The NOLA Heart Novels (Complete Series)

by Maria Luis

  “You sure?”

  “Can’t a girl want to go on an adventure every once in a while?”

  Blue eyes lazily swept over her, then stopped at her feet. “In those shoes, you’re limiting our options.”

  Sawyer grinned, then brought her massive purse forward to riffle through it. She plucked out one sneaker, then the other, holding them up with a victorious wave. “Rule number one to working as a dating advice columnist: you never know when you’ll have to run.”

  A scowl notched his brows. “The fact that you feel like you need to run at all makes—”

  “Your vagina all sad and lonely?”

  Startled laughter broke from him. “You’re ridiculous.”

  “And you’re too busy getting all upset over something that’s definitely temporary,” she said, poking him in the chest with the toe of one sneaker. Good Morning, New Orleans had been her ticket into the city, sure, but that didn’t mean she would be stuck there forever. “Trust me, I won’t be writing that stupid dating column for long.”

  Julian’s mouth softened with encouragement. “I know you won’t.”

  “It’s just a stepping stone,” she felt compelled to tell him. “A foot in the door.”

  “You don’t need to remind me about stepping stones. How many summer internships did I have to do to get my job?”

  “I’ll never forget when you ended up being your boss’s coffee lackey,” she said, shaking her head at the memories. And smiling. Dammit, she couldn’t stop the grin from spreading.

  “I could have won a marathon. You know how many steps I hit each day?” He tapped the back of his leg. “Buns of steel, glutes too—you name it, I had it. You could have bounced a quarter off my ass and taken out all of America with the rebound.”

  She would have gladly risen to the occasion and taken one for the team. Still, she had a civic duty to keep Julian O’Connor levelheaded and among mere mortals.

  “Your ego,” she said, teasing him.

  “Too bright?” Julian arched his brows. “Do I need to dim the halo a little?”

  “The halo? Oh, God, I think I just vomited in my mouth.”

  He pretended to reach up and rearrange a pair of angel wings. “If you’re good, maybe I’ll get you a pair of your own.”

  “If I’m good, then I never want to attend another speed date night for the rest of my life. Why do dating advice columns even exist? That’s what I want to know. They’re utterly useless, not to mention degrading.” She eyed the smile he was doing a terrible job of smothering. “I mean, Sarah was dating her boyfriend for two years while she wrote that column. But there she was, still going on these dates just for the sake of a keeping job. And, honestly, you never see men getting hired for these types of gigs.”

  “So, fake it.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “Remember that creative writing class you took sophomore year?”

  “Jules, I barely remember what I ate this morning.”

  His answering laugh was deep and low. “That’s because you skipped breakfast.”

  “I’ll have you know that lunch is the food of champions.”

  “Pretty sure that’s not how the motto goes.”

  “Pretty sure you’re killing my joy right now, O’Connor, and that’s unforgivable.”

  The smile he gave her was pure masculine arrogance.

  “Anyway,” he said, grabbing both sneakers from her and jerking his chin toward her stilettos, in a silent order for her to get to swapping them out, “you had some assignment where the professor tasked y’all to write a story based on a lie. One small untruth that would spin into something larger, and each day you had to elaborate.”

  She vaguely recalled the assignment, but . . . “Are you asking me to lie?”

  Julian’s expression didn’t even twitch. “I’m telling you to conduct an experiment.”

  “Where I lie.”

  “Where you ditch the bad dates and take a shortcut to writing the articles you really want out in the world.”

  She bit down on her bottom lip.

  Ditch the bad dates. He made it sound so easy, so simple. “So, you’re saying to do what Sarah did?”

  “No, LeBlanc. I’m telling you to fake them from start to finish. Make them elaborate, make them sweet. Do what you have to do to show that you’re worth more than a few shitty dates each week.” He shifted forward and patted his thigh with the sole of one sneaker. “C’mon, strip off the heels for me.”

  Julian O’Connor was always, always the gentleman.

  But sometimes . . . sometimes Sawyer couldn’t help but wonder if he was aware of what he said. The innuendos, the puns. His handsome face never revealed a thing, which always led to a seed of doubt planting roots in her gut.

  She wanted to strip off the heels.

  She also wanted to strip it all off—for him.

  Balancing a hand on the car, she bent one leg and slipped a finger under the elastic strap around her ankle. A relieved sigh fell from her mouth when the shoe hit the pavement and she flexed her toes with a joyous sense of freedom.

  She heard the audible thunk of weight hitting the car’s roof seconds before Julian’s big hand gripped her bare foot and dragged it onto his thigh. He kept his gaze focused south where he flattened her sole against his dark jeans.

  It took everything in her power not to moan.

  “That feels . . .” Blue eyes leapt to her face, waiting for her to finish. Her nails scraped the car, pressing deeply. “Amazing,” she whispered breathlessly.

  One knuckle slid under her foot, grazing the center of her sole. “Tonight, your date took you to get a massage.” He dragged his thumb over the sore tendons lining the ball of her foot, stealing a sigh from her lips. “You worried it would be weird at first. You didn’t know him; he didn’t know you. Strangers, completely. But you went for the job, to get the story you needed.”

  She couldn’t have torn her gaze away from his face if someone had demanded it. “Jules, I—”

  “You undressed in separate rooms. Put on the robes they gave you. Silk. Soft. It swished around your legs when you and your date met back up, and you couldn’t help but notice him.”

  He had her foot resting on his thigh, on an empty street in the middle of the Warehouse District. If she closed her eyes, she could hear the calliope playing from the steamboats on the Mississippi River, a few blocks away, and the raucous laughter of patrons at a nearby bar. But her eyes were open, stitched wide as she stared up at him, and she heard nothing but her fractured breathing.

  What was he doing? What were they doing?

  This surpassed shoulder brushes and touching thighs. It surpassed every tight hug they’d given each other over the years. And maybe she’d had more wine than she’d initially thought because she. Could. Not. Stop.

  “What happened next?” she asked hoarsely.

  He squeezed her foot. “You turned around, giving your date your back, and then let the robe fall.”

  Oh, God.

  Heat pooled between her legs. Heat and want and so much desire that it was a miracle her standing leg didn’t just collapse out from beneath her.

  She was drunk. Tipsy. Had to be or she never would have given voice to the riotous thoughts in her head: “Was I naked under the silk?”

  His fingers flexed against her skin, and his blue eyes flashed bright in the muted city lights. “That’s your call.”

  “What?”

  “Your call, your lie.” His lips curved upward. “You get to write the rest of tonight’s date.”

  “I thought we were going to—”

  “Adventure tomorrow, LeBlanc.” Reaching up, he snagged one of her sneakers and handed it to her. “Spin a beautiful lie. I know you can do it.”

  But when Sawyer sat down later that night, with Julian in his bedroom and she in hers, it wasn’t a lie she wrote down. It was a fantasy. It was hope. It was everything she wanted from him and more:

  The silk fell to the floor, and even th
ough I couldn’t see him, I knew with every beat of my heart that he devoured me with his gaze.

  3

  Getting a hard-on at your mother’s dining table was all kinds of wrong.

  Julian knew it.

  His traitorous cock knew it.

  Hell, he was pretty sure if he put it up to a vote, the entire table would agree with him too.

  Put the ice cream cone down, LeBlanc.

  Put the ice cream cone down before I come in my pants.

  He watched in horror, awe, and straight-up need, as Sawyer’s tongue swirled around the ice cream, her gaze fixed on his mom, completely clueless to Julian’s suffering.

  Fuck. Me.

  A wet nose nudged Julian’s elbow, and he didn’t have to look to know that it was Sassy. Clearly, the Dane was commiserating with him. Without taking his eyes off Sawyer, Jules scratched Sass behind the ears, then gave the dog a smacking kiss on the top of his massive head.

  Sassy blew out a happy breath and returned the favor with his gigantic tongue sliding across Julian’s face.

  So much slobber, so little time.

  “How’s it going at the firm?”

  Gently pushing Sassy away, Julian ran the napkin over his jaw before cutting his attention to Luke, who sat at the head of the table. “Same as it’s been. Deadlines, late nights. When I used to joke about wanting to play video games for a living, one of you should have stopped me.”

  His stepdad’s green eyes glittered with humor. “Wasn’t gonna be me telling you that, son. I know better than to get in the way of something that you want.” And, like he’d read Julian’s mind, those green eyes swung knowingly in Sawyer’s direction. “O’Connors take no prisoners.”

  Apparently there was enough blood in system to hang out in two separate hemispheres because warmth infused his chest.

  Over the last eight years, he’d kept waiting for the moment when he would inevitably get over Luke calling him an O’Connor. It should have been old news. Should have been, maybe, but there wasn’t a day that he didn’t feel grateful for the man to his right. Grateful and loved—embarrassingly so, at times.

  With that said, he could seriously do without the blatant reminder that Sawyer sat across from him, still laughing with his mom, still doing that thing with her tongue as she licked at her ice cream.

  “Speaking of prisoners,” he said, pushing up from the table, “I’m gonna grab myself a beer. You want one?”

  His stepdad glanced from him to his mom. “Nah, I’m good. I’ll come with you, though.”

  With Luke hot on his heels, Julian made his way into the kitchen. He’d barely pulled open the fridge when Luke announced, “I’m taking your mom on a date tonight.”

  Julian’s lips twitched as he nabbed a bottle of Abita Amber and cracked the top off using the counter. Brought the beer to his mouth and took a small swig, just before turning to plant his ass against the cabinets. “Will you have her home by ten?”

  The fine lines branching out from Luke’s eyes crinkled. “Smartass.”

  “All I’m saying is, I know where you sleep at night, old man. I said ten-sharp and not a minute later. You hear me?”

  “What did I do to deserve you?” Luke hefted himself up onto the kitchen island with graceful ease. His features didn’t even pinch at the weight he put on the leg that once gave him hell. “I went wrong somewhere.”

  Julian pointed the bottle at him. “You fell in love. It was a two-for-one deal.” He cocked his head, grinning. “Great stroke of luck, right there.”

  “We didn’t even meet on a Tuesday.”

  “Greatness like me doesn’t need to wait for a Tuesday.”

  They stared at each other, both of them determined not to break. But ultimately Julian lost the game first, and he wasn’t even sorry. Laughter climbed his throat, and he hid his grin by taking another drink.

  “How does Sawyer deal with an ego like that?”

  The beer went down the wrong pipe, and he came up choking.

  Luke didn’t even have the grace to look ashamed. He only crossed his arms over his chest, dipped his head in the same way that Julian had adopted, at some point over the years, and said, “If you squirmed any more out there, you would have set your chair on fire.”

  Jesus.

  Scrubbing a hand over his jaw, he leaned to the side to peer into the dining room. From his vantage point, he couldn’t see much of the table, but he could hear them. His mom’s sweet-natured voice and then Sawyer’s, husky and just a little sarcastic. Just the way he liked her.

  “Are we really doing this?” he asked.

  Luke raised a brow. “Father-son bonding?”

  When they wanted to bond, he and Luke went to the shooting range; they met up with Luke’s buddies—Julian’s uncles—Danvers and Gage and Brady; they binged The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, which they adamantly would never admit to, if anyone ever asked. Which no one did, thankfully.

  “This isn’t father-son bonding,” Julian said, clasping the beer bottle loosely to his side. “It’s an interrogation.”

  His stepdad’s features masked over with innocence. “Would I do that?”

  “You would if Mom put you up to it.”

  “Or maybe I’m just offering to help you out.”

  “The same way you helped out Mom and then ended up marrying her? What was it again? Three dates or dares and then—”

  Luke’s deep laughter cut him off. “Moving onto deflection tactics now? You’re in deep, kid.”

  Julian busied himself with another pull of his beer. Lowered his voice so there was no chance of his mom or Sawyer overhearing. “I’m working on it.”

  And he was—in his own way.

  His relationship with Sawyer was . . . complicated. Or maybe the problem was that it was so completely uncomplicated that at some point, all the loose ends had managed to tangle themselves together into a knot that he had no hope of ever untying. Theirs was a friendship that had taken root from the very first night they’d met, and it had never let up steam.

  When he needed to talk, he turned to Sawyer.

  When he needed space to think, or to work out a problem, he’d rather do it with her seated next to him.

  He didn’t want to risk any of that with her, but the other night, when he’d held her foot on his thigh, something had felt different. Needy. And it hadn’t just been him doing the needing—he’d read the lust in her dark gaze.

  One second he’d been soothing the tense muscles in her foot, and the next, he’d been providing a visual that had kept him up for the rest of the night, his hand wrapped around his dick, his eyes slammed closed as he pictured her above him. Straddling him. Riding him.

  Because it hadn’t been some stranger that he’d wanted Sawyer to envision watching her disrobe, but him.

  His fingers stripping her naked, his fingers dancing down the curve of her spine.

  Only his.

  He cleared his throat. “Where are you takin’ Mom tonight?”

  Luke’s mouth pulled to one side. “Another deflection? Careful, you’re getting predictable now.”

  Julian didn’t even bother to deny it. “Maybe I’m curious.”

  “Or maybe you don’t want me prying into your love life.”

  He chuckled. “All I’m gonna say is that I’m trying to do this right—with Sawyer, I mean. It’s been four years of me . . . Well, of me wanting the hell out of her. You know it, Mom knows it, I know it.”

  “She moved to N’Orleans for you, Jules.” Luke’s expression softened and he slipped off the kitchen island to move toward Julian. “You know it,” he said, his voice pitched low, “Blondie knows it, and I know it too.”

  He swallowed, hard. “She found a job.”

  “She found you, son.”

  Those words lodge in his throat, making it hard for him to find any of his own to say. When Sawyer had called him two months ago to let him know that she’d found a gig in New Orleans, of all places, Julian had felt like the world had granted
him a gift.

  They’d said their goodbyes after graduation in the spring.

  In May, he’d packed up his apartment, tossed all the shit he didn’t care about in the car that Luke had bought him for his sixteenth birthday, and left the one thing he loved behind.

  But she was here, in the city he always knew he’d return to. In his parents’ home, talking to his mom like they were the best of friends. In his home, his apartment, that had felt ridiculously empty without her in it.

  And for the first time since they’d met, Julian was done playing it safe.

  He wasn’t a ladies’ man. Never had been, even before Sawyer, but that didn’t really matter when he only wanted one woman.

  He was Sawyer’s, and Sawyer was his, and it was finally time he made it happen.

  Good Morning, New Orleans

  “Disrobing for Two, Please” by Sawyer LeBlanc

  I won’t lie—getting a couples’ message is not something I thought would ever make for a great first date.

  First, there’s the intimacy of it all. The absolute vulnerability.

  Then, there’s the staggering reality.

  Do you moan when something feels good? If you don’t moan, is that indicative of you being totally silent in bed? Which, depending on the person, could be a total turn-off?

  There are, and were, a million reasons to say no to this sort of thing.

  Lucky for you, dear reader, I said yes.

  I said yes to getting practically naked with a stranger. I said yes to wondering if his gaze would meet mine as we lay on our prospective beds and let magical hands kneed the stress from our bodies. I said yes to disrobing for two, knowing that I’m not the sort of girl who rushes from first base to third. (If we’re being truthful here, it’s been a number of years since I’ve even hit second).

  The silk fell to the floor, and even though I couldn’t see him, I knew with every beat of my heart that he devoured me with his gaze. My skin pebbled with heat and my pulse raced, just a little faster.

  We never mentioned to the masseuses that this was our first date.

  Maybe they could tell. Maybe they couldn’t.