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  His answering smile was slow and easy. “Not at all.”

  Her fingers curled tightly around the car keys. “I’ve got somewhere to be.”

  “Yeah?” His tone suggested that he didn’t believe her. “Where are you going?”

  She toyed with the idea of blowing off his question, but if there was one thing she knew about Brady Taylor, it was that he was annoyingly persistent. “I’ve got a bachelorette party tonight.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He said it differently this time, as if intrigued, perhaps even despite himself. “Didn’t realize you had many friends left in N’Orleans?”

  She scowled, placed a hand on her hip, and then realized that she must look about five seconds away from throwing a good ol’ Southern princess tantrum. Hastily she folded her arms over her chest to mimic his stance. With determination she ignored the way her sweat-coated skin fused together.

  “For the record, I do have friends.” She didn’t, not really, but he didn’t know that. “And secondly, my job is hosting a bachelorette party.”

  He seemed to digest that, his full mouth momentarily flattening before quirking up in a nonchalant smile. “Where do you work nowadays, Shae?”

  The bells of Holy Name chimed again. She really had to be going, but something stopped her from walking around the hood of her car, climbing in, and speeding away. She didn’t want to think about what that something might be.

  “I work at La Parisienne in the French Quarter. On Chartres.”

  One of his black brows arched up in surprise. “The lingerie joint?”

  Only a man would call a business that sold women’s underwear a “joint.” Rolling her eyes, Shaelyn let her weight rest on her right leg. She bit back another moan of pain. “It has a name, but yes, I work at the ‘lingerie joint.’”

  “And they host bachelorette parties?”

  She shrugged. “Sometimes. Tonight we’re cohosting it with The Dirty Crescent.”

  “The sex toy shop?”

  “Yes.”

  His blue eyes glittered, and when he asked, “Can I come?” his voice slid through her like that first shot of whiskey she’d downed in his grandfather’s office years earlier. Shocking at first, and then hot and tingly as it heated her core.

  Then he ruined everything by laughing.

  Nothing ever changed with him.

  “You’re such a jerk,” she snapped. She stepped forward and pushed at his chest to urge him away from her car. He didn’t budge, which only infuriated her. How dare he tease her like he hadn’t broken her heart? So what if she’d been young, naïve, and fifty shades of stupid? Being a gentleman was not overrated.

  He was still laughing when he caught her by the shoulders. “I could arrest you for harassment.” His hands were warm on her exposed skin, hotter, maybe, than the late afternoon sun toasting the back of her neck.

  Shaelyn glared up at him, not the least bit pacified by the mischievous glint in his blue eyes. His thumbs stroked her collarbone. Once, twice. If she’d been a weaker woman, she would have curled into his embrace. “You should arrest yourself.”

  “For what?”

  “For being an ass.”

  His head dipped, his breath a whisper against her ear. Goosebumps teased her flesh. “You gonna do it yourself? Maybe buy a pair of new ’cuffs from that party tonight and put them to good use on me?”

  It took a second for the words to sink in, and another second after that to realize that he was taunting her, baiting her for the sort of reaction she would have given him when they were young.

  She refused to sink to his level.

  Stepping away from his touch, she unlocked her car with her keyless remote. “Have a nice life, Brady.”

  She congratulated herself on sounding Cool, Calm and Collected, even though her insides were crashing around and threatening to pull a Birds of Paradise Incident Part II. She rounded the front of her car.

  “Hey, Shae?”

  She glanced up. Standing with his hands on his hips, Brady’s eyes were narrowed, his brows drawn together. With that hard expression on his face, it was difficult to think of him as anything but as a cop on a mission. Difficult to remember him as the boy who’d once held her heart.

  “Yes, Brady?”

  His gaze flicked from her to the busy street. “Tell the fiancé hello for me,” he said. And then, just like he had at his grandparent’s BBQ, he stalked off without giving her the chance to have the last word.

  Jerk.

  So much for apologizing.

  Brady shook his head as he spotted his buddy Luke O’Connor waiting for him. Luke was home on leave from the army and, just like they had as kids, they’d decided to come to Audubon Park to shoot the shit and work out.

  “Was that Shaelyn Lawrence you were talking to?” Luke asked as Brady came up beside him.

  Brady didn’t want to talk about Shaelyn. He’d done nothing but think of her since their unexpected meeting at his grandmother’s BBQ. Plus, there was that little detail of him digging up some dirt on that fiancé of hers over the last few days.

  Did Shae know that Ben Beveau was married with two kids? The guy lived Uptown with his family, drove a silver Prius, and was a member of his kids’ PTA. For all looks and purposes, Beveau was a happy man. Not the sort to fly up to New York City and pick up a random woman. Not the sort of man to propose marriage before returning to New Orleans with a fiancée in tow.

  While his family lived across town and could bust his story at any time, no less.

  It didn’t add up.

  Which meant that Shaelyn had probably fabricated the engagement. The “why” had eluded him so far, but he’d figure it out.

  To Luke, he nodded. “Yeah, it was her.”

  They broke into a jog in the pedestrian-only lane after a family on bikes barreled past.

  “I wonder what made her come back,” Luke murmured. “Didn’t she leave right before college?”

  The first weekend of that August. The fact that Brady recalled the day so vividly didn’t surprise him—he was good at remembering random dates, but even if he hadn’t been, it would be difficult to forget the way he’d pathetically shown up at her parent’s house, heartbroken.

  He’d been too late.

  An oncoming runner had him shifting to the left. When the lady passed, he closed the gap between him and Luke. “Don’t know if she officially told Tulane she wouldn’t be attending at the end of the month or if she just took off.”

  Luke didn’t say anything else. Brady supposed there wasn’t anything else to say on the matter. He and Shaelyn had dated in high school, they’d broken up like every other high school couple, and life had gone on. So, they’d been a statistic. Brady dealt with statistics every day in his line of profession.

  He and Luke rounded the curve in the path, the green expanse of a golf course on their left. Golf carts rumbled over the man-made grassy mounds, the sun glinting off their shiny wheels.

  He needed to stop thinking about Shaelyn. It didn’t matter that his body instantly hardened with a sexual awareness he hadn’t felt in forever. He was too busy with work to date. His coworkers had coerced him into joining the Red Dress Run charity two weeks ago—he’d borrowed a dress from a buddy’s wife, and hell, it had been tight and short—but that was it. He didn’t have much of a social life.

  Usually he was okay with that.

  Usually Shaelyn Lawrence wasn’t back in town.

  Unable to silence his thoughts, he muttered, “She’s trouble.”

  Luke didn’t even turn his head. “Trouble for you, you mean.”

  Brady wanted to deny it, but yeah, Shaelyn Lawrence spelled trouble with a capital T for him. She’d had damn leaves stuck to her butt, and all he’d wanted to do was remove them just to have an excuse to touch her. With her cheeks flushed from exercise and her short hair wild from the summer humidity, Brady had wanted nothing more than to pull her up against him and suggest they put his government-grade handcuffs to good use.

  He wasn
’t into kink—there wasn’t anything some sex toy could do that he couldn’t do better—but the sensual image of Shaelyn cuffed to his headboard while his body settled into the cradle of her splayed knees . . . . Yeah, he might make an exception just to have Shae at his mercy.

  He cut a quick look at Luke. “I didn’t think she’d ever come back.”

  “She didn’t come back for you.”

  Brady flinched. “I’m aware.”

  Trust Luke to break Brady in like a soldier. “You humiliated her.”

  “Yeah,” he bit out, “I remember.” Like he could ever forget. He’d tried, but there was only so much guilt one person could digest.

  Luke, apparently, wasn’t finished. “She heard you tell your grandmother that you were planning to dump her as soon as school started; that Tulane was so big you’d never have to see her.”

  Brady stopped running. Without missing a beat, Luke pivoted with sharp military precision. With his brown hair buzzed short, and his green eyes sharp and alert, it was sometimes hard for Brady to accept that, after six tours, Luke wasn’t the same guy he’d always known. Even so, Brady wasn’t the sort to sit by and let anyone, even his best friend, run roughshod over him.

  He forced a droll, unbothered tone to his voice and asked, “Anything else you dying to add?”

  “Yeah,” Luke said, “get the fuck over her.”

  “I am over her.”

  Luke shook his head and started jogging.

  “What?” Brady demanded as he followed. “I am.”

  “You’re in denial.”

  Brady laughed at that. “I’m not in love with her, man.”

  “I’m not saying you’ve been pining for her but you’re interested.”

  “Who wouldn’t be interested? You saw her.”

  “What I saw was her lookin’ like she’d like nothing more than to run you over with her car, and you lookin’ at her like she was a new Glock you wouldn’t mind getting your hands on.”

  Brady narrowed his eyes and decided that he’d like nothing more than to run over Luke with his car. “You’re a real sweet-talker—you get a lot of women with that mouth of yours?”

  “At least I talk to women,” Luke retorted. They both knew that Luke didn’t do much “talking” with the opposite sex. Leave from the army meant involving himself with one or two new “friends.” Rarely did they stick around for longer than the month or two that he was home.

  “When’s the last time you got laid?” Luke asked.

  Christ. “C’mon, are we back to that again? I’ve been busy.” The excuse fell flat, even to Brady’s ears.

  “You’ve been ‘busy’ for seven months now.”

  “How would you know? I haven’t even seen you in nine.” Although Brady interrogated people for a living, he hated being on the receiving end. He concentrated on his breathing, on the soles of his Nikes beating into the pavement, on the twinge in his right knee from an old injury. “Thought the military would keep you too busy to keep tabs on my sex life.”

  “You mean, your lack of a sex life,” Luke quipped smoothly.

  “You harping on me ’cause you’re interested?”

  They both knew the real driving force behind Brady’s abstinence, and it had nothing to do with diving into the dating scene. At the end of the day, it boiled down to straight up ambition.

  Brady wanted a promotion.

  He wanted the sergeant position that was opening up in the homicide department. To get it, Brady had given up all distractions: dating, hanging out with his buddies, even—Lord help him—football.

  When he’d dropped out of Tulane his sophomore year, he’d received nothing but grief from his grandparents. They’d dreamt of him being a future district attorney. Brady hadn’t seen that for himself. He’d wanted to be in the thick of things, workings beats and details and undercover stints, and obtaining a pre-law degree had felt like the equivalent to letting spiders crawl all over his body. In other words, his version of hell.

  Brady didn’t regret dropping out of school and joining the force. But he did wish that he’d finished his undergraduate degree sooner, so that his initial salary had been higher and he’d had the opportunity for more promotions.

  He had a criminal justice degree now—from Loyola, not Tulane—and after five years of working in homicide, he was ready to start climbing the ladder.

  “Nothing to say?” he prodded Luke, just because he could. “Don’t tell me you’re getting shy now.”

  Scoffing, Luke cut him a sardonic glance and his upper lip curled. “Unless you’ve got a vagina hiding somewhere, I’m gonna have to pass.”

  “Make a pass, you mean? Can’t say I’m surprised—I should have paid more attention to the way you always grabbed my ass when we wrestled.”

  Luke punched him in the arm. “Fuck you.”

  “Not even if you ask nicely.”

  The smirk morphed into a scowl, and Brady ducked ahead to avoid another blow to his right bicep. Laughing, he eased his pace and pulled up the hem of his T-shirt to wipe the sweat from his face.

  “How much longer do you have on leave?” he asked as they neared his parked car on St. Charles Avenue, one of the city’s most picturesque streets. At this time of day, though, the street put aside its antebellum elegance for gritty, rush-hour traffic.

  Luke ran a hand over his buzzed hair. “Close to two months.”

  Brady didn’t like to think about the fact that it might be another year before he saw his best friend again. Sometimes he wondered why Luke didn’t retire—he never talked about going for the full twenty but he never mentioned getting out, either. Every four years, Luke quietly re-upped and that was that.

  “October is coming up,” Brady said as nonchalantly as he could.

  Luke rolled his shoulders. “Yup.”

  “You re-upping?”

  If it was possible, those shoulders rose even higher. “Don’t know yet.”

  Brady knew better than to pester. Luke’s mama had asked Brady for help convincing her son to stay home this time around, but Brady wasn’t about to tie Luke to a chair and beat him into submission. If he wanted to complete his full twenty and get the pension he was owed than that was his decision.

  Just like it was Brady’s decision if he wanted to seek out Shaelyn again.

  Because even though his brain was telling him to cut the shit and focus on his job, Brady already knew it was a lost cause. From the minute he’d seen her at his grandmother’s BBQ, he’d known he was in. He just had no clue what in meant yet, for him or for Shae.

  5

  Two hours after her disastrous meet-up with Brady at the park, Shaelyn couldn’t help but wonder if she’d entered a permanent, alternate universe, as she watched Ben Beveau’s wife pluck a sheer-pink baby doll from the spinning rack.

  Holding the fabric up against her trim frame, Josie Beveau posed in front of the floor-length mirror and glanced over at Shaelyn. “What do you think?”

  Shaelyn’s only thought was that she hated New Orleans’ Small-world Syndrome. No way had she been prepared to see her fake fiancé’s wife stride into La Parisienne with the bride-to-be for that evening’s bachelorette party. They’d been arm-in-arm—first cousins apparently—and Shaelyn had planned to avoid Josie Beveau like the plague for the rest of the party. It was just too weird to make friends with your fake fiancé’s wife. There had to be a rule about that somewhere, right after Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.

  “I think Ben will really like it,” Josie went on, oblivious to Shaelyn’s discomfort. She smoothed the gossamer material against her body and turned to the right, tugging at the middle like she questioned its size. “Our anniversary is coming up, you know.”

  She hadn’t known. It wasn’t like she and Ben were buddies. What Shaelyn did know was that she was ready to be “single” again. “Congratulations,” she murmured.

  She busied herself with reorganizing the display table. Usually the frosted glass top was covered with variously colored
panties and matching bras. In honor of joining up with The Dirty Crescent, the table was adorned with edible underwear and three types of dildos for the evening’s festivities. Two were bright pink and the last a neon-green color with rhinestones decorating the handgrip. Shaelyn didn’t understand why sex toys had to be designed like fashion accessories.

  “How long have you two been married?” she asked.

  Josie returned the hanger to the rack. “Oh, about fifteen years. We met in high school.” A small smile lifted the corner of her mouth. “He married me less than a month after we graduated.”

  “That’s really cute,” Shaelyn said, genuinely.

  Would she and Brady have had a similar story to tell if their relationship hadn’t imploded? Although she’d spent years contemplating the various what-ifs, it hadn’t done her a lick of good. All that mattered at the end of the day were the facts: she’d loved him, he hadn’t loved her, and now they hated each other’s guts.

  Hallmark couldn’t even stitch this one up.

  “Have you had any more run-ins with your ex?”

  Shaelyn lifted her gaze from the lingerie to Josie. She wondered what kind of woman let her husband fake an engagement with someone else. Maybe Josie and Ben Beveau were swingers, not that she got the feeling that Josie was interested. But fifteen years was a long time to be married, and Shaelyn knew firsthand how couples were often willing to try anything to keep it interesting between the sheets.

  Only an ingrained habit of holding her tongue kept her from asking any personal questions. Shaelyn’s mama had always warned her about the evils of spreading gossip. Then again, Charlotte Lawrence had been the worst of them all.

  “Not really,” she finally said as she stepped back from the display. “We don’t run in the same circles.”

  Except you both run. Or, rather, she limped and clutched her burning sides, and he glided across the pavement like a hot lifeguard from Baywatch.

  “That’s a shame.” Josie picked up the neon-green dildo, tilted it this way and that, and put it back on the table. “Ben said Brady couldn’t keep his eyes off of you.”

  Or his hands. Not that she needed to be thinking about that. “Ben probably mistook Brady’s desire to toss me out of his house for something else.”