Dare You To Love Me (A NOLA Heart Novel Book 3) Read online

  “Shit.” He passed a twenty-dollar bill up to the cabbie and cranked open the back door, more or less throwing his body out of the car and onto the cracked sidewalk. Julian glanced up at the sound of the car door slamming shut and immediately jumped to his feet.

  The kid looked so much like Anna, it was almost unreal. They both shared the same blond hair and the same blue eyes, and it hadn’t escaped Luke’s notice that they tended to tug on their earlobes when they were nervous.

  “Hey Luke!” Julian called out, one hand cupped around his mouth. “I showed up a few minutes late. Thought you might have taken Sassy out . . . thought maybe you’d decided to fire me.”

  Luke clapped the kid on the back as he passed him. “Your job’s safe. I was late coming out of physical therapy.”

  The kid’s eyes dropped to Luke’s leg in a gaze as subtle as a stampeding rhinoceros. “How’s that going for you?”

  Definitely not as good as he’d hoped it would be by now. Luke took the porch stairs one at a time, trying to hide a sliver of envy at the way Anna’s son bounded up all four in one fell swoop. “It’s going.”

  “Yeah? No amputating then? We watched this video in science the other day about amputations. It was crazy. They talked all about this thing called phantom limbs, and one of the girls in the back of the class passed out.”

  “What the hell are y’all watching in science?” Fiddling with the key, Luke shoved the correct one into the lock and let them in the front door. With a sharp whistle to alert the Dane that he’d arrived home, Sassy came hauling butt toward them, thin tail whipping back and forth as he prepared for a lick attack.

  Julian’s hands immediately sank into the extra skin behind Sassy’s ears, bending low so that the dog could lick from his chin all the way up to his forehead. “It’s my teacher’s last year before he retires. I think he’ll let us watch pretty much anything. Last week we watched this video about a woman giving birth.”

  Luke snapped his jaw shut and rubbed the back of his neck. “Did it just follow her from doctor’s appointment to doctor’s appointment?”

  “Nope.” Sassy turned his snout to the ground and head-butted Julian—a move that made the kid laugh. “The camera was inside her. You know . . . up the chute?”

  If this was the sort of conversation that Anna had to put up with daily, no wonder nothing fazed her. And here was Luke, wondering how the hell they could stop talking about a woman’s . . . chute. “Let’s not call it that,” he muttered, “too clinical.”

  “It was a bit clinical,” Julian agreed readily enough. “Two people fainted that day.”

  “Impressive.”

  “That’s what I thought.” The kid slung an arm over Sassy’s back to pet his opposite side. “So, I’m thinking I might walk Sass down to Louis Armstrong Park today. It’s not that far.”

  It was farther than Anna would like, that was for sure. Julian’s safety was something Luke could understand. New Orleans’ French Quarter neighborhood was historic, its architecture beautifully breathtaking, but it was no place for a teenager to be walking alone as night began to settle in.

  “You want some company?”

  The words escaped before Luke could put a lock on them. He didn’t miss the kid’s look of surprise. “Thought you were confined to the house?”

  Would a few more weeks of non-activity really make a difference for his hip? A few blocks wouldn’t do him in . . . much. “Nah,” Luke said, waving away the truth, “it’ll be good for me to get some fresh air.”

  Now the kid looked more suspicious than concerned. “Did my mom set you up to this? I told her that I don’t need a babysitter. I’m fourteen.”

  Had Luke ever been sheltered the way Anna sheltered her son? He didn’t think so. From almost the moment of birth, he’d been the man of the house for better or for worse. At Julian’s age, Luke had already learned what it meant to stand on his own two feet and lend a hand to the household.

  “Look, kid,” Luke murmured, already hooking Sassy up to his leather leash, “I’m not much of a babysitter.”

  “You don’t look like one.”

  A compliment from the prepubescent; his day was now complete, he thought wryly. “The last time I babysat anyone, we ended up at McDonald’s at three in the morning, caroling the girl at the drive-thru register.”

  “Whoa, really?” Julian’s blue eyes glimmered with delight. “How old was the kid? What did y’all sing?”

  Handing the leash over to Anna’s son, Luke gestured for him to head out the front door while he locked up. It wasn’t until they’d descended the front steps and banged a left toward the back of the Quarter that Luke continued, “We sang ‘Baby Got Back.’ You probably don’t know the song. Sir Mix-A-Lot was popular before your mom even thought about having you.”

  Sassy paused at a fire hydrant to take a leak, lifting his leg higher than some people were tall.

  Almost offhandedly, Julian replied, “My mom didn’t think about having me—I was an accident. And I love that song. I’m not kidding. Last year, I pulled the best prank on Mom ever. Anytime someone came through the front door of the shop, I timed the song to start playing.”

  Impressive, but Luke’s brain hadn’t fast-forwarded past the ‘accident’ comment. Had Anna really told her son that he hadn’t been planned? Luke wasn’t a father, and had no plans to become one, but it seemed pretty harsh to tell someone so young. He slid his gaze to Julian, noticing for the first time the kid’s at-ease attitude.

  A fourteen-year-old Luke would have been Julian’s polar opposite. Single moms had raised them both, but somehow Julian still maintained a youthful naivety that Luke had shed by the age of ten.

  Tugging on the leash, Julian led Sassy into a trot. Luke struggled to keep up and sent up a silent prayer that his hip wouldn’t flake on him during the walk. They passed rows of traditionally styled shotgun houses, their wood siding and telltale louvered shutters a myriad of bright colors: turquoise, violet, red, orange, and a few stray brick buildings stuck in between.

  “You didn’t say how old the kid was,” Julian pointed out a few minutes later.

  Luke sidestepped a particularly deep pothole. “Eighteen.”

  The kid’s nose wrinkled. “Isn’t eighteen a bit old for a babysitter?”

  In the regular world, yes. Within the military, eighteen was the equivalent age of an infant. Considering that Luke’s baby-sit-ee had been three sheets to the wind—for that matter, so had Luke—he figured that night had either been a resounding success or an absolute failure, depending on the way you looked at it. There’d been no in-between.

  Feeling the kid’s watchful gaze, Luke said, “He hadn’t felt too well that night.” Witching-hour caroling in the drive-thru had led to an awkward stumble back to base and a night spent hugging the toilet for dear life.

  It had been one of the few times in Luke’s life where he’d felt like every other twenty-one-year old celebrating his birthday.

  “He was learning the ropes, still.” They crossed busy North Rampart Street, cutting around tourists waiting for the red streetcar, and passed beneath the large white arch into Louis Armstrong Park. At the sight of grass, Sassy grumbled happily and made a straight shot for it, tugging Julian along with him. While his tail whipped back and forth happily, the dog’s snout got up close and personal with a flower bush.

  “Luke, can I ask you a question?”

  Resisting the urge to run, Luke forced his shoulders to relax. He fixed his attention on Sassy licking the underside of a leaf—in one pass, the leaf disappeared within the dog’s large chompers. “Yeah, sure. Fire away.”

  Hopefully he wouldn’t come to regret it.

  Julian turned to face him fully. “So, my mom has started this whole dating thing. Which I’m not mad about—Brady always says we all need love in the world. And, honestly, it’s nice to sometimes have the house to myself so I can play video games.”

  Luke’s gut told him he would not like where this was going. He held hims
elf still. “I can see how you wouldn’t mind being alone for a bit.”

  “I love my mom, but yeah, it’s nice. I can leave my socks on the floor or sneak snacks up to my room to eat, that sort of thing. She ever tell you how much of a dictator she is at home? You think she’s all sweet-looking and then bam, she won’t let you up from the table until you finish all your cabbage. She’s savage, Luke, I’m telling you.”

  He didn’t think she sounded savage at all. A fine warrior, though; he could see that easily enough. “I can tell you love her,” Luke answered as he patted Sassy on the rump to leave a flower bush alone.

  “Obviously I love her.” Julian rolled his eyes. “See, thing is, with this whole dating thing, I think she’s going about it all wrong.”

  Luke couldn’t help but chuckle at his fierceness. “Do you have a lot of dating experience to back up that claim?”

  “Well, no.” Blue eyes zeroed in on Luke’s face. “But everyone knows you should date people you know. They do it on Friends.”

  “You watch Friends?”

  “Re-runs,” Julian said. “Other than trashy reality TV, Mom’s favorite is Friends. But, I mean, look at Monica and Chandler or Rachel and Ross—they all knew each other!”

  Luke almost felt bad letting the kid down. “It’s TV. Not that I’m looking to kill dreams here, but you do realize that they have people who write those scripts, right? Real life doesn’t work that way.”

  “Brady and Shaelyn were friends first.”

  “Brady and Shaelyn dated years ago, broke up, still hated each other twelve years later and reunited. The two of them are a Hallmark-reject postcard.”

  “Mom watches the Hallmark Channel, too, when she doesn’t think I’m paying any attention.”

  Somehow, Luke wasn’t even surprised. “So, what’s your plan? Dig through your mom’s phone? Get her on Hallmark? The opportunities are endless.”

  Sensing Luke’s playful sarcasm, Julian granted him with a wide smile. Then, he announced, “I have the perfect guy for Mom. She already knows him.”

  At that moment, Luke noticed two things:

  A seagull overhead swooped down and attacked a poor woman who’d made the mistake of eating French-fries outdoors, and,

  His heart kicked up its pace, turning from a rhythmic ba-dum ba-dum to a much more erratic ba-dumba-dumba-dumba-dum.

  It was stupid and pathetic, and still he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d interpreted Julian’s words correctly. If he had . . . Hell, had the kid just given Luke his seal of approval to date his mother? And if he had, what did Luke do with that information?

  He’d already sent that ship sailing. Not that there ever could be a ship in the dock whatsoever. Singledom was Luke’s thing and would no doubt somehow be etched onto his family’s ancestral tomb in St. Louis Cemetery No. 3 up in Mid-City. He could almost see it now:

  Man turns down woman’s offer for sex for unexplained reasons. Later greatly regrets the decision and dies a lonely, old man.

  Not that Luke was lonely or old. He shouldn’t be feeling this . . . whatever it was in his chest. Warmth. Anticipation. He watched his dog clamp his teeth down on a thin stick and victoriously thrash it around in the air. Luke didn’t feel victorious; he felt, if anything, a bit sick.

  “Thanks, kid,” he forced out upon realizing that Julian was watching him strangely, “but I think your mom and I probably aren’t the best match. I won’t even tell her you thought of the two of us like—”

  “You and Mom?” Julian laughed loudly, a bit too loudly for Luke’s ego. “No way. I mean, you’re cool and all, Luke, and Sassy’s awesome. But you and my mom? No way. No way.”

  The warmth in his chest died as quickly as the Saints’ hopes for the Super Bowl championship every year. “You weren’t talking about . . .”

  “No!” Red crested over the kid’s cheeks and he ducked his face. “Sorry, what I meant to say is that you and Mom are so totally different. She won’t even come inside whenever she drops me off to walk Sassy. I’m tryin’ to plan a date here, not a murder.”

  Ouch. The kid had claws, though he had no idea he was currently sharpening them on Luke’s hide. Unsure if he even wanted the answer, he heard himself ask, “You have someone else in mind?”

  “Our neighbor.” The words tumbled out of Julian’s mouth as though he’d been thinking over them hard all day. “My friend’s dad . . . He’s perfect for her, Luke.”

  He didn’t want to know. He really didn’t want to—fuck it. “How perfect?”

  “One of our friends—she’s a girl—came over last night and said that Mr. Ajax is hot guy calendar worthy—”

  How fucking lovely, Luke thought with a snort.

  “—And I don’t know anything about that, but that’s got to be a good thing. Like Playboy for girls.”

  “It’s called Playgirl.”

  Julian’s brows arched high. “It exists? Huh. I totally thought Marcie was just making it up.”

  “Don’t tell your mom I told you that,” Luke said, pointing a stern finger that was feeling less stern every moment. “So, this Mr. Ajax guy? He’s good-looking?”

  “The women in the neighborhood all come over when me and Toby—that’s Mr. Ajax’s son—are playing video games. They bring him cookies and cake and all sorts of stuff.”

  With each passing second, Mr. Ajax was beginning to sound more and more like a hotshot prick. “What is he, a doctor?” He said it flippantly, only somewhat surprised when Julian countered, “Nah, he’s a veterinarian.”

  Because which woman could resist a vet who looked good enough to be July on a twelve-month spread with a goddamn puppy licking his face?

  “Have you got a vet for Sass yet? You should bring him to Mr. Ajax. Scope him out and tell me if you think he’s good enough for my mom.”

  Over his dead body. “I’ll have to pass, unfortunately. If they aren’t old and gray and don’t have at least forty years of experience, they aren’t good enough for Sass.”

  At the sound of his name, the Dane glanced up, and Luke could have sworn that one look said something along the lines of, “Aw, shucks, Dad. You shouldn’t have.”

  This one isn’t for you, boy.

  Sassy’s tail shot up in the air like a middle finger.

  Appropriate.

  “Crap.” Julian thrust his hand through his white-blond hair. “All right, new plan. When my mom gets back from that meeting with those Hollywood people tonight, I’m going to tell her Mr. Ajax invited us over for dinner. She’s too polite to say no.”

  Damn it, but he wanted to know how her meeting had gone. Don’t show your ace. He scrubbed a hand over his mouth, dragging his palm over his unshaven jaw. “Did this Ajax guy invite y’all over?”

  “No. He will, though. He’s been dying to ask my mom out for months now, ever since he moved in. Mr. Ajax is really cool.”

  “You said.”

  “You sure you won’t help me out with this? I’ll give you part of the credit. Maybe if you help me score her a date, she’ll like you.”

  Luke had a sneaking suspicion that he’d killed whatever chance he’d had of Anna liking him the moment he’d ended their hot kiss with a rejection. “Doubtful,” he said, whistling for Sassy to stop scraping the flowerbed with his claws. A smaller dog wouldn’t cause that much damage; by the time Sassy finished, the soil would look like a monster truck had rolled through it. “If you think your mom will like Ajax, I don’t think you’ll have a problem getting her to dinner.”

  “Maybe I should offer to cook dinner for us and then burn it.” Julian reached out a hand to scratch Sassy under the chin. “Then we’ll have to go next door for dinner.”

  “Or,” Luke stressed as visions of a flaming house flashed before his eyes, “you could tell her that y’all were invited to the neighbor’s house. Simple, efficient.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I know.”

  “Maybe Toby can stage—”

  “Jules.”

  The teen
ager sighed. “Okay, okay. Ask her over for dinner. Attend dinner. Throw parents together. Man, this option is way more boring.”

  Anna dating someone that wasn’t Luke could never be classified as boring—wrong, definitely. Wait, no. No. She wasn’t going to date Luke. Hell, he wasn’t even interested in more than sex. Relationships weren’t his thing. They’d never been, and one beautiful blonde wasn’t going to change anything.

  Boring was good. Her going to dinner with the a-hole vet guy was good.

  He clapped a hand on Julian’s shoulder, squeezing once. “Adults like boring, Jules. If things aren’t more boring than watching paint peel, then someone’s not doing a good enough job.”

  “Sounds shitty.”

  “Language,” he pointed out, releasing his hold on Julian’s shoulder. “Women love flowers, Jules. If Mr. Ajax gets her some, then I’d imagine she’s one step closer to agreeing to a date.”

  “What type of flowers?”

  Luke pretended to think on the question. Tilting his head to the side, he said, “Roses. Women like roses.”

  Except for Anna Bryce. She didn’t want boring, and roses were the stereotypical date flower. If Luke were to ever give her a bouquet—and not that he ever would—but he’d be sure to exclude roses from the mix. She needed something vivacious like her personality, something bright and cheerful and yet strong and independent.

  She needed a type of flower that Luke wasn’t sure even existed in the real world. But she certainly didn’t need a rose.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Anna was just about to pull off her work clothes—and her bra, most definitely her bra—when her bedroom door yanked open. She caught sight of the bouquet of roses first, thrust up in the air like a sacrifice.

  Then, the bouquet shifted to the side and Julian’s youthful face emerged. Not that she’d had any doubt about who had entered her bedroom unannounced. Since the age of five, Jules had never followed her closed-door policy, though lately he’d taken to resenting when she returned the favor.