by Maria Luis
Jade visibly winced. “No talk of clowns, please. I still haven’t gotten over your clown makeup tutorial from last year, Liz.”
And it’d been amazing—Pennywise all the way.
“Don’t pretend that you didn’t beg me for that look, so you could scare the crap out of everyone at work,” Lizzie said, pointing her fork at her best friend. “You even made your boss drop to his knees with a whimper.”
Looking altogether too pleased with herself, Jade flicked her dark hair behind one shoulder. “What can I say? I make a terrifying clown. Even managed to scare your big, bad brother.”
Everyone looked to Danny, who made a show of piling more food onto his plate. “I have no idea what y’all are talking about.”
“None?” Jade pursed her lips, stared at her husband, and then announced, “Danny has a phobia of clowns.”
“Jade.” Her name was a pained grunt as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Clowns didn’t bother me until someone I know decided she wanted to tempt the whole city of N’Orleans into painting red on their noses and jagged, The-Joker-type lines across their mouths. You know what it’s like to go to work as a cop on Halloween and see clowns jumping out all over the place?”
With a sly grin, Jade folded her arms across her chest. “Considering I work for the same department as you do, mi amor, I’d say that I do.”
There was a small pause, and then, “All right, fine. Point for you, Jade Danvers, point for you.” Gray eyes swung in Lizzie’s direction. “As for you, dear sis, no more clowns this year.”
“Well, if she has her way,” Beth grumbled, “she won’t be doing makeup at all.”
Back to that again. Lizzie massaged her temple with her fingers. “I really don’t get why you’re put out about this, Ma. For years, you’ve been hoping I’d quit YouTube and do something else. Well, I’m doing something else, and now you’re giving me grief instead of throwing a party.”
Rocky gave a sharp bark and, as if by reflex, Beth dropped a sliver of steak down to the pup. Danny groaned, then rose to snag his dog by the collar. “C’mon, big boy, no table scraps. You’ll get something good later.”
The pair exited the dining room just as Beth dropped her utensils to her plate with a clink! and met Lizzie’s gaze. “You’re thirty, honey. Thirty. And I’m not saying that’s old, but I figured that by this age, you’d be doing something more.”
More.
There was that word again, always dropping in when Lizzie least desired it.
She looked to Josh, the man who had been more of a father to her than hers ever was, and said, “Do you feel the same way?”
Under her breath, Jade excused herself and fled the room.
Traitor.
Lizzie slammed her eyes shut. All right, fine. If she’d been caught in the crossfire at Jade’s house in Miami, she’d have done the same. Even so, she couldn’t stop herself from pressing, “Josh? What about you?”
Her stepfather cleared his throat, then ran a hand through his graying hair. With his shoulders ramrod straight and his face clean-shaven, he looked like the cop he’d been for over thirty years. “Your mother”—at Beth’s growl of disapproval, he cleared his throat again—“I apologize. We were simply hoping that you’d leave the social media world altogether at some point. Maybe find an office job in the area, stay close to home.”
Stay close to home? Lizzie shook her head. “In case y’all missed it, I work out of N’Orleans.”
Josh sent a beseeching glance to his wife, but at her chin-lift, added, “Beth—I mean, we…just want you to dive into life in other ways. A buddy of mine, he works for this marketing firm, and you’d be a perfect fit, sweetheart.”
Usually, the endearment reminded Lizzie that this man, with his broad shoulders and thinning hair and the fine lines bracketing his mouth, had done everything in his power to show her that not all men were sleaze-bags. There were good men out there who loved their wives and never beat their family, and never drank to excess.
Right now, his carefully drawn out “sweetheart” felt like a dig, however right or wrong, as though only he knew what was best for her.
In a stiff voice she barely recognized as hers, Lizzie said, “I’d never make at a nine-to-five what I do now.”
“But if you’re leaving YouTube,” Beth said pointedly, clasping her hands together on the table, “then you’ll need something else.”
Lizzie would continue to earn commissions off her videos for as long as they existed on the platform. And that didn’t even account for the fact that she had another business to fall back on, if needed. She opened her mouth, prepared to say just that, when Beth beat her to it.
“Maybe it’s time to get married.”
Was it rude of her to bark out a laugh? Probably. But that didn’t stop Lizzie from tipping back her head and letting the disbelief cut through her. “In case you haven’t noticed, there aren’t any takers for the position, Ma.”
“That Scott boy?”
She highly doubted her mother hadn’t seen that fallout online, considering that the woman tracked Lizzie’s social life like a hawk. “Dumped me.” She tapped her finger against the porcelain plate. “And he just so happens to be engaged to someone else now.”
To a semi-friend of yours.
She and Scott hadn’t been serious, and so she only hoped Stephanie knew what she was doing, hooking up with a total tool like Scott Manson.
More likely than not, Scott had promised yet another girl that he had magical hands.
When Stephanie discovered that to be a lie, she’d be just as disappointed as Lizzie and the rest of the girls who’d stood in her place beforehand.
“What about . . .” Beth sipped her wine, then swirled her glass around. “What about . . . that boy? The one you’ve been taking photos with all around town?”
Gage?
This time, Lizzie managed to choke back a laugh at the ludicrous thought. “Ma, Gage isn’t likely to marry anyone soon, least of all me.”
“He’d be lucky to marry you.”
Lizzie sent a silent thank-you smile to her stepfather. She wondered if he knew Gage, since they both worked for the NOPD. But the New Orleans Police Department was huge, and her stepdad and Gage worked for two different sections. If they crossed paths, it probably wasn’t often.
“Whether he’d be lucky or not, marriage isn’t in the works for us.” Dating wasn’t in the works, either—although maybe there was still the chance to spend the night in his bed. Her bed. Did it really matter which flat surface they did it on, so long as it all felt good? Lizzie drew herself up, and added, “If you’re holding out hope I’ll settle down soon, Ma, trust me when I say that wouldn’t stop me from working hard at my businesses. A ring doesn’t change anything.”
Beth’s expression softened as she reached for her husband’s hand across the table. “Sometimes, Lizzie, one ring does change everything. And sometimes, sweetheart, one look is all you need to know that you’ve found the man to tempt you into forever with.”
Tempt you into forever?
The only temptation Lizzie had ever faced were holiday makeup collection sets—no one could turn down metallic eye shadows or bold red lipsticks on a steep discount.
She thought of her dance with Gage, of his hard, muscled body dancing behind hers, of the way she’d felt dressed in his T-shirt and shorts. Heat curled in her belly, and she dug her toes into the soft area rug beneath her feet.
All right. So maybe she knew what temptation felt like all the way around, but anything more than sex with Gage was off-limits.
He didn’t do relationships.
And Lizzie wasn’t willing to even contemplate forever with a man who might as well have “temporary” tattooed across his forehead.
Chapter Sixteen
“O’Connor, dude, your dog weighs a shit-ton.”
The Great Dane cranked back on the couch at Luke’s house, landing in Gage’s lap with the most pitiful doe eyes he’d ever seen. Puppy eyes, more lik
e. Utterly, completely pitiful puppy eyes. Sassy’s palm-sized ears flopped onto Gage’s thighs, his massive mouth parting like the Red Sea as his sandpaper-like tongue scraped across Gage’s arm.
“No, man,” he muttered, trying to catapult the dog onto the floor with a nudge and a shove, “you can’t have my beer. You’re not twenty-one.”
“Like that’s ever stopped anyone before,” said Julian O’Connor, Luke’s teenage stepson. The kid’s hair was as white-blond as his mother’s and he had eyes just as blue. Julian’s mother was a stunner, something every single man in S.O.D. knew firsthand. All it’d taken was one dropped-off lunch to her husband, Luke, and tongues started hitting the floor.
Gage’s included.
He stared down at the family dog, then back to Jules. “Sneaking some booze, kid?”
At seventeen, Julian only cocked a brow and played the I’m-too-cool-for-you card. “What do you think?”
“I’m gonna go for ‘hell yes’.”
Julian faked hitting a buzzer with the palm of his hand. “Bzzzt! Guess again, Officer Harvey, guess again.”
Gage dropped a forearm on the dinosaur-sized dog in his lap. “You really going to try and pretend you don’t escape out of your second-floor bedroom and hit up some of the high school parties I see raging on the weekends?”
“Nah, he doesn’t.” Luke entered the den with two beer bottles clasped in one hand, as well as a glass of milk in the other. “We’ve got a firm no-sneaking down the fire escape policy around here.”
Accepting the milk, Julian offered a slow grin that reminded Gage way too much of O’Connor. “That we do. My old man right here made me sign a contract on my sixteenth birthday.”
“A contract?”
“Yup.” Downing half the milk, Julian dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. “I solemnly swore on the day of the signing to never lie about my whereabouts, and in return . . .”
Luke snapped his fingers and Sassy leapt to attention: he hopped off the couch (while digging a paw into Gage’s stomach), and slapped his butt on the ground in wait for a treat. A bone-shaped cookie arced through the air, and landed smack in the Dane’s waiting mouth.
Impressive.
Unfortunately, the only thing Gage had to offer the dog were single dollar bills, thanks to the tips he’d received today at Inked.
Taking the seat Sassy had just vacated, beside Gage, Luke handed over a beer and then took a long pull of his. “In return, I promised Jules a trip to every NFL stadium along the east coast by the time he went off to college.”
Gage brought the beer bottle to his lips, tipped it back, and welcomed the hoppy flavor. “How many do you have left?”
“Just one—the Patriots at Gillette.” Julian gave a huffed chortle. “Luke here wanted to save it for last since he views celebrating Tom Brady as a true betrayal to his beloved Saints.”
Thanks to growing up in Hackberry for most of his impressionable years, Gage’s first football love wasn’t the New Orleans Saints but rather the Louisiana State University Tigers. It came with the territory; in west Louisiana, college ball took higher priority to the pros.
With a downward tug on his purple LSU ball cap, Gage said, “O’Connor’s going to be in the stands screaming ‘Who Dat?’ like a true N’Orleanian, while he gets pummeled with snow by Pats fans everywhere.”
Julian curled his hands around the milk glass and shifted forward on the sofa, elbows dropping to his knees as his eyes brightened with anticipation. “I’m hoping for massive snowballs. Never seen snow before, though if I get my way, I’ll be heading up to the Northeast for college.”
Luke tipped his Abita bottle in the kid’s direction. “If your mother gets her way, you’ll be going to school at Tulane and living at home. She’s going to say room and board costs too much, but really—”
“She just doesn’t want me to leave home,” Jules finished with a laugh. “It’s bad when I know exactly what you’re gonna say.”
“No, son, it’s bad when your mother asks me to drop the word ‘Tulane’ into every conversation I have with you.”
One blond brow hiked up. “You know you’re failing, right?”
“I don’t fail at anything, kid. We both know I’m pulling for you to go wherever your innocent heart desires.”
Stepfather and son broke out into laughter, clinking their drinks together, as Gage took in the scene before him. Over the last year, he’d spent a lot of evenings at the O’Connor house, more time than he’d even spent with Owen. It’d started out with an invitation to watch the Saints or the Tigers play, then had morphed into playing pool at their local pub when Anna was out with her friends.
Watching Luke and Julian was a bit like staring into a magic crystal ball and hoping to see a reality that didn’t exist. If Gage tried hard enough, he could imagine conversations just like theirs taking place between him and his dad, conversations that had never crossed their lips or emptied into the space around them.
Questions about his separation from Gage’s mom.
Questions about his mother’s death.
Questions, really, that had plagued Gage for years but which had no answers—no answers that the living could answer, at any rate.
Feminine laughter disrupted his morbid thoughts, and Gage’s head jerked toward the kitchen.
Anna’s laughter, he recognized, and the other female’s . . .
He sucked down his beer, feeling the thread of anticipation hum in his veins.
Husky, sexy laughter.
Lizzie Danvers’ laughter.
Whether he wanted to admit it or not, his spine snapped straight and before he knew it, his empty bottle was on the coffee table and Gage was on his feet. He flattened down his work T-shirt, which he’d worn under the Kevlar vest and black uniform top at work earlier today. Both had been stripped off and tossed in the back of his unmarked Crown Vic, which sat in front of Luke’s house.
Gage re-angled his LSU hat, then twisted it around to sit backward on his head. Took two deep breaths because the last time he’d seen her, she’d stripped naked in front of him and offered a drunken striptease before yanking on his clothes and passing out on his bed.
There’d been no stopping him that night from climbing into his shower and turning the temperature to balls-shriveling freezing. It was either that or stroke one off in the shower, and considering that she’d also thrown up in his shower . . . Well, he hadn’t wanted to spend any amount of time in there, despite hosing the place down and spraying all sorts of bleach onto the tiled walls.
“You heading out?”
“No, I, uh . . .” Gage swallowed, meeting his buddy’s gaze before glancing swiftly away again. Jesus, when was the last time he’d gotten tongue-tied over a woman before? Then again, getting tongue-tied wasn’t Gage’s M.O.
Taking charge. Acting alpha.
He did all that, and he did it well.
Which didn’t at all explain why he was shifting his weight from foot to foot, ready to spring toward the kitchen—and Lizzie—at the first opportunity.
An opportunity he’d clearly have to create, because not once in twelve months had Gage proactively tried to hang out with Luke’s wife or her friends. It wasn’t his thing. Felt way too much like shacking up for his comfort, and even now his brain shouted, What are you doing? Stop your nervous twitching! Make your dick stand down. No, we said DOWN not UP, you idiot.
A fact that Gage proved tenfold when he opened his mouth and muttered, “You have water?”
Julian, the snarkmaster of the O’Connor family, held up a finger and announced, “No-can-do, Officer. We’re taking a stand against water. All water. Don’t even have it in the toilet bowl for when you want to flush. In fact, we’re petitioning for the entire city of N’Orleans to free the water and to cease using it frivolously in their homes.”
Gage’s brows arched up to his hairline, under his hat. “O’Connor, man, where’d you find this one?”
“His mother.” Luke clapped a hand on th
e kid’s shoulders and chuckled. “Though, depending on the day of the week, sometimes that answer changes.”
Julian cracked a wry grin. “Back when I was a little shit, I told him that he’d found me in Uranus. He wasn’t pleased.”
“Overplayed, kid, overplayed. You don’t think I haven’t heard that one before?”
“Then how come you spit out your Coke when I said it? Don’t play up your game in front of one of your buddies, Luke.” The kid shoved back his white-blond hair and gave a pitying pat-pat to his stepfather’s shoulder. “We all know that—”
“Gage?”
Every muscle in his body strung tight, acutely aware of the mingled curiosity and confusion in her voice. Slowly, because he needed time to wipe the ridiculous smile off his face, he turned around and took the time to prepare himself for the sight of her.
Both his heart and his cock gave a kick of approval when his gaze settled on her, though it took him a moment to readjust the image of her he had from Sunday morning pancakes to this exact moment.
Gone were the caramel highlights from her hair; instead, the strands had been dyed a velvety chocolate brown. There wasn’t a single trace of makeup on her face, that he could see, and she was dressed in a light blue sweater, nondescript jeans, and a pair of tennis shoes.
No plum-painted lips. No shadow on her eyelids. No flashy jewelry or clothing.
He had a gut feeling that she’d stripped ThatMakeupGirl from her appearance, and had gone straight for Lizabeth Vittoria—and, yes, he was fully aware of how ridiculous it sounded to be talking about her like she were two different people.
“Hey,” he said, hands going to his ball cap to drag down the bill further. Over the years, he’d noticed the habit picking up whenever he felt off-balance or nervous.
Lizzie Danvers, for what it was worth, made him feel both.
Her brows arched high as she rocked back on her heels, hands going behind her back. “Hey.”