Dare You To Love Me (A NOLA Heart Novel Book 3) Page 10

  “Are you asking me how many years it’s been since I’ve been in a relationship?”

  “Sure. I doubt anywhere over—”

  “Or are you asking me how many years it’s been since I’ve had sex?”

  Luke held himself very still. He had two options. He could either pretend he’d never heard that statement, or delve deep into a conversation likely to make him harder than a block of wood.

  He went for Option B, because Luke was a man and no man that he knew could resist a beautiful woman’s invitation to talk about her sex life. Even if that sex life did not involve said man, and even if said man had no intention of seducing the beautiful woman.

  Jesus Christ, his life had become one bad soap opera.

  “The second one,” he grunted, like the caveman he was, “definitely the second one.”

  She rolled her eyes, giving a rather unladylike snort. “You’re such a guy.”

  Luke dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Guilty. But let’s be honest here—if you didn’t want me to know the answer, you wouldn’t have offered the question.”

  Her cheeks bloomed with color and she averted her gaze. “You tell me first,” she said, “It’s less embarrassing for a guy to admit stuff like that than it is for a woman.”

  “Bullshit.” The fact that he hadn’t had sex until he’d turned nineteen? Not exactly information he readily disclosed. While he’d certainly made up for lost time over the years, routine deployments tended to put a damper on one’s sex life.

  “All right, fine,” she grumbled, “just give me an answer and I’ll give mine right after.”

  Luke tapped his fingers on the top of his cane, mentally working his way through the outcomes of each option. Either he admitted to being less of a man-whore, or he lied and pretended that he had a harem just waiting to ride him at any opportunity.

  A year ago, the latter might have been true. Nowadays, Luke had a shot hip and a ginormous, male dog named Sassy.

  “A year,” he finally said, “to the day.”

  Her lips quirked up. “You circle the date on a calendar or something?”

  “No.” He may as well have, though. A calendar would have been more preferable to the truth. “I re-upped a year ago tomorrow for the army. Met a real sweet girl at a bar. Was my last night before I got on a plane, and she treated me real well.”

  So well that he’d carried a visual of them together for at least three months while he’d been off in the desert.

  Anna murmured, “Oh,” and then bit her lip. “Do you talk to her still?”

  “Nah, Blondie,” he said with a shake of his head, “that’s not the way it works. She saw my dog tags. I told her it was my last night in town. Put two and two together and, trust me, four is the only answer.”

  “If you’re good at math, that is.” She winked, making him chuckle, and then dropped her gaze to the glass sandwiched between her knees. Her shoulders inched up with a deep breath. “Five years.”

  His gut dropped south of his feet. “Since your last relationship?”

  A quick shake of her blonde head. “Since the last time I had sex. In case you’re wondering, it was horrible.”

  He had been wondering, but only because Luke couldn’t stop thinking about Anna with someone else. Damn, but it felt wrong. So did the unfamiliar sensation gripping his lungs like a vice. He passed a hand over his jaw, then clutched the back of his neck. “Not all sex is good. Loads of it is bad.”

  “This was bad.”

  Christ, but he was going to ask her why. Don’t do it, man. Don’t fucking do it. He looked at Sassy, his new best friend, for guidance. The Dane was passed out on Luke’s bed, sprawled across the queen-sized mattress with his large paws dangling off the side.

  In other words, useless.

  He was going to do it.

  He thumped the bottom of his cane against the floor. “I think we may need something stiffer than water for this conversation.”

  She grumbled something beneath her breath.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “I said, he needed something stiffer too.”

  Luke's jaw locked tight as he tried not to gape. “Who are we talking about here?”

  “The guy I had sex with,” she told him, holding his gaze as though daring him to laugh. “He needed something stiffer.”

  Ah. So he’d heard right.

  Yeah, they needed booze. He slowly stood, hand on the table. “Beer? Wine?”

  “You have both?” She sounded surprised.

  He shrugged. “You never know who’ll come to your house, ready to spill all of their deepest sex secrets.”

  She mimed throwing something at his head, and he reacted accordingly, feigning a quick bob-and-weave—only to curse violently as his hip erupted into flames.

  Anna was out of her chair in a heartbeat, her soft hands landing on his side as though she could physically keep him from falling to the floor.

  “Are you okay?” She ran her hand down toward his hip and the feeling of her palm against his bare skin sent gooseflesh erupting down his back.

  Torn between the need to have her hands on his naked skin and the fear that she’d ended up asking for more than he could ever give her, he shifted away from her touch. “I’m good,” he grunted.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” He gracelessly hobbled his way to the fridge and yanked the door open, hard. He could feel her blue eyes boring into his back, and the weight of it made him feel edgy, out of sorts. “You want wine?”

  “A beer will be fine, thank you.”

  Luke twisted just far enough so that he could meet her gaze. “You can have wine. You perked up the second I offered it.”

  She visibly wavered. “I probably should get going. It’ll be halftime by now and Julian’s going to be wondering where I am.”

  Luke went for the wine, pulled out two glasses from the cabinet, and poured them each a few fingers’ worth of the pinot grigio. It was Amy’s favorite, and as a good brother, he always kept a bottle in the fridge for the random times she stopped by his apartment. He made his way back over to Anna, holding out the pinot until she wrapped a hand around the glass and took a sip.

  He waited until she’d swallowed to pop the question. “Now, this bad sex? How bad we talkin’ here? On a scale of I’d-Like-a-Do-Over to Holy-Mother-of-God-I’m-Scarred, where would you rate the experience?”

  She lowered the glass to her collarbone, much the same way she’d done at Tuck’s. Tonight, in her loose sweats and thin T-shirt, she looked young. Too young to be drinking and definitely too young to be talking sex. Then again, she outranked him by a year—her curves alone and the wicked gleam in her blue eyes signaled that she was all woman.

  Damn it.

  Luke downed his wine.

  “He ranked at Lie-Back-And-Think-of-England,” she said, tapping a perfectly manicured nail against the glass. “Do you promise not to laugh?”

  “Not guaranteed,” he told her in a low voice, “but I can promise to try.”

  “Not good enough.”

  Damn, but this woman challenged him. Luke wanted to challenge her in return, to push her out of her comfort zone the way she continued to do to him. This talkative version of himself was not a version he recognized. In his past relationships—though “relationship” was a bit of a stretch—no one pushed him. Propositions began and ended between the sheets. They didn’t involve wine while still dressed, or talking about past sexual experiences with a guy that wasn’t Luke.

  You told her you weren’t interested.

  Great plan, right there. Fan-fucking-tastic.

  He stared down at the top of her blonde head and vowed, “I promise.”

  And then she told him about the asshat who’d lasted all of two minutes and had awkwardly moved inside her, shifting his hips like he was scooping ice cream.

  And then Luke laughed, and hell, it felt good to do so. It felt even better when Anna joined in, cutting loose and drinking her
wine as though she were content just to talk with him.

  And that fact, that they both enjoyed each other’s company, was dangerous.

  Luke had lived dangerously for thirteen years. He wasn’t interested in doing so any longer, not even with Anna Bryce.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Why are you sending me with Brady?”

  Anna busied herself with folding laundry at the kitchen table. “I’ve got things to do, Jules.”

  Julian leaned forward and plucked a red tablecloth out of the massive heap of freshly cleaned laundry. “Mom, you’re folding the Christmas stuff.” He lifted up the red fabric, which just so happened to be emblazoned with Santa’s eight reindeer. “We haven’t even hit Thanksgiving yet.”

  Thanksgiving was only two weeks away. For a second year in a row, it appeared that she and Julian would be joining Shae and Brady for the holiday, as Anna’s parents had taken off for Austria last week. In the years before Shaelyn’s return to Louisiana, Anna and Julian had mostly done Thanksgiving and Christmas alone.

  It was nice to feel like part of a family—or, at least part of a family who stuck around long enough to unpack their suitcases.

  Anna tugged the tablecloth out of Julian’s grasp. “It’s never too soon for Christmas.”

  “Do you not like Luke?”

  I want to jump his bones. Yup, totally not a parent-child-appropriate statement. “He’s fine.”

  “Fine” was an understatement. After confessing to an incredibly awkward experience that had kept her off the path to sex for a handful of years, Anna had drained the rest of her wine and fled Luke’s house like a bat out of hell. She’d then spent the rest of the football game replaying her visit to his house.

  His naked torso.

  His mussed brown hair.

  His gravel-pitched voice that reminded her of perfectly aged whiskey.

  Her infatuation with Luke O’Connor had no roots. Obviously, she was attracted to him—she’d have to be asexual to not notice that Luke was sex on a stick. But what did she really know about him, aside from the fact that he’d adopted an orphan dog and was a wounded veteran still on the mend?

  Nothing.

  Anna knew more about her dentist, and she typically tried to avoid the appropriately named Dr. Fayng for the majority of each year.

  Feeling Julian’s gaze on her, waiting, she said, “You’re the one he hired to walk his dog. Brady said he didn’t mind bringing you. He was heading down there anyway.”

  The mention of Sassy incited excitement in Julian’s blue eyes. “How awesome is the dog? I can’t wait to walk him.”

  “Please have Brady walk with you.”

  “Mommm. I’m not four.”

  “No, you’re not,” Anna conceded evenly, “but you are only fourteen. We’ve discussed you being in the Quarter alone and I told you—”

  “That I can’t be alone until I’m sixteen,” Jules grumbled with a teenage roll of his eyes. “You’ve told me that a million times.”

  “Then this makes it a million and one.”

  “Mom, I’m walking his dog. That’s it.”

  She wasn’t playing the game. His safety meant so much more than his teenage pride. “Take Brady or you can kiss your dog walking career good-bye,” she told him firmly.

  Looking very much like he wanted to argue, Julian crossed his arms over his chest. He was the poster child for defiant teen, but like every time he’d pulled a stubborn stint since he’d turned five, Anna didn’t give in. She continued folding her Christmas blankets and hand towels.

  Five . . .

  Four . . .

  Three . . .

  Two . . .

  Anna flicked her gaze to her son, waiting.

  One . . .

  He blew out a pent-up breath and she bit back a grin. For all of his bluster, she still reigned queen in the Bryce household, no matter that he now outweighed her by fifty pounds and stood half a foot taller. “What time is Brady coming to get me?”

  Anna peered down at her watch. “Should be here in about five minutes.”

  “Five minutes!” All bravado fled her son’s lanky frame as he shot to his feet. “I’ve got to get my gear together.”

  She lifted her eyebrows. “You’ve got gear?”

  “Well, yeah, Mom. How else am I going to walk Sassy?”

  “It’s called a leash,” she said dryly, “and a collar, of which Luke has both.”

  Grumbling beneath his breath about clueless mothers, Julian skipped out of the kitchen. There was the thundering of his feet hitting the stairs, and a door creaking open with a vibrant curse.

  “Language!” she shouted with a shake of her head. Boys. No matter how many times she reminded him that four-letter words were off-limits, he let them loose now and again. She figured his friendship with Toby next door didn’t help—Toby belonged to a family of a single father and a younger brother. Cursing was probably the norm.

  When the doorbell rang five minutes later, Anna tossed a hand towel over her shoulder and went to answer it, listening for the sounds of Julian’s feet clambering back down the stairs. Her brow furrowed. Seriously, what sort of “gear” did he need to walk one dog?

  “He ready?” said Brady the moment Anna opened the door. “Luke promised pizza if we get there before noon.”

  A man after her own heart. It was almost like fate—except that it wasn’t, she thought with a snort.

  Stepping aside to let in Brady, Anna said, “He’s gathering his gear.”

  Her cousin’s boyfriend turned to stare at her with arched brows. “What the hell sort of gear does he need? Walking a dog is traditional. Leash, collar, shit bag.”

  “I’m ready, I’m ready!” Julian called out, taking the stairs two at a time before jumping the last three at once. “Hey Brady, hear you’re the sacrificial lamb today and get to be my personal driver.”

  “Kid, the day you get your driver’s permit is the day I stand in line to buy you a car.” Brady, as he always did, snagged Julian by the back of the T-shirt and drew him in for one of those manly hugs and a quick knuckling of the head. “I’ve been driving you for a year now. I deserve a raise.”

  “Get in line,” Anna said, grinning widely as she unhooked Julian’s jacket off the coat rack by the front door. “If anyone deserves a raise, it’s me. Fourteen years of motherhood trumps one year of playing chauffeur.”

  They all laughed and Anna smiled at the scene, not for the first time thinking how lucky Julian was to have a guy like Brady Taylor in his life. How lucky they both were, really. Although Anna had known Brady for more than a decade, the last year had proved his loyalty not only to Shaelyn but to Shaelyn’s family as well. Even Shaelyn’s grandmother Elaine adored the guy, though she did often try to hide it behind a curmudgeonly personality.

  “You got all your stuff?” she asked Julian with a tilt of her head. “All the gear packed away?”

  Julian patted his backpack, which he had slung over one shoulder casually. “Yup, all good.”

  “Good, now give me a kiss before you go.”

  Dutifully, Julian did as he was told, though the gleam in his blue eyes told her he didn’t mind. He bussed a kiss to her cheek. “Have fun on your lunch date, Mom.”

  Brady slowed to a stop to look back at her. “You got a hot date, Anna?”

  It was just coffee. At Starbucks. Nothing special. But she’d chosen a casual afternoon meeting to avoid Luke at Tuck’s. Yesterday at his house had seemed . . . way too personal, and what better way to put their platonic relationship into perspective than with a little online dating?

  Anna had gone the traditional route this time, signing up for a free dating site that guaranteed love matches. She let out a soft sigh. That was the problem: they all promised love matches. If she had to watch another commercial with a guy looking adoringly down at his significant other and praising the world of X dating site or Y dating company, Anna would be forced to take drastic measures.

  Like becoming a nun.

&n
bsp; Or kidnapping David Beckham and demanding that he sex her up (sorry, Victoria).

  The latter was infinitely more tempting.

  “We’re just grabbing some coffee,” she told Brady, lifting a shoulder in a half-shrug, “Nothing over the top.”

  His blue eyes softened with a brotherly affection she’d come to recognize. “Stay at the coffee shop,” he said, tone hardening as was his way. “Bring your taser, just in case.”

  Her date was at one in the afternoon on a Saturday. She was absolutely not bringing her taser. Even so, she saluted the detective with a dramatic flick of her heels snapping together. “Yes, Sergeant Taylor.”

  Seeing that she’d resorted to sarcasm, Brady pointed a finger at her. “Taser, Anna. Don’t make me send out reinforcements.”

  With her luck, he’d send Luke, and her plans for the day would be ruined. It wasn’t that she was calling off the dating challenge, but rather that . . . she and Luke needed some space.

  Okay, so she needed some much-needed space from Luke.

  Today’s date was the perfect chance to get to know a man over coffee like all the heroines in those rom-com movies Shaelyn devoured.

  Anna sent Julian a reassuring smile, seeking to ease the confusion tugging at his features. “Taser,” she murmured, “you got it, Sarg.”

  She had no plans of bringing her taser to a public place today. But she did intend to bring an open mind, and in her opinion, that was incredibly more useful when it came to dating.

  Luke’s first impression of Anna’s son was that he was tall.

  The second?

  “You’re a kid who likes to come prepared,” Luke noted, peering down at the backpack Julian had just unzipped to withdraw an assortment of different dog . . . things. Luke nudged a bright green pooper-scooper with his tennis shoe. “Ever hear of a plastic bag?”

  Familiar-colored blue eyes shot to Luke’s face. “A pooper-scooper works better,” the kid said with an air of authority, belied only by the nervous twitch of his left brow.

  “You’ve had a dog before?”