be furious to know that I’d embarrassed her in front of the neighbors.”
Both sisters shared a knowing laugh. Their mother was nothing if not vocal about her opinions. “How is she?”
“Misses you, of course.”
Jade swallowed the lump of guilt budding in her throat. “I’ve only been gone a month,” she said, leaning the broom against the kitchen counter. She grabbed her laptop from the counter and brought Sammie with her to the living room, where she collapsed onto the couch with a heavy sigh. “A month isn’t that long.”
The are-you-serious look Sammie leveled on her was a heavy hitter. “She’s upset you haven’t called much.”
The lump grew larger, and Jade shifted in her seat. “I’ve been busy.”
“With your so-called ‘problem?’”
No one in the world knew Jade better than her younger sister. Growing up, she’d often figured it was because they were in each other’s way 24/7. Rita, the eldest, had been given the luxury of her own room while the younger Harper sisters camped out in the other bedroom in bunk beds. They’d shared a small bathroom—one toilet, one sink, no shower or bath—and had been both the biggest of enemies and the greatest of friends, depending on the day and the hour.
Sammie knew her, and because Sammie knew her, Jade didn’t even bother to lie.
“My problem’s a man.”
Sammie didn’t look all that shocked. “I’m assuming you’re not talking about John Thomas?”
A groan worked its way up Jade’s throat. “Definitely not John Thomas.” She thought of the four years she’d spent at John Thomas’ side, always wondering what it would be like for a relationship to be more. “I’m sure he’s moved on already. We haven’t spoken since I left.”
“Jade, he’s been at the house almost every other day.”
Her ears perked at that slice of knowledge. Her mind whirring with countless of scenarios, she said the only thing that made sense, “Why in the world would he be doing that? We’re over.”
Though the laptop screen was small, it didn’t hide the half-shrug and pitiful glance her sister gave her. “He wants you back, hermana. Him and Mom have been scheming.”
“Mom thinks I’m a lesbian.”
Sammie laughed. “No one thinks you’re a lesbian, Jade. Not Mom, not John Thomas. Everyone guessed pretty soon after that you were just using the excuse to skip town—which you totally were. I would have told you sooner but you’ve been screening my calls.”
“I—” Jade’s cheeks warmed at the lie that had been ready to trip off her tongue. “I’ve only been sort of screening them.”
“That’s like if I said that I had sort of eaten the flan in the fridge.”
Jade threw her hands in the air. “Okay! Okay. I have been, but it’s only because I wanted to prove that I can make it here on my own, without Mom always perched on my shoulder and Dad paving the path for me with his connections.” She drew in a deep, shaky breath. “I wanted to prove to myself that I can be just as successful as you and Rita.”
For a moment, there was only the sound of the leaky kitchen faucet drip-drip-dripping away. Jade felt that silence like a punch to the gut. She shouldn’t have said anything at all. It would have been best to keep her feelings on the matter to herself.
Because in the end, being unsuccessful was not something Sammie could possibly understand. At the age of twelve she’d taken up needle and thread. By fifteen, she’d started sewing prom gowns for the upperclassmen at Hialeah High. By seventeen, she’d been featured as one of the most up-and-coming designers in Miami.
And now, at twenty-two, she was on her way to completing a degree in fashion design and just months away from moving to New York City.
Jade hated feeling jealous of her sister’s achievements, especially when she was simply so proud of them. But just once she wanted to feel that blimp of success for herself. New Orleans should have done that for her, but since arriving in the Crescent City nothing seemed to go as planned.
“Jade.”
“I know, Sammie,” she answered quietly, “I know.”
“No,” her sister said firmly, “you don’t.”
“I think I—”
Sammie cut her off with a flash of her palm. “You should be glad there’s a computer screen in between us because otherwise I would slap you silly. Do you seriously think you’re not successful?”
Jade refused to feel pity for herself, so she spoke the truth. “I think I’ve always been pretty good at what other people tell me to do. Date John Thomas. Live at home. Go back to school for a better job.”
“You have a good job,” was Sammie’s wry response. “You’re not living at home, and you’re definitely not dating John Thomas.”
“Well, yeah, I’m not now.”
“You’re not now,” Sammie stated forcefully, “because you looked at your life and decided what you wanted. You wanted a new start and you had one delivered to you. You wanted a partner more interested in you than in what shoes he happens to be wearing that day, and I’m going to guess, mi hermana, that if you have a guy who’d you label as a ‘problem’ he’s more interested in you than in his shoes.”
Jade almost laughed. Because it was laughable. Danvers—no, Nathan—went out of his way for her. And had gone out of his way for her until she’d decided to psychoanalyze him like her degree was in studying people’s emotions and not digging through dirt and silt for shards of pottery.
What her Archaeology degree had provided her with, though, was an acute attention to detail. Something she’d recklessly discarded during their last meeting in an effort to protect herself. It was easier to point fingers than it was to recognize one’s own faults.
“I’m seeing that what I’m saying is sinking in,” Sammie mu
rmured. “So, is he a problem?”
No. Well, maybe. Jade stuck her hands under her thighs to keep from fidgeting. “I think, maybe, that I might l—”
“Love him?” A hand flashed in front of Sammie’s face as she tilted the screen down. Then, all Jade saw were her sister’s narrowed eyes and the slope of a nose. “This is so exciting! I have to tell Rita. And Mom.”
“No!” Jade covered up her outburst with a well-timed cough. What was with everyone assuming that she was knee deep in a certain four-letter word? “No,” she repeated, this time in her indoor voice. “Don’t tell anyone. I like him, Sammie. That’s all.”
Her sister didn’t look convinced. “You love him.”
“It’s only been a month,” she said, going for the logical approach. “I dated John Thomas for four years. I know what love is.”
“Yes”—Sammie jabbed a finger at the screen—“exactly. You know what love is. You know you didn’t love John Thomas. And this feels different, right?”
Jade shifted on her hands uncomfortably. “Yes,” she muttered.
She really did not like the smug look of satisfaction on her sister’s face.
“So, if this feels different . . . then don’t you think it might be because you love him?”
“I really don’t think—”
The sound of a knock at the door cut off the rest of her frame of thought. She hadn’t been expecting company. Then again, it was a Saturday morning, a morning following a late evening out with the girls, and maybe Lizzie was here to apologize for throwing her into the arena with the wolves.
Satisfied by the prospect of demanding restitution in the form of pancakes or waffles, Jade told her sister to wait while she answered the door.
“If you’re wondering if I’ve forgiven you for last night, the answer is—Danvers! What are you doing here?”
The man responsible for her emotional turmoil stood on the opposite side of the doorway, wet hair plastered to his face and an equally wet shirt plastered to his chiseled chest. She could just make out the shadows of his flat nipples, as well as the ripples of his carved abs beneath the thin white cotton.