Laws of Engagement for dealing with an Ex:
Rule #1: Don't give into temptation for a kiss just to see if they taste the same.
Rule #2: No clothing removal. Seriously, don't take them off.
Twelve years and too many pairs of stilettos later, Shaelyn Lawrence is back where she started: New Orleans. She's returned only to take care of her grandmother, and after that? She's out, hopefully long before she sees irresistible Brady Taylor, the boy who stomped all over her heart. But when a family member approaches her for help, there's only one person she can to turn to...and he's just as infuriatingly sexy as she remembers. Oh boy.
New Orleans Detective Brady Taylor has his sights on the finish line: getting promoted to sergeant. Nothing, and no one, is getting in his way--except that he didn't prepare for her return, the girl who left him without a word. Resisting Shaelyn has never been his strong suit, and now all he can think about is stripping her out of her fuck-me heels and kissing the lipstick off her sassy mouth. And when she asks him for help, he's forced to decide between his career and the woman he's never stopped loving.
Rule #3: Don't even think about falling in love again...
CHAPTER ONE
Spotting her ex-boyfriend in a dress was the very last thing Shaelyn Lawrence expected to see when she stopped at Rite-Aid for tampons.
But there she was, dropping a box of Tampax Pearls into her blue basket when Brady Taylor stepped past the hygiene aisle. Red fabric clung to his masculine frame, and the scalloped, mid-thigh hem offset the black Nike tennis shoes on his feet and the black Saints baseball cap on his head.
After twelve years away, there’d been no doubt in her mind that she’d run into Brady after returning home to New Orleans. The city was small, their social circle even smaller. But even knowing that their meet-up was inevitable hadn’t prepared her for this.
Shaelyn stood on her tiptoes to absorb the sight of him over a display of female hygiene products. His dress was made of lace. Brady Taylor, I-was-born-with-a-voice-as-deep-as-sin, was brazenly wearing lace in public, and he wasn’t alone. He stood with a group of four men who also wore red dresses.
It would have been ridiculous if not for the fact that no less than two women doubled back around to ogle the men in the same time frame that Shaelyn stood there clutching boxes of overnight pads to hold herself steady on her toes.
Pull it together, girl.
Turning to one of his buddies, Brady clapped him on the back and then reached up to adjust his hat over his short, dark hair. Despite the twelve years and the heartbreak, Shaelyn could still recall the silky texture of his hair. How his eyes used to flutter shut with pleasure as she combed her fingers through the thick layers.
Shaelyn barely refrained a snort as she spared Brady one last glance and backed around the opposite end of the aisle.
She’d been way too naïve at eighteen, naïve enough to believe Brady when he talked love, marriage, the whole nine yards. At thirty, Shaelyn no longer mistook lust for love.
And no matter what excuses he might scrounge up whenever they officially crossed paths—because they would, eventually—Shaelyn knew one last thing: for as long as she was stuck in New Orleans, she wanted nothing to do with the man who’d sent her running from Louisiana with a shattered heart.
***
I saw Brady Taylor today.”
Shaelyn’s grandmother craned her head, blue eyes blinking slowly from behind black, cat-eye bifocals. “Did you tell the boy hello?” Meme Elaine asked.
“I think he’s a few years beyond being a boy.” Shaelyn popped a red cherry tomato into her mouth.
It was hard to forget how the cheap fabric had molded to his frame. He was taller than she remembered. Broader. Because of his hat, she hadn’t gotten a good glimpse of his face, but that was probably a good thing. He’d been sinfully handsome at eighteen, and she wasn’t above hoping that he’d lost some of his looks in the last decade.
No one ought to be that attractive.
“He was wearing a dress.”
“Cher, have you been gone so long you’ve forgotten your roots? Today was the Red Dress Run.”
Ah, right. The day in which New Orleanians embarked on a half-marathon while wearing red dresses, all in the name of charity. Only in New Orleans did no one bat an eye at the sight of hundreds of people running down the street in dresses—or in nothing at all.
She’d been gone too long. It was official.
During the past twelve years, she’d called Jacksonville, Washington D.C., and New York City home. The sense that something new, something better, was always around the corner, had kept her moving. New York had been home for the longest, and she could acknowledge, at least to herself, that the city that never sleeps had reaped its toll on her.
Returning to New Orleans had never entered her radar until last month.
Not until her grandmother had delivered the news.
Shaelyn hid her worry behind a casual tone. “What did the doctor say this morning?”
Meme Elaine blinked once, her eyes appearing cartoon-like behind the bifocals, and glanced down at her plate. “Oh, nothing. The nice doctor told me that I need to watch out for my sugars.”
“You said your prognosis was bad.” It was the only reason Shaelyn had bought a plane ticket and moved back to the one place she’d sworn never to return. Growing up in New Orleans had been good, until it’d turned bad. But her grandmother had been there for Shaelyn every step of the way, even when her own parents hadn’t, and there wasn’t much she wouldn’t do for the Lawrence matriarch. Meme Elaine was everything to her—a package of mother, grandmother, and friend all wrapped up into one. “Let me go with you to your next appointment.”
“I won’t be done in by a packet of Splenda, cher.”
It was more than just the sweeteners and they both knew it. Deciding to let the matter drop, Shaelyn reached for her glass of sweet tea and shifted her full attention to her grandmother. Although Elaine Lawrence didn’t look sick, it was clear she had long slipped past caring about her genteel Southern heritage. Neon-green rollers were tucked into thinning white hair, shimmery-blue eyeshadow dusted her eyelids, and on her feet were a pair of pink leopard-print slippers. The slippers were fuzzy and Shaelyn’s cat, Freckles, had a bad habit of swatting at them as though offended by their very existence.
Like right now.
Shaelyn slipped her hand under his belly to pick him up before he threw another well-aimed right hook. A small paw went to her chin in protest. “No, baby,” she murmured with a playful tap on his nose.
Meme Elaine frowned. “Where are his manners?”
“Brady’s?” Shaelyn asked innocently.
Pointing her fork in Shaelyn’s direction, Meme Elaine clucked her tongue. “You know exactly who I’m talkin’ about.” The fork swiveled down toward Freckles. “If I find him chewing on another one of my Victoria’s Secret bras, I’ll introduce him to Chow.”
“We buried that dog fifteen years ago.”
“Exactly.”
Shaelyn lowered Freckles down to the ground with the order to “save yourself.” His tail shot up in the air like a fluffy middle finger as he pranced into the rarely used parlor.
Truth be told, most of the house now sat unused. The Lawrences were Old New Orleans—the sort of family who continued to live in the same mansion a great-great-great-great-grandparent had constructed in the 1850s. The Italianate-Revival mansion boasted seven bedrooms, five bathrooms, a converted ballroom, a parlor, a kitchen, a media room, and one very, very pretty circular wrought-iron staircase. Six thousand square feet later, Meme Elaine owned it all.
Or she would until her living will was instated and Shaelyn inherited the monstrosity.
She poked at the herb-encrusted chicken on her plate with her fork, her head swirling with dread of the impending responsibilities.
“Are you going to eat that?” Meme Elaine barked over the sound of her knife scraping against the porcelain plate.
“I told you, I’m a pescetarian.”
“What’s that?”
“It means that I don’t eat meat or chicken.”
Her grandmother’s blue eyes narrowed. “What did that godawful place do to you?” Up went the fork again, only this time it pointed unerringly at Shaelyn’s neck. “You’re too skinny. Eat.”
“Meme—”
“What? You used to love chicken. What am I going to tell people?”
“That I have a weird obsession with blackened red fish and crawfish. I don’t know. Does it matter?”
Clucking her tongue again, Meme Elaine punctured Shaelyn’s uneaten chicken breast with her fork and plopped it onto her own plate. “You’d best stop this pesce-whatever business before the Taylors’ BBQ this weekend. I won’t be—”
A red cherry tomato flew out from under Shaelyn’s fork, skidded across the table, and dropped to the floor. A thrilled meow echoed in the room as Freckles initiated a sneak attack, snatched the tomato in his mouth, and beat a hasty exit back to the parlor.
“The Taylors are having a BBQ?” She turned slowly toward her grandmother, even though she really, really wanted to escape with her cat.
“Saturday coming up.” Meme Elaine drained the rest of her glass. “Everyone will be there. At least a hundred people—you know how the Taylors are.”
Yeah, Shaelyn knew all right. She knew that Arthur and Mary Taylor, Brady’s grandparents and guardians, were all about The Image. The Image they presented to their neighbors, to their fellow churchgoers, and to their only grandson. Lovely as they were, Shaelyn also knew that it had been Mary Taylor’s idea to hook up Brady with Shaelyn, her best friend’s granddaughter.
How cute would it be if they got married? Mary Taylor used to say when the two families gathered together. Brady would be the lawyer in the family (after attending Tulane University, of course), and Shaelyn would follow in her daddy’s footsteps and become a doctor (after attending Tulane, of course).
Shaelyn had always known that Mary Taylor had supported her and Brady’s relationship throughout high school, but she hadn’t known then that Mary was the sole reason for the relationship in the first place.
Over the humming in her ears, she heard herself whisper, “I can’t go.”
Meme Elaine reached for her hot-pink cane. Bracing one hand on the table, and gripping the cane with the other, she hoisted herself up. “You’re goin’.”
Given the option between coming face-to-face with Brady or living the rest of her life in the bayou with the gators, she’d choose the gators. Every. Single. Time. “I’m here to help you get better, Meme, not to party.”
Slow, tempered steps brought her grandmother to the fridge, which she opened to withdraw a decanter of homemade sweet tea. “You wouldn’t have agreed to come back at all if it weren’t for your mama and daddy dying.”
Shaelyn felt the words like a blow to her stomach, eliciting age-old guilt that never quit. She screwed her eyes shut and shut those black thoughts away in a box. Ultimately, her parents’ death may have driven her home two years ago for their wake and funeral, but the elderly woman standing at the fridge had brought her back now. For however long that Elaine Lawrence continued to feel unwell, Shaelyn had no plans on leaving New Orleans.
Hopefully her grandmother was destined for a speedy recovery.
Meme Elaine poured sweet tea into her glass, then mixed it with the vodka sitting on the countertop. A Southern girl’s secret, she’d always called it.
“You’re gonna go to the Taylors’, cher, and I’m going to tell you why.” Dropping heavily into her chair, Meme Elaine swirled her finger around in the mixed drink. “You’re gonna go because, after twelve years, you ought to show that Brady Taylor just what he missed out on.”
Oh, no. No, no, no.
“Because you’re a young woman with a promising career ahead of you—”
Actually, she wasn’t. Shaelyn didn’t even have a career. She’d bounced from one job to another, so much so that she’d made a career out of not having a career. She opened her mouth to tell her grandmother just that.
“And because you’ve returned home to take care of your old, decaying grandmother—”
“You’re not decaying, Meme,” she interjected weakly.
“And because you’re engaged to be married.”
Hallucinogens, they were the only answer. Shaelyn would have to question the doctors on the prescriptions they’d prescribed to her grandmother. She eyed Meme Elaine’s sweet-tea concoction suspiciously. Cleared her throat. Fixed her attention on the Svedka vodka on the countertop.
Finally, she managed, “I’m not engaged.”
Meme Elaine winked, like Shaelyn ought to be in on the joke. It wasn’t funny. “I know that but he doesn’t.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“Brady.”
Inhaling through her nose, Shaelyn counted to five. Some years ago, her mama had called Shaelyn to say that she thought Meme was losing her marbles. “She tried to take off her shirt right there in church, like the Good Lord would not remember her old wrinkled self on Judgment Day,” Charlotte Lawrence had hissed over the phone. “I’m telling you that senility has struck, but your daddy is convinced nothing could ever be wrong with his mother.”
“Was she wearing one of her Victoria’s Secret bras?” Shaelyn had felt compelled to ask.
“Shaelyn Magnolia Lawrence! What your grandmother was or was not wearing matters little compared to what she did in the House of the Lord.”
So maybe Meme Elaine was losing it. That was all right. The woman was closing in on eighty and slipped more vodka into her drinks than was probably healthy for a woman her age. She played bingo every Tuesday and still made her way downtown to listen to jazz every Friday night with friends. If she was losing a few marbles along the way, well, it was bound to happen. At least Shaelyn was here to help.
And, quite honestly, a crazy scheme like this was just up Elaine Lawrence’s alley.
She gently placed her hand over her grandmother’s. “I’m not engaged. Not that I think Brady would care one way or another.”
“He can’t win, you see? And neither can Mary.”
Shaelyn had done her best over the years to forget about her first love. She’d tried and mostly she’d succeeded. But not once had she ever thought about their breakup in terms of wins or losses. “I don’t understand why it matters. It’s in the past”—or it would be as soon as they moved on from this conversation—“and I’m over it.”
Liar.
She tacked on, “Aren’t you friends with Miss Mary?”
Meme Elaine picked up her cocktail and downed half like it was Aquafina. “Miz Mary stole my fiancé, got herself knocked up, and then married him. I wouldn’t say that ‘friends’ is the proper term for our relationship.”
“You were engaged to Arthur Taylor?” She tried to imagine her crazier-than-life grandmother married to the stoic patriarch of the Taylor family. Like a misplaced puzzle piece, the image just didn’t fit. “How much vodka have you had?”
“Not enough.” Up went the glass again and down the rest of it went. Elaine Lawrence must have been a favorite at parties in her heyday. A keg-stand girl for sure. “Details don’t matter, cher. What matters is that I’ve already told Mary that you’re engaged. It’s high time that she realizes that the sun does not rise and set on her grandson’s behind.”
Having seen Brady’s behind cupped tightly in a red dress just that afternoon, Shaelyn was tempted to argue that actually, yes, the sun did shine on Mary’s grandson. His behind, particularly.
“It’s been twelve years. I doubt either Miss Mary or Brady have spared me a single thought.” Especially Brady. After their fallout, there had only been silence. Not that she’d reached out, but her silence had been justified, considering the circumstances.
“Listen, Meme,” she tried again, “I’m sure you want to show Miss Mary that I’ve pulled my life together, but I don’t think lying about a fake engagement is doing me any favors.”
One overly plucked eyebrow arched high behind the cat-eyed frames. “Oh, but you are.”
“No . . . ” Shaelyn said slowly, “but I’m not.”
“You are.” A sly grin lit her grandmother’s face and Shaelyn experienced an acute sense of dread slither down her spine. “His name is Benjamin Beveau, and I believe I just heard his car pull up outside.”
CHAPTER TWO
“It is so nice to see you, Shaelyn! And with a fiancé in tow? You know, we weren’t ever quite sure you’d come back on down to N’Orleans, baby, but it sure is nice to have you back—here, sweet tea?”
A crystal glass was shoved into Shaelyn’s hand. Ben Beveau—her fiancé—placed a hand on her lower back.
“Aren’t you Miss Popular around here,” Ben teased as he led her away from the refreshment table.
She glanced over at him. Shaelyn wasn’t blind; Ben Beveau was a good catch. His hair was a light brown that burned a bronzed gold in the sun; his eyes were a very pale blue. He was tall, and quick to flash a white-toothed smile. He was a unicorn among men, and thanks to her grandmother, Shaelyn had the good fortune of being his fiancée.
He was also getting paid five thousand dollars. Meme Elaine certainly knew how to strike a deal. It would be one thing if Ben were single and interested. He wasn’t. Mr. Beveau had a Mrs. Beveau, and two rascal twin Beveaus who enjoyed prodding Freckles with the pointy sticks they found in the backyard.
“Are you sure your wife is okay with this?” Shaelyn stepped away from Ben’s touch, barely catching his reply about “paying a good deed forward” or something. Covertly she checked their immediate surroundings. The cloying scent of magnolia mixed with smoking charcoal hung in the stale August air, and she distracted herself with another glance around the mingling crowd.
She hadn’t spotted Brady yet, but it was only a matter of time. Mary Taylor had made it no secret that her grandson would be stopping by the BBQ, and wouldn’t Shaelyn just love to catch up with him?
She wanted to “catch up” with Brady Taylor about as much as she wanted a Pap smear and a root canal. On the same day.
Shaelyn looked down at her sweet tea and wished it were alcoholic, but the Taylors were sticklers and had banned all hard liquor, as usual.
They’d been that way when she and Brady were young, too. Mr. Arthur had always kept a secret stash of Jim Beam hidden in his study, only to be brought out on days when his wife went out with friends. Once, when Shaelyn and Brady were fifteen, Mr. Arthur had sat them down, warned them against overindulging, and proceeded to pour them each a shot.
He’d tipped his chin up and tossed back the amber liquid. Brady and Shaelyn had exchanged nervous looks—was it a trap?
“Go on now,” Mr. Arthur said, his shrewd gaze pinned to his grandson. “Pick somethin’ to drink to.”
Brady’s hand tightened around the tumbler, his shoulders hunched. “To what?”
“Anything, son.” Mr. Arthur settled back in his chair. “Go on and pick somethin’.”
“To the Saints?”
Mr. Arthur nodded with approval. “A New Orleans man should always throw one back for the black and gold.”
“What should a New Orleans woman drink to?” Shaelyn asked. She liked football well enough, but she certainly didn’t want her first toast going to a stupid sport.
Mr. Arthur drummed his fingers on the chair’s armrest. “First loves,” he finally drawled. “The kind that stays with you until you’re old and gray like me.”
Her cheeks burned at the suggestion and she tried not to look at Brady. She tried so, so hard not to let him see that she had a crush on him, except that Shaelyn wasn’t all that good of a liar and Brady knew her better than anyone. They’d been best friends since diapers.
“Y’all ready?”
Shaelyn heard Brady audibly swallow.
“Bottom’s up!”
She and Brady had started dating six months later.
Now, as she looked up at her fake fiancé, Shaelyn had to wonder if Mr. Arthur hadn’t been referring to his own first love. Because she was pretty sure that if Meme Elaine hadn’t had a bone to cross with Mr. Arthur’s wife, Shaelyn wouldn’t be faking an engagement right now. She didn’t need a man to make her happy, and she definitely didn’t need a man to prove her desirability to an ex. Despite the fact that the ex was hot as hell, even while wearing a dress.
“Code red.”
Shaelyn cut a sharp glance to Ben. “What?”
“Code. Red.”
“You see him?” She’d barely turned to scour the crowd for Brady before Ben caught her by the waist and hauled her up against his side.
And then, right after he muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “five grand,” he leaned down and laid one on her.
Something twisted in the pit of Brady Taylor’s gut at the sight of his ex-girlfriend kissing a stranger. It wasn’t jealousy—Brady didn’t do jealous—but maybe he could call it awareness. Made sense. It was only natural that he’d feel some sort of weird knee-jerk reaction to seeing her with somebody else.
Although from what his grandmother had told him, Shaelyn wasn’t just involved with the guy. She was engaged.
He halted a few feet from the scene and cleared his throat. Loudly. The pair broke apart, rewarding Brady with his first glimpse of his ex since she’d fled Louisiana when they were eighteen. He was surprised to find that she didn’t look all that different: same curly, chestnut hair, same hazel eyes, same cool smirk on her red lips that had always spelled Trouble for him. On closer inspection he noticed that her frame was curvier. Her waist flared into full hips that begged to be gripped and—
Brady shook his head to dispel the image. He purposely didn’t look in Shaelyn’s direction when he said, “I hear congratulations are in order.”
“Congratulations?”
Brady’s gaze flicked from the fiancé to Shaelyn. “Your engagement?”
“Right! Our engagement!” The fiancé flung his right arm around Shaelyn’s shoulders and squeezed. “We’re so lucky to have found each other. Right, cupcake?”
Even if Brady hadn’t been a cop for the New Orleans Police Department for eight years, and a homicide detective for the last five of those, there was no way he could have missed Shaelyn’s pained expression. Problem was, he couldn’t tell if her pursed lips were on account of having to talk to him or because she disliked the pet name. Brady studied her. Those hazel eyes of hers said it all: if she could skewer him where he stood, he’d be served to the rest of his grandparents’ guests like a kabob.
“Sorry, I haven’t introduced myself.” Brady slid his gaze to Shaelyn. Waited to see if she might actually do the honors herself. When it was clear she had no intentions of playing nice, he said, “I’m Brady Taylor. Shae and I go way back.”
Back so far that there was an old picture of the two of them naked in a bathtub together. They’d been three and you couldn’t go much further back than that.
“Ben Beveau.” The man stuck out his left hand, and the gold band on his ring finger didn’t escape Brady’s notice. His gaze flicked to Shaelyn, focusing on the left hand wrapped tightly around a glass of sweet tea. Saw clearly that while her fiancé’s ring finger bore an expensive, shiny gold ring, hers remained unadorned.
Jesus. How had Shaelyn gotten herself involved in one of those pansy relationships? Call him old-fashioned, but Brady was a firm believer in the tradition of certain things. When it came down to a marriage proposal between a man and a woman, the man did the asking.
Brady reached up to readjust his ball cap, then slid his hand into the front pocket of his Levi’s. “I’m sure the proposal was memorable.”
Beveau squeezed Shaelyn’s shoulder again. “Very memorable. Right, cupcake?”
Shaelyn’s expression pinched. “Very.”
Brady didn’t like the way the sound of her husky voice teased sensations of hot, wet kisses to the forefront of his memory. Didn’t like the way he could so easily recall her whispering naughty things in his ear. “Tell me all about it,” he said, mainly in an effort to distract himself from memories of them together in bed.
Shaelyn blanched. “What?”
He smiled slowly. “How did you propose?”
Bringing the sweet tea to her lips, Shaelyn sucked it down like she wished it were something stronger. No doubt his grandparent’s strict no-hard-liquor policy was killing her.
“It was romantic.” Her gaze settled on something beyond his left shoulder, all squinty-eyed. “Ben brought me out to dinner—my favorite seafood place—and he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.”
A quick look at Ben Beveau showed that the man was smiling and nodding. “Shaelyn is pescetarian,” he said, as though Brady gave a damn.
He tucked his thumb into the belt loop of his jeans. Not that he wasn’t interested about her eating habits, but . . . “So, he proposed at dinner?”
“After dinner.” She cut a swift glance at him. Hastily looked away again. “It was nice.”
“Nice” was a trip to the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans’ Uptown neighborhood. “Nice” was a cold beer after a hectic day at work.
“Nice” didn’t cut it when it came to marriage proposals.
So, she wanted to pretend that Beveau had done the asking. Usually Brady would have let the matter drop. Unless he was on duty, Brady wasn’t a tenacious sort of guy. He preferred to sit back, crack open a beer, and watch football. Despite the Saints’ losses over the last few seasons—all right, except for that one miraculous season in ’10 when they’d won the Super Bowl and he’d cried tears of joy—Brady’s loyalty to the football team never wavered.
Okay, maybe he was a bit tenacious and maybe there was something about Shaelyn kissing someone else that burrowed under his skin. And so maybe there was a logical reason as to why he opened his mouth and said, “Did you foot the dinner bill, too, or did that ring on Beveau’s finger wipe you out?”
Shaelyn’s red lips parted just as Beveau groaned and stuffed his left hand into his pocket.
With a pointed look at Beveau, Brady drawled, “No need to hide it, man. I’m sure they do it differently up—where did y’all meet again?”
“New York,” Shaelyn bit out.
He didn’t have to hear the tension in her voice to know that she was furious. Her hazel eyes were verging on a mossy green, and if Brady remembered one thing about Shaelyn Lawrence, it was that when hazel morphed into green, she was seconds away from nailing him in the balls.
He stood his ground and returned her steely glare with an arch of his brow. She’d always hated when he did that—God, could you at least try not to be a jerk today? she used to demand right before he kissed her senseless.
Brady didn’t think she’d be too keen on receiving one of his kisses right now, even without considering the whole engagement factor.
“There’s no need to hide it. You’re among friends”—at this, Shaelyn snorted derisively—“but let me give you a bit of advice.” Brady pushed the bill of his hat up with his index finger and leaned in close. “Leave the ring bit out, and maybe just stick to that real nice story of a proposal at your favorite restaurant.”
Brady didn’t give either of them a chance to speak, and honestly he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what Shaelyn had to say. He’d moved on years ago.
Once more with the less-than-genuine congratulations spiel and Brady was already stepping away, seeking out his grandmother to say his good-byes.
He was suddenly filled with the need to drive away as fast as possible, to throw himself into endless work until he could push away the image of Beveau bent over Shae, his mouth on hers. Brady had never been one to keep his head on straight where Shaelyn Magnolia Lawrence was concerned. Apparently twelve years hadn’t diluted his attraction to her.
Much to his disappointment.
One thing was clear, though. He’d been an ass and he was going to have to apologize. Brady only hoped that he could keep his loose tongue in check the next time around.
In the interim, he planned to dig a little deeper into Ben Beveau’s history. That panicked look on Beveau’s face was all Brady needed to know that something wasn’t quite right. Either the man was actually embarrassed about the fact that his fiancée had done the ring-popping or he was hiding something. Fortunately, Brady’s job with the NOPD supplied the necessary resources to discover what that something might be.
* * *
Four hours later and Shaelyn was still furious. Oh, she’d put on a friendly façade after her encounter with Brady. She’d greeted family friends whom she hadn’t seen in years, held a perfectly boring conversation with Mary Taylor, and drank three flutes of champagne too many.
After talking with Brady, she’d needed something a whole lot stiffer than sweet tea. Problem was, Shaelyn wasn’t much of a champagne drinker. One minute she’d been standing next to her pretend fiancé and drowning her fury in Dom Perignon, and in the next she was tossing up three glasses of the bubbly and her breakfast into a birds-of-paradise plant.
Not her finest moment.
Not the birds-of-paradise’s either, which hadn’t looked so much like paradise right then.
It was official—Brady Taylor brought out the worst in her.
“This is all your fault,” she told her grandmother, as she lay sprawled on the couch, her exposed skin sticking to the plastic furniture cover that should have been ditched in the 1970s.
Meme Elaine didn’t need further elaboration because she picked up the remote and lowered the sounds of What Not to Wear to a low hum. “Did I force the champagne down your throat?”
“No, but you did set me up with a married man.”
“An exaggeration, cher.” Meme Elaine exchanged the black TV remote for another. Pushing one of the buttons, Shaelyn’s grandmother settled in as the brown leather La-Z Boy—also furnished with plastic coverings—reclined to horizontal. “All I’ve done is help you to show Brady that you’ve moved on.”
Shaelyn swung her legs from the couch’s armrest to the gray carpet. With a pitiful moan she clutched her head and cursed Dom Perignon. How could something so expensive make her feel like a Mack truck had hit her after an all-night boozer on Bourbon, New Orleans’ most famous party street?
Deep breaths; in through the nose and out through the mouth. No more champagne—ever. “Meme, that’s the problem. I have moved on.”
“I’m not sure that he has.”
Shaelyn’s wayward heart kicked up its pace before she kicked the unwanted emotion to the curb. “I think you were the one to have too much to drink,” she muttered.
“Do we need to revisit what happened today?”
Total humiliation. Shaelyn preferred if they never mentioned it again.
She planted her elbows on her knees and clasped her hands together. “Listen, Meme,” she began in as accommodating of a tone as she could muster given her raging headache, “I appreciate your . . . help, but today was a mess. I’m already the resident screwup. I really don’t need that sort of attention.”
Meme Elaine’s lips pursed. “You have a roof over your head, your health, a job—what more could you want?”
That was part of the problem. Shaelyn had no idea what she wanted; she only knew that she didn’t want to relive her NYC days. In the meantime, selling crotch-less panties, lacy bras, and nightgowns at her cousin’s French Quarter lingerie boutique was definitely preferable to the nature of her previous job. Just the thought of it sent a tremor of anxiety down her spine.
Shaelyn’s fingers dug into her thighs.
“You like working with Anna, don’t you?” Meme Elaine pressed curiously. “You girls haven’t spent all that much time together in years.”
Anna was Shaelyn’s older cousin through her mama’s side of the family. Growing up, their one-year age difference might as well have been twenty. Anna, with her sleek, blond hair and baby-doll blue eyes, had always been fashionable and perfect. She’d been a debutante, the teachers’ pet, and a cheerleader. Naturally.
Then she’d gotten knocked up during her freshmen year at Tulane. At the time, Shaelyn had been a senior in high school, but she could still vividly recall her mama’s horror at the news.
“Dropped right on out,” Charlotte had said as she scrubbed the dishes in the sink. “The boyfriend dropped her first. Guess he wasn’t interested in being a daddy.”
Drying the dishes with a towel, Henry Lawrence stacked them high on the counter. “Never would have thought Anna to be the one to end up pregnant.”
Had they expected that of Shaelyn? Her and Brady were always very, very careful.
“My sister is furious. That’s what happens when you stop attending church, I said.”
Henry hadn’t said anything, but that was only because his faith came nowhere near his wife’s dedication to Scripture.
Charlotte went on robustly, ignoring her husband’s silence. “So I asked her, what will you do? Will you let Anna stay in your home? Dorothy said she has no plans of kicking out her only child. But now Anna is working down in the Quarter at some naughty boutique and, Lord, I never once thought I would see that girl selling unmentionables to the general public.”
What would her mama do, Shaelyn wondered now, if Charlotte knew that her only child was working for Anna and selling unmentionables to the general public right along with her? Anna now owned La Parisienne, and her son, Julian, was thirteen years old.
Shaelyn was utterly grateful for Anna offering her a position, and she and Anna got along surprisingly well. It was just that . . .
Shaelyn felt her throat tightening up, just as it always did when she thought about the looming responsibilities lying ahead of her. Inheriting the family home was more than she needed, and certainly more than she’d ever wanted. And it certainly required more monetary funds than her position at La Parisienne earned her every two weeks.
Closing her eyes, Shaelyn rubbed her temples. She’d figure it out. Meme Elaine’s only wish was for the house to continue through the generations. Shaelyn was it. She just had to remind herself that this unexpected inheritance did not mean New Orleans had to be it for her—she didn’t have to stay forever.
“It’ll be fine,” she heard herself say out loud, as though her hands weren’t clammy from the stress and her toes weren’t curling into the rug in a futile effort to ground herself.
“‘Course it will be fine.” Meme Elaine cracked a smile, then reached forward to grab the TV remote from the table. After a moment, she clucked her tongue. “Would you look at that?” she demanded. “What sane women wears spandex at her age?”
Shaelyn figured it was best not to point out that her grandmother had no room to talk when it came to questionable wardrobes.
“Oh!” her grandmother exclaimed, pointing the TV remote at Shaelyn. “I meant to tell you earlier, but a woman called for you yesterday while you were at work.”
“Here?” Shaelyn couldn’t think of anyone to whom she might have given the landline number. “Did she leave a name?”
Meme Elaine’s attention remained focused on the show’s hosts throwing hangers of Spandex into a large, metal trash bin. “A Carla-something. Carla Winter? Carla Ritter?”
No. Shaelyn swallowed past the bundle of dread climbing her throat. Had she given Carla her new phone number? She was positive that she hadn’t. Carla Ritter was nice . . . for a ballsy woman who ran the sort of business establishment that she did. But Shaelyn had left New York City for New Orleans, and her two weeks’ notice had been closer to four. No way did she owe Carla anything.
“You know her, cher?” Meme Elaine asked. “She seemed real nice, had a sweet Southern accent.”
“No,” Shaelyn lied, “Never heard of her.”