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

  “I found these downstairs when I got home,” he proclaimed, holding the flowers out to her. “They were on the little table on the porch.”

  Anna crossed her arms over her chest. “Were they now?”

  “Yup.” Julian lifted the blooms up for a quick sniff. “Pretty, aren’t they? Wonder who they’re from.”

  “I have a good idea.”

  “You do?” There was no hiding the delighted expression on his face.

  “I do.” She took the bouquet and sniffed the flowers herself. She loved the scent of roses, though she was more of an orchid girl herself. There was just something about both the fragility and strength in orchids that spoke to her. She placed the flowers on her dresser, and then faced her son. “You left the scissors on the counter.”

  His cheeks turned red, and he reached back to tug on his earlobe in that familiar way of his. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he told her, lying through his teeth, “I’ve got a feeling these are from a secret admirer.”

  “Mother’s Day is months away, Jules. Valentine’s Day, too, for that matter.”

  “Can’t a person show their interest in November? Seems months-ist to me.”

  “Sure they can.” But as Anna had wrapped up a phone meeting with Jas and Thick of the Woods, she’d witnessed her mischievous son sneaking into the kitchen, stealing the scissors, and then banging a quick exit back out the front door. She’d watched with curiosity from the dining room as he’d snipped at her rose bushes and tied an elastic band around the stems. With a wry smile she added, “Secret admirers just don’t come around all that often.”

  “It’s Thanksgiving this week. Maybe he’s feeling the holiday spirit.”

  Anna pretended to give it some thought. “My very own Thanksgiving secret admirer. I wonder if he’ll reveal his identity over turkey or the sweet potatoes.”

  With a look of dejection, Julian’s shoulders fell. “You know it was me, don’t you?”

  “If it hadn’t been for the scissors evidence”—Anna shrugged—“it’s possible you could have fooled me.”

  “Really?”

  He sounded so hopeful and she hated to be the one to let him down, but . . . “Probably not. I watched you snip the stems from the dining room. Wasn’t that goal number one in hanging out with Brady? Learn to be a secret human ninja with silent footsteps?”

  “That was last year’s goal. But no, not exactly.”

  Motioning for him to move ahead of her, Anna grasped the bouquet and they took the stairs down to the first floor. She hid a smile when Julian slumped into a kitchen chair and eyed the scissors on the counter as though they were at fault.

  “So, who are we pretending the flowers are from?” she prompted as she filled a vase with cool water and slipped the snipped stems into the glass. “Don’t break my heart and tell me someone unrealistic.”

  “Like Luke?”

  Anna's fingers froze, the moment dragging out endlessly as she steeled her thoughts from wandering to Luke O’Connor. She turned off the faucet and set the vase on the countertop with a sharp tsink! of glass meeting granite. “Luke would never give me flowers,” she finally said.

  “He was the one to suggest roses.”

  Heart thumping erratically, Anna whirled around to look at Julian. Do not get excited. Do not get excited. “Luke’s my secret admirer?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She gestured to the flowers. “You said that the roses were Luke’s idea.”

  Her son’s brow furrowed. “I’m screwing this up, aren’t I?”

  “Messing,” she corrected, then tacked on, “and how about you start from the beginning?”

  For the next few minutes, Anna stood with her butt against the counter as she listened to her son’s plan to see her married off to their next-door neighbor. It hurt, just a little, that Luke hadn’t done much to dissuade Julian’s mission. Maybe he thought that by enlisting Jules, his job as playing matchmaker was over.

  Not that it wasn’t already over. Anna couldn’t imagine letting Luke fix her up on another date after she’d already played tonsil hockey with him. There was awkward and then there was awkward, and continuing their matchmaking challenge was definitely an awkward fit under the latter category. And pathetic—she couldn’t forget about that either.

  “Did it occur to you that I might not be interested in Mr. Ajax?” she asked, moving to the fridge and removing leftover food from the night before. Pasta and alfredo sauce. Not as good as her gumbo, but she and Jules would have to make do.

  “You haven’t given him a chance, Ma.”

  Sliding him a side-eye glance, she muttered, “You’re starting to sound like your grandmother.”

  His mouth fell open. “Take that back.”

  “Nope. Your grandma has been trying to set me up for years. One time, when you were maybe three or four, she set me up with the mailman.”

  That earned her a hearty laugh. “No way, really? What did she do, take the mail and throw you out of the house in exchange?”

  Not quite, but still close enough. “Turns out he was married.”

  Jules gave a dramatic gasp, probably for the benefit of the story. “No,” he mock-whispered, throwing a hand over his heart. “Grandma Dorothy would never do anything so embarrassing.”

  “She wouldn’t? Remember that time when you admitted you liked that girl in your class and she—”

  “Okay, okay!” The hand on his heart went up in the air. “You’re right. She’s the queen of embarrassment. But the whole marriage thing seems more in line with Aunt Elaine. Like what Aunt Elaine did with Shae last year, remember that?”

  As if Anna could ever forget the marriage plot trick Shaelyn’s grandmother had pulled last year. In the end, Shae had ended up with the perfect man for her.

  Anna peeled back the tin foil from the pan, staring down at the cold pasta as a terrible thought hit her. Maybe Julian was so keen to have her dating because he felt like something was missing from his life, namely a father.

  Her heart sank and unwanted tears dampened her eyes. Nothing a quick swipe of her sweatshirt sleeve couldn’t hide.

  Anna had worked so damn hard over the years to be both a mother and a father to her son. She’d attended football games, played endless hours of video games until her motion sickness landed her at the foot of the toilet. She’d played with Thomas the Tank Engine toys, over the years building Lego forts and blanket forts and chair forts.

  She may not have been a father, but she’d been Julian’s only parent, and the fear that he’d felt something in his life was missing had pushed Anna to always try harder to be the best parent she possibly could be.

  But apparently . . . she swallowed over the lump in her throat as she yanked out a pot from the cupboards and stuck it on the stove. With sharp movements, she scooped pasta into the pot and set the stove eye on medium.

  Anna wasn’t a good cook. It was probably safe to say that she was an awful cook, and it was a quick reminder that over the years she’d become more adept at the “father” roles than the traditional mother ones.

  “Mom?” came Julian’s hesitant voice by her shoulder. A hand landed on her arm. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” She was not fine. She stirred the pasta and added a small bit of water so the bottom of the pot didn’t scorch. Over the years, she’d learned the mechanics of cooking even if she’d never learned to master the skills of spices and flavoring.

  “That’s what Shae tells Brady every time he screws up.”

  “Messes up,” she corrected again, still stirring angrily.

  “Mom,” Julian said gently, “you’re decapitating the noodles.”

  Anna glanced down and, sure enough, a few stray noodles had landed on the stove, the alfredo sauce splattered like cream-colored blood. “Right. I’m sorry.”

  “Why are you sorry?”

  Because you obviously want a father figure and I can’t even manage a single date. Stifling that particular thou
ght, Anna only said, “I don’t know.”

  And, because Julian had lived with only a mother for his entire life, he deadpanned, “Are you on your period?”

  His monotone voice made her laugh. Trust Julian to cut to the heart of the matter—or what he thought to be the heart of the matter, anyway. The truth was a lot more convoluted. “Yes,” she lied, because it was easier to blame her tears on PMS than to admit that maybe, somewhere in the last fourteen years, she’d done her son a disservice. “Don’t mind me.”

  Biting his lip in thought, Julian planted his hands on the countertop and jumped up to sit on the granite the way he’d done since he was a kid, when Anna had to drag a kitchen chair over so he could climb up. Now, his legs hung loosely and he had to hunch his back and rest his elbows on his knees to avoid banging his head against the upper cabinets.

  Her stirring gentled, thankfully, and the noodles were no longer at risk of losing their lives. “What are you thinking,” she prompted Julian. “A quarter for your thoughts.”

  A grin lifted his mouth at their inside joke. At ten years old, he’d started demanding a quarter instead of a penny, already an entrepreneur in training while still in elementary school. “I’m thinking that I’ll have to ask you about the Mr. Ajax thing next week once your period is over.”

  “Jules!” She swatted him on the knee, and he cackled joyfully.

  “I’m just saying, Mom, you might really like him.”

  Maybe, but would she like him more than a handsome, green-eyed veteran who had no interest in her? Questionable. She’d desperately wanted to meet Mr. Right. Sumner Ajax next door had all the right qualities.

  And instead of pursuing Mr. Right, she was consumed with thoughts of Mr. All Wrong. Clearly something was wrong with her. Anna had always thought herself to be a smart woman, but Luke O’Connor had shown her otherwise in the last few weeks.

  In the end, it was Julian’s earnest air that gave her pause. “You really want me to go on a date with him? Mr. Ajax, I mean.”

  Steam rose from the pasta pot, and Anna removed it from the burning eye, all too aware that Julian watched her steadily. She took down two bowls from the cabinet and heaped a large mound of pasta into one and a small hill into the other. Parmesan cheese was sprinkled on both bowls—hers more liberally drenched with the cheese—before sticking two forks into the pasta and handing the larger portion over to Julian.

  They ate in silence for the next few minutes, leaving her to wonder if it was Sumner Ajax specifically that Julian wanted her to date, or if any guy would do. She poked at her pasta, then reached for the green container to add more Parmesan. The noodles were bland, as usual. She’d forgotten to add the garlic again.

  Julian, bless his heart, didn’t mention the poorly seasoned dish. He devoured the pasta, all but shoveling the food into his mouth, before rinsing the bowl out in the sink and placing it in the dishwasher.

  “Can I be honest?” he asked, as Anna once again went for the cheese. Some people thought wine cured all hurts; Anna believed cheese had the same power. Julian didn’t wait for her to answer before he continued, “I just want you to be happy, Mom. Ever since . . . last year, you’ve just seemed down.”

  “Things are great, Jules. The shop is doing—”

  “I’m not talking about the boutique,” he interrupted. “Last year, with my dad . . .”

  At his beseeching glance, she whispered, “I know.”

  “Right.” He reached up to tug on his earlobe again. “Anyway, ever since then you’ve been different, Mom. I just thought, I don’t know, maybe if you had someone you wouldn’t seem as down.”

  Stupid tears. She shifted the pasta bowl to her left hand and used her right sleeve to wipe at her eyes. “I’m okay, honey. I’ve got you.”

  His blue eyes narrowed, not in anger but in confusion. “But don’t you want someone like how Shae has Brady?”

  She did. Oh, how she did. Striving for nonchalance, she murmured, “It would be nice, I guess.”

  “So, you never know—Mr. Ajax might be your Brady.”

  Anna didn’t kid herself. For whatever reason Julian had, he’d set his sights on their next-door neighbor as being her perfect match. And perhaps he was. How would she know if she never tried?

  Chapter Twenty

  “The cranberry sauce. I forgot the cranberry sauce.”

  Luke looked over at his mother, her hands ten-and-two-ing the steering wheel in a death grip. “It’s Thanksgiving, Ma. I think that the Taylors have got cranberry sauce covered.”

  “I left it on your kitchen counter. Will your horse eat it?”

  “Sassy’s a Great Dane, but no, I think the cranberry sauce will be safe. If it’s not still mooing, Sass isn’t interested.”

  Moira’s nose wrinkled. Though she’d met Sassy twice now, she’d yet to warm up to the “horse,” as she called him. The same couldn’t be said for the Dane, who’d taken to nuzzling up to Luke’s mom every chance he got. Luke had thought Sassy might be Moira’s cup of tea: gentle, quiet, and an all-around sweetheart.

  But no, Moira had as much affection for the dog as the dog had for cats.

  Luke rearranged the sweet-potato casserole on his lap. “Amy meeting us there?”

  “Yes.” Moira sent a hesitant glance his way. “Robb’s joining.”

  “I know.”

  “Okay.” With a straight finger, she punched through the various radio stations, finally settling on Christmas music. It bothered Luke when people couldn’t wait for Thanksgiving to pass before they whipped out the garland and the blow-up lawn decorations, but he bit his tongue. Humming along to Jingle Bells, Moira said, “Robb told me that he filled you in.”

  Luke stayed silent. He’d already forgiven his mom and sister for their deception—they were family and he had so little of it already. But the hurt lingered, arrowing in on his chest. Was it too much to hope that they would have just trusted him? God forbid they let the black sheep in on the family secrets. Better to just lie to him for almost a decade.

  The bowl of green beans shifted at his feet, and he clamped his shoes on either side of the glass to keep it steady as they took to the shitty New Orleans streets.

  Almost guiltily, Moira murmured, “I’m so sorry, baby. We should have said something—at some point. You disliked Robb so much . . .”

  “I would have gotten over it.”

  They pulled up to Brady and Shaelyn’s shotgun house in the Irish Channel. A blow-up turkey sat on the porch like a guardian of the house, and Luke chuckled. Until Shaelyn had returned to New Orleans, Brady wouldn’t have bothered with Thanksgiving at all. The guy was fully invested in his career, so it was nice to see him relax and enjoy life outside of the NOPD’s homicide department.

  “Will you hold the green beans?” he asked, bending over to swoop up the bowl from the floor. “I can’t grab both.”

  “Luke.”

  He stilled at the steel in Moira’s tone.

  “I’m sorry. I know you’re going to go in there and pretend everything is just fine. I just want you to know that I’m sorry. Amy is sorry . . . Robb is sorry, too. It was never our intent to hurt you. We just . . . we didn’t mean to make you feel like an outsider.”

  Except that they had. While he’d spent years putting his body through hell, and his mind through a grater, they’d picked and selected what they felt like he could handle. It was a brutal bruise to the ego, an even ruder awakening to his state of mind.

  “I’m good, Ma.” He held out the green beans to her, and with a soft grumble she took it. “I know y’all had your own reasoning.”

  “But you’re upset.”

  Didn’t he have the right to be? “I’m solid.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yup.”

  “Are you really sure?” she pressed, worry lining her brow. “I hate the thought of you being mad and just not saying anything.”

  “I’m good, Ma. If I were any better, we’d have unicorns raining from the sky.”

&nbs
p; She laughed at his dramatics, exactly as he’d intended her to. “You always did love Amy’s My Little Pony toys.”

  “What?” Luke shook his finger at her. “Now don’t be spreading any lies at this party. I only played with Ken dolls, if I played with dolls at all.”

  “You did. Amy begged you.”

  And what Amy wanted, Luke had always done everything in his power to give her. Which was why, even though he wanted nothing more than to plow his fist into her boyfriend’s face, he had no plans of actually doing so. “Let’s keep that to ourselves, eh?”

  As Moira threatened to tell the world about his love for My Little Pony—a show he couldn’t even recall watching—Luke unfolded his body from the car and grabbed the sweet potato casserole from the passenger’s seat. He spared the glove compartment a glance, where’d he’d stowed away a gift. For Anna.

  He’d heard through the grapevine that she might be here today, but if she wasn’t . . . Probably better to just leave it here, for now. Luke had enough to carry without adding the ridiculous gift he’d bought her on a whim to the mix.

  Didn’t help that his lower body felt constrained, thanks to the jeans he’d donned just before leaving. You dressed up for her—admit it.

  Yeah, he had. But he hadn’t been able to rid himself of the cane, which he still clasped like a second lifeline, though he planned to leave it by the front door with the coats and jackets.

  If he needed it, it wouldn’t be so far out of reach.

  And if Anna wasn’t there today, as Brady had hinted that she’d be, he’d be surrounded by family. If he stumbled or moved a bit slow, no one would be waiting to make fun of him.

  He and his mother crossed the street, sidestepping a massive pothole, and took the porch stairs slowly.

  “I haven’t been here in so long!” Moira exclaimed with a little smile. “He and Shae have done a great job with the place.”

  “Make sure you tell Brady that.” Luke held open the door with his good hip so that his mom could enter the house before him. “You’ll be his favorite forever.”

  “I’m already his favorite,” his mom answered readily, just before a shriek echoed from inside the house.