The NOLA Heart Novels (Complete Series)

by Maria Luis

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  29. From the desk of ThatMakeupGirl

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Dear Fabulous Reader

  1

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  At what point did hashtags become an acceptable form of conveying that one has, in fact, terminated a relationship?

  Seated at her vanity mirror-turned-office space, Lizzie Danvers stared at her phone, a glass of wine on the desk beside her mason jar of ride-or-die makeup brushes. The brushes were top of the line—her bread and butter—thanks to her career as a beauty influencer. The wine was necessary because, well, she’d just been dumped over Instagram. Publicly. With creatively used hashtags. And a photo of a superimposed red X over her face.

  “Who does that?” she muttered as she reached blindly for her wine. At the rate she downed the pinot grigio, she’d be better off drinking straight from the bottle.

  But desperate times called for desperate measures, and this was desperation at its finest.

  The damn photo had been liked no less than thirty-thousand times in the last twenty-five minutes since Scott had posted it. With each minute that passed, the comments doubled, tripled, quadrupled. And Lizzie watched them all unravel down the screen like something out of a horror movie.

  In other words, the horror movie that was now her life.

  Because her ex, another YouTuber, had followers, and lots of them.

  You never should have trusted a gamer.

  Yeah, that’d been her first mistake. Her friends had warned her about Scott Manson. The thirty-five-year old might have the face of an angel, and the voice of a fallen angel, but he was slick. Real slick. And, sure enough, Lizzie had fallen for his charms—including his promise that he was good with his hands.

  Considering he spent all day thumbing a controller, she’d figured it had to be true. Ha.

  The only thing Scott did well with his hands was play World of Warcraft and jerk himself off.

  Which made his public dumping even more ridiculous because the jerk had seen fit to claim that Lizzie was hopeless in the sack, that she’d bored him, and . . .

  She squinted at the photo’s caption, her gaze tracking the words for the twentieth time:

  It is with sad regret that I announce my split from Lizzie Danvers, otherwise known as ThatMakeupGirl across social media. In case you’re wondering why, let’s just say that a man likes to be pleased. In bed. From a woman who not only knows what she’s doing but is more exciting than a ball of cheese. Mansonites, you know how much I hate cheese, so this says a lot. Anyway, let’s just put it this way: #terminated #MansoniteGaming #betteroffwithoutyou #singleforlyfe #ihatewingedliner #shallowbytches

  Lizzie honestly didn’t know what she found more appalling—the fact that he hated cheese (this should have been her first tip-off), that he couldn’t spell worth a damn, or that he thought her shallow.

  She wasn’t going to touch the bad-in-bed comment. Clearly, he was delusional.

  But as for the shallow bit . . . Sure, she got heat all the time for applying makeup for a living. Lizzie heard it all—airhead, bimbo, waste of space. Whatever. If she could make young women and men feel confident about their looks, to enhance and show off their already beautiful features, and still make money doing so, then she didn’t care what anyone called her.

  Sticks and stones, and all that jazz.

  But this—this was bad.

  This was potentially career-ending. It was nearly midnight; by the next morning, she had no doubt that Scott’s post would be trending everywhere. The people loved him. Lizzie did not.

  After another sip of wine . . . Oh, who was she fooling? She chugged the glass. One swallow. One loud hiccup. One drunken swipe of her hand across her mouth.

  Really, she should leave well enough alone.

  Be the bigger woman.

  Prove to the world that she didn’t care if Scott Manson died with only his right hand for company.

  Not her problem.

  She’d planned to dump him anyway. He’d only sped up the process.

  Another comment popped up, and she recognized the username, sunsetgurl, as one of her die-hard followers.

  You just gonna take it like that @ThatMakeupGirl??!

  Lizzie traced her finger around the rim of her glass.

  Was she? Was she just going to sit back and let one “playboy” embarrass her like this? It wasn’t her heart smarting; in all honesty, in four months of dating Scott, she’d learned pretty quickly that he wasn’t The One. But he’d charmed her into believing that he was different than her string of exes—in other words, troubled bad boys who never shaped up into men worthy of a painful Brazilian wax, let alone a long-term relationship.

  She was over charmers.

  She was over bad boys—those who were wannabes and those who were the real deal.

  Maybe she was overreacting. Maybe she was too drunk to think clearly.

  But she did know that sunsetgurl was right; she was not going to take Scott’s public humiliation like the quiet victim. Yeah, not happening. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.

  Lizzie hadn’t spent the last decade, since the very day she’d turned twenty, creating a recognizable brand to just hang her head and retreat from her business when the flames flickered. She stood up for herself, always.

  And right now, it was necessary to show the world that Scott’s words hadn’t clawed at her pride. She was unfazed, in every way that mattered, and there was no better way to prove that than to hop onto her home-away-from-home and deliver that message to the masses.

  YouTube, here she came.

  Launching up from her chair, she set up her equipment—or as much as she cared to do at midnight. Ten minutes later, she had a full glass of wine, a swipe of gloss on her lips, and a burning fire to do some major damage.

  Petty isn’t a good look, girl.

  Yeah, well, Petty hadn’t ever been #terminated via Instagram.

  Desperate times.

  She cast a quick glance in her mirror, fluffed her caramel-accented brown hair, and flicked on the recording button.

  Game on.

  She smiled brilliantly at the camcorder, which sat on a tripod behind her laptop.

  “Hey, dolls!” More smiling. Wider. Toothier. Screw you, Scott Manson. “Today’s video is a little bit different. For one, I’m not coming to you with a Chit Chat Get Ready With Me or a full face glam tutorial. Nope, by the time this video goes live, you will all have seen that I was dumped. Epically.” Lizzie held up a hand as though warding off her viewers’ gasps of horror—she was so accustomed to speaking to the camera like her fans were physically present that it was truly second nature.

  She sipped her wine for liquid encouragement.

  “So, here’s the thing. We all know that on my channel, I’m all about self-confidence. Loving yourself first, and treating yourself with respect. Well, dolls, that’s still the case tonight, but after what I just saw, I have to take a stand. Why is it ‘funny’”—she threw up air quotes—“for a man to completely tear at a woman on social media? I’ve been reading these comments, y’all, and if I weren’t so secure in myself, they’d be enough to throw me into a depression.”

  You are drinking by the glassful.

  Lizzie purposely took another sip of wine.

  “Slut shaming is not okay, dolls.” She pointed her glass at the camera, absently noting the way the liquid sloshed violently against the side. “It’s never okay. Have some respect.”

  Swallowing against the hurt, Lizzie shoved her chin up and narrowed her eyes. She saw herself in the viewfinder, and she wondered who that angry woman was s
taring back. A woman scorned, that’s who. Her caramel hair was still curled perfectly from early that morning and her foundation hadn’t budged, thanks to a facial setting spray she’d tried out for an upcoming First Impressions video.

  But when she met her blue eyes . . . yeah, that angry person wasn’t her.

  Lizzie had spent a lifetime working to keep a level head. To the outside world, she was Bubbly Lizzie Danvers. Flirty Lizzie Danvers. That was her brand. At this point, it was her, although sometimes she wished that weren’t the case.

  Tonight, her eyes told a different story.

  Glittering (and not because of her duo-chrome eye shadow) and rimmed with black liner, she looked ready to kick some ass. Scott Manson’s ass. The ass of every bad boy in the world who’d wronged her, stood her up, called her an idiot, and deemed her a “shallow bytch” because she loved makeup, who treated her as though she was only good for what existed between her legs.

  When she’d first started on YouTube, she hadn’t realized all that would come with it—including all the man-whores who deemed her an easy lay.

  She was over it.

  All of it.

  She tossed back the rest of her wine.

  “Never trust a bad boy, doll. Don’t trust them when they whisper sweet words in your ear. Don’t trust them when they wine and dine you, and definitely don’t trust them when they promise you forever. They may look good, but I can promise you that the saying is true—once a playboy, always a playboy. They will lure you in only to spit you back out. You’ll change, wondering what you did wrong; they never will, I can guarantee you that. And I’m going to prove it.”

  What are you doing?

  Lizzie’s fingers tightened around the wine glass. She should cut the recording. Pretend none of this had happened. She’d had too much to drink, had spent too many minutes staring at the comments on Scott’s post calling her both a prude and a slut, depending on the commenter. Emojis were included for the benefit of all—not.

  Back away, girl. Back away from the camcorder.

  She couldn’t.

  Not this time.

  It was time to prove once and for all that bad boys were not redeemable, that they would always be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, preying on women who only wanted love and affection.

  “Thirty days, doll,” she heard herself say. “Within thirty days I’m going to prove that bad boys will always be just that—a bad boy, no matter what romance novels and rom-coms tell you otherwise. And I’m not going to do this Kate Hudson-style, y’all. I don’t need to act crazy or be wild in order to lose a guy. I’m going to . . .” She stifled a hiccup, and her throat burned with the kickback of the booze.

  “I’m not trying to get rid of the bad boy—I-I’m going to find New Orleans’s biggest commitment-phobe. The biggest. We’ll date. Thirty days. Weekly check-ins on my channel. And when Day Thirty rolls around, I’m going to show you that he’s no different than he was on Day One. He won’t ever change, and us, women? We’re always going to be the ones that end up brokenhearted.”

  2

  “Another butterfly up front. It’s your round, man.”

  Gage Harvey paused, fork halfway to his mouth, as he glanced up at his twin brother, Owen. “No can do,” he drawled. “I’ve reached my butterfly quota for the day.”

  Hell, he’d reached his butterfly quota eight years ago when Owen had opened Inked on Bourbon, the city’s hottest tattoo parlor. Back then, Gage hadn’t known anything about tattoos, save for the fact that he liked them, and Owen had filled every inch of Gage’s arms with ink. Most of his chest, too, for that matter.

  They’d each had a role to play: Owen tattooed people for a living, and Gage locked people up in jail as a cop for the New Orleans Police Department.

  Then Owen had dropped the bomb about opening up his own place, smack in the middle of the French Quarter. At the damn intersection of Toulouse and Bourbon streets, of all places—it didn’t get busier than that, and it sure as hell didn’t get any more touristy.

  But tourists equaled business, and business equaled money, and Owen, older than Gage by three minutes and fourteen seconds, was all about creating a nest egg for unforeseen events.

  Gage lived for the unexpected. Hell, as a member of the NOPD’s Special Operations Division, better known as S.O.D., he thrived off the unexpected. He was just as hooked to the adrenaline rush as he was to the need to protect the citizens of New Orleans, just as his father had done, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather.

  He was a fourth-generation cop.

  Then Owen had laid out the guilt trip, coercing Gage into a tattoo apprenticeship he never wanted, all so that he could work as Owen’s second-in-command whenever he wasn’t suited up, busting down doors, and saving lives.

  All so that you can tattoo butterflies.

  Gage popped a sliver of steak into his mouth, chewed, and then washed it down with his energy drink. “Pretty sure I had my contract amended last month. No more butterflies.”

  Owen rolled his eyes, eyes as black as Gage’s, and pushed the office door shut. Folding his arms over his burly chest, he stared down at Gage over the crooked bridge of his nose. A nose Gage had broken back when they’d been thirteen and battling it out over a chick they’d both liked. They’d been idiots, back then.

  “One more butterfly,” Owen said. “It’s not my fault that women come to N’Orleans wanting to be inked with something delicate.”

  Gage pointed his fork at his twin. “As owner of this joint, you should convince them to go for something original. Hell, I don’t know, suggest they go crazy and go for a skull or something.”

  Behind Owen’s trim beard, his mouth hitched upward. “Yeah, because that’d go over well. Sorority girl with a skull on her ankle? I can just see the stampede of horrified mothers busting down the door.”

  Yeah, so maybe not a skull then.

  Owen had been smart to buy the space here at Toulouse and Bourbon, but in doing so, he’d set himself up for a lifetime of butterflies for the women and Celtic armbands for the men. Sometimes things got wild and there was the chance to do a pretty awesome bit of artwork, but more often times than not . . . butterflies, all day every day.

  It was enough to make a thirty-four-year-old man—in other words, Gage—cringe indefinitely.

  Especially since Gage worked at Inked as a favor to Owen; it wouldn’t ever be his main gig. Which meant that while Owen frequently tattooed celebrities and famous N’Orleanians, Gage got the leftovers.

  He pushed his lunch away with a sigh.

  Time to suit up and shut up. Faster he got this over with, the faster he’d be heading Uptown to do real work.

  “Where she want it?” he asked, scrubbing his hands in the sink. Owen’s office was large and dominated by black furniture. Leather couch, leather chair, mahogany desk. He’d outfitted the room with a sink for easy access, along with a mini fridge and a microwave. Photographs of some of his best work decorated the walls, and it hadn’t escaped Gage’s notice that his twin had added a few photos of Gage’s work, too.

  When Owen didn’t answer immediately, Gage slid his eyes over to his brother. “Ankle?” he prompted.

  Owen glanced up at the ceiling.

  Oh, Jesus.

  Gage pinched the bridge of his nose. “Another ass-tattoo?”

  “She’s cute,” was all Owen said, which Gage took as confirmation that, yep, he’d have his hands all over some sorority girl’s butt for the next twenty minutes—forty, if she wanted shading done.

  It wasn’t the placement of the tattoo that bothered him.

  Nope. It was the fact that once he had his hands on her skin, the chick usually took that as invitation to hit on him. Blatantly. Without hesitation.

  Gage had enough on his plate already; he didn’t need to add a girlfriend to the mix.

  “You owe me,” he muttered, shoving past his brother and opening the door. Since their receptionist was on maternity leave, it fell to Owen and Gage to handle front
of the house. Last time they’d let the other tattoo artist, Jordan, man the phones, he’d ended up screwing a client in the closet. The sounds of masculine grunting had horrified the mother and daughter duo sitting on the couch, plastic Mardi Gras beads encircling their necks.

  Jordan had effectively been suspended and warned to keep his dick in his pants.

  The mother and daughter had gripped their beads, cheeks blooming red, and ran from Inked as fast as their flip-flops could take them.

  Another sign of a tourist—no self-respecting N’Orleanian would ever wear sandals on Bourbon. Not if they didn’t want to catch an STD or end up dead from a fatal disease.

  Gage headed straight for the vintage marble-topped bar, which functioned as their receptionist’s desk, only to see a woman facing the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked Bourbon.

  He catalogued the back of her in a heartbeat.

  Perfectly tousled brown hair.

  Off-the-shoulder white blouse.

  Form-fitting black skirt.

  Slim calves, trim ankles, and a pair of fuck-me black heels that could do double-duty as a weapon if she was so inclined.

  “You here for the butterfly?”

  At the sound of his gruff question, she turned around, and Gage felt his gut clench with unexpected lust. Owen hadn’t had the right of it; this woman wasn’t cute, she was gorgeous. The sort of breathtaking that had you questioning your sanity. The sort of breathtaking that made you wonder what the hell you could say to get her into your bed, her slim legs wrapped around your waist, and her breath hot and fast against your neck.

  Damn.

  Blue eyes lit with nervous anticipation as she rubbed her hands together. The motion jostled her bracelets. And, if her shirt weren’t so loose, he’d have had the opportunity to see if all that rubbing and jiggling affected her breasts too.