MID-CITY, NEW ORLEANS

“Are you banging my brother?”

Ah, crap—Car horns erupted all around as Jade slammed on the brakes.

“You all right?” Lizzie asked in her ear. “It sounds like you’ve pissed off all of N’Orleans over there.”

“Don’t hang up!” Jade shouted into the receiver. “I need you for directions to your brother’s house.”

There was a small pause. “Are you sure the two of you aren’t hooking up?”

Yes. No. Did one hot-as-hell moment constitute as “hooking up?” Jade had no idea. She’d never been the type of girl to throw herself into casual flings—though this had more to do with her history with John Thomas than anything else. Perhaps the better question was: did she want to hook up with Lizzie’s brother on a more permanent basis?

The answer to that question was yes.

“I like you too.” His words from the other night still haunted her every night. She wanted more of him.

“I’m taking your silence as a confirmation that y’all are doing the nasty.”

“We aren’t—”

“Then why else are you going to his house at nine on a Friday night?”

Jade’s mouth clamped shut. She didn’t have a solid answer to that question, other than the fact that she hadn’t seen him all week. Not to mention that the media had discovered his involvement in the Zeker case, and now it was his name being dragged through the mud.

Even if they didn’t see eye to eye on the Zeker case, she just wanted to . . . Jade swallowed over the growing lump in her throat as she pulled up to a stop sign. “I just want to make sure that he’s okay.”

“You could text him.”

Jade cringed. She could text him, but, well, was it wrong that she would rather see him in person? “I’m worried, that’s all. I’ve got pizza with me, in case I need an excuse.”

There was no mistaking the sigh on the other end of the line. “I really don’t think you need an excuse to see my brother.”

“We’re friends.”

“That’s not the reason why, Jade, and you know it.”

Worrying her bottom lip with her teeth, Jade glanced into the rearview mirror for oncoming traffic and merged into the right lane. The urge to ask Lizzie what she meant was terrifyingly strong. Had Danvers mentioned Jade at all? Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel. No, Lizzie was probably just fishing for information. Danvers didn’t seem the sort to spill his guts to his sister.

“You said right by Bayou St. John?” she prodded, ignoring the sliver of disappointment that Lizzie probably didn’t actually know how her brother felt about Jade. “Where do I go from here?”

Lizzie delivered the instructions and stayed on the line until Jade pulled up to the two-story Victorian gingerbread house. It looked incredibly out of place among the single-story double shotgun houses on either side. Small lights lined the short walkway to the front steps, and a live oak’s branches stretched up to the top of the house, concealing most of the second-floor balcony.

“Danvers lives here?” she asked in awe. “This place is gorgeous.”

All Jade got in return was a snort. “Yeah, that’s his house. Pretty, I guess, but I’d never live there.”

She turned her gaze to the upper floor and the stained glass that formed a bay window within the gingerbread-styled turret. “Why do you say that?”

This time the pause that stretched over the phone felt . . . uncomfortable, perhaps even a little strained.

“Lizzie? You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” There was the sound of rustling, as though Lizzie were pulling on clothes. “I’m gonna go, yeah? We should hang out soon. You keep bailing.”

Jade took the subject change in stride. “I can’t bail on something if we haven’t set it up in the first place.”

“Way to call a girl out!” Lizzie laughed, joy edging out whatever darker emotion she’d experienced moments before. “All right, all right. I’ll give the girls a call for tomorrow night. I don’t even want to hear you say no.”

She had no plans to. Growing up, Jade and Sammie had done everything together. Moving to New Orleans had, well, it hadn’t separated their bond exactly, so much as forced Jade to be independent of her sister. Still, she missed having girls’ nights. Which brought her to . . . “Can I invite a friend?”

“You aren’t allowed to invite my brother, Jade. Not allowed.”

Jade grinned, shutting off the car’s ignition with a twist of the keys. Darkness closed in as the overhead light dimmed and then shut off. “Not that friend. A girl friend from work. We’re, ah . . . trying to sort out our differences.”

“Sure.”

There was no more mention of the Victorian house before they hung up, so Jade shoved her curiosity into a box where it belonged, clamped the lock shut, and mentally threw away the key. For all she knew, Lizzie simply didn’t care for the architecture.

Unclipping her seat belt, she reached for her purse on the passenger’s seat. The pizza box she balanced on a flat palm, then turned and—

“Mierda!”

Blinding florescent light filtered through the window as Jade threw up an arm to protect her eyes. Wait. Awareness dawned that someone was standing just outside of her driver’s side door, and that someone was . . . not wearing a shirt?

The driver’s side window inched down, just enough for the words, “Is that you, Danvers?” to reach his ears.

He powered off the flashlight, resting his forearms on the roof of the car, and lowered his head to meet Jade’s gaze through the slit in the window. “I heard that you ordered me pizza.”

“I didn’t order you pizza.”

Nathan shifted his weight. “No?”

“No.” She paused and he imagined her running her tongue along her lips. “I ordered us pizza.”

He couldn’t help it. He grinned widely, absurdly pleased that she’d sought him out after the hell week he’d had. “You ordered us pizza,” he corrected. “Were you worried about me?”

The sound of her grumbling preceded the driver’s side door cranking open and her body spilling out from the vehicle.

“You’re making this weird,” she muttered, hiking up her purse strap on her shoulder. The pizza box she tucked against her hip. “I just thought that with everything going on . . . ”

Nathan’s gut clenched. He didn’t need a reminder that he was currently persona non grata in the NOPD’s homicide department. That afternoon he’d also been privy to his stepfather’s thirty-minute tirade, in which Nathan’s incompetence was blasted on repeat for every detective who’d stopped into Headquarters today.

Not that Josh Cartwell had uttered his stepson’s name once. Still, everyone had known that the Zeker case was Nathan’s, and everyone knew that he was running backward up shit creek right now.

But Jade’s presence here at his house immediately soothed him. He succumbed to temptation and briefly allowed his hand to touch the small of her back, only to feel like he’d been sucker punched. For once her hair was down. No smooth ponytail in sight. Hell, her hair wasn’t smooth at all but a riot of big curls that begged to be fisted and tugged.

As they took the small walkway, he watched in amusement as her gaze found his bare chest before snapping away. He didn’t offer to throw on a T-shirt, mainly because the way she kept eyeing him was fantastic for the ego. But more importantly: hell, did he want to kiss her, and if strolling about half-naked guaranteed him the best chance at getting his mouth on hers, then he was down for it.

They paused in the marbled-floor foyer.

He tried to objectively look at the place like she might, with a nonpartisan glance and no idea of the anger and sadness that had once filled these walls. To his right, a mahogany stairwell circled up to the second floor. To his left was a short hallway that led to the kitchen and dining spaces, as well as to a study he hadn’t entered in fifteen years.

Jade unceremoniously plopped the pizza box on the entrance table he’d discovered at a flea market two years ago. Her hands went up in the air as she did a three-sixty. “Do you have the first or the second floor?” she asked, her head craning back to take a gander at the arched dome ceiling above the stairwell.

Nathan made a grab for the pizza box and motioned for her to follow him into the kitchen. His feet hit the kitchen’s tile floor, and he reached out to flick on the switch, giving light to where he spent most of his time. Some nights he never made it farther than one of the bar stools at the small island.

His gaze went to the paperwork scattered across the countertop. The last few nights had been the sleepless kind.

With a swipe of his hand, he shoved the papers to the left side of the island. “Take a seat,” he said, patting the counter as he set the pizza box down and moved to the cabinets. “Let me take care of you.”

Jade laughed softly, and it was then he noticed that it wasn’t only her hair that was natural today—she’d also opted for glasses instead of what he guessed were contacts. As he set two plates down on the island, Nathan couldn’t help the fissure of warmth that sluiced through him. Yoga pants, hair down, glasses on. Call him old-fashioned, but this Jade was the sexiest version of her he’d seen yet. Better yet, it was another indicator that she trusted him. And that, more than anything, was the biggest turn-on.

“I like you, Danvers.” He rubbed a hand over his chest at her whispered words. He wanted to hear them again and again and again.

It didn’t help that she looked comfortable and so damn at home in his kitchen.

A thought which should have terrified him, and would have only weeks earlier, but now felt . . . right.

With a finger to the bridge of her glasses, she shoved the frame up her nose. “Letting me take care of you is supposed to be my line.”

He lifted the cardboard lid and proceeded to unload the pizza onto their plates. He paused after selecting her two, eyebrow arched as he awaited her response. A blush warmed her cheeks as she solemnly lifted three fingers into the air.

Who was he to deny her? Satisfaction flared that she felt no need to pull that I-eat-salad-only crap on him. He slid another pizza slice onto her plate and chose three for himself.

“Want something to drink?” he asked. “Milk, water, beer?”

“Do you have wine?”

Nathan pressed a hand to his heart and feigned dismay. “Who do you think I am? A heathen? Of course I have wine.” He jerked open the fridge door and peered inside, his gaze bouncing from drink selection to drink selection. Poking his head out from behind the door, he held up a half-gallon of juice. “I’m a total heathen. It’s grape juice or broke.”

She grinned. “Water will be fine.”

He poured a water for her and a glass of cold white milk for himself, then slid onto the bar stool across from hers. “Do you really think I’m a heathen?”

“Depends.”

“Yeah?” He washed down the pizza with milk. “On what?”

“I’ll offer you a trade,” she murmured, immediately piquing his interest. He gestured for her to continue. “You give me the tips of your pizza and I’ll give you my crusts.”

For a second all Nathan could do was stare down at his plate, including his half-eaten pizza slice. “I’ll get the crusts . . . ”

To his pleasure her blush came back in full force. “For your tips.”

She’d walked him straight into a version of hell he’d never known existed, one where his hard-on threatened to become the next boulder Sisyphus would never actually roll back up the hill—in his case, he doubted his erection would ever abate.

He let his gaze track from the crusts on her plate up to her pink face. “That sounds sexual, Jade.”

Her blush turned an even more furious shade of red. “I’m talking pizza, Danvers.”

“You don’t talk about tips with a man and expect said man not to let his imagination wander.” Nathan watched her closely for a reaction, and then slowly, methodically, he folded his pizza slice in half and offered her . . . the tip. He didn’t let so much as a muscle twitch as he waited.

Her tongue touched the center of her lower lip and his cock went from half-mast to fully erect in a matter of seconds. Her hands flattened on the island as she leaned forward, a silent dare in her eyes that he was all too keen to take on.

“You letting your mind wander, honey?” he asked, voice low, gritty.

She didn’t answer. Her teeth sank into the tip of the pizza.

Nathan almost came like a twelve-year-old boy with his first Playboy.

Then, while he was still imagining all the ways he’d like to throw her down on the island and nibble on her tips, she swiped his plate away and ripped off all the ends of his pizza slices like a total barbarian.

His promised crusts were tossed onto his plate like dried-up carcasses.

“Who are you?” he demanded, only slightly horrified by what he’d just witnessed. Mostly he was just turned on, and he knew exactly what that said about him.

He was a total goner.

Nibbling on the stolen pizza, Jade offered him a wide grin. “We agreed to the trade.”

Nathan flicked his gaze to his plate then back up to the woman smiling—hell, she was practically glowing—like she’d just won the lotto. “Honey,” he said, “I think we were envisioning two different types of trades here.”

One brow arched high on her forehead. “Who’s letting their mind wander now, hmmm, honey?”

Fuck, he couldn’t even resist her. He laughed, loudly, as he shook his head and dug back into his meal. Still chuckling, he pointed a torn crust at her. “You’re a piece of work, you know that, Jade Harper?”

“My mom tells me that all the time.”

“And your dad?”

Her shoulders lifted in a delicate shrug. “The man lived with four women in the house until Rita moved out and hightailed it to California. Work was his savior.”

As much as she talked about her mom and her sisters, Nathan could barely recall the last time she’d mentioned her father. Although his curiosity ran high, he couldn’t say that he blamed her. It wasn’t as though he spoke of his own dad.

Especially when you considered that he’d inherited the old man’s house.

Nathan went for his milk, downing half. “What does your dad do for work?”

If he hadn’t been watching, he would have missed the flinch that deflated her spine. Shit. Making her uncomfortable hadn’t been his intention.

“I’m sorry, Jade.” She was busying herself with a napkin, winding it tightly around her finger before letting go, and he closed one large hand over hers. “I didn’t mean to make you feel uneasy.”

Dark eyes zeroed in on his face. “My dad’s a cop.”

He sat back, withdrawing his hand from hers and wrapping both around the milk glass. Old Man Harper was a cop. That was good. Hell, Nathan was a cop, so this was good news.

Except that from the way she was now tearing the napkin into little shreds, he had to wonder if being a “cop” was all her father did. Ridiculous scenarios skipped through his brain. Mr. Harper as a mafia hit man. Mr. Harper as ex-CIA. Mr. Harper shoving a blade into Nathan’s gut for sticking his hand into his daughter’s panties as they watched the city of New Orleans come alive below . . . and as Jade came apart in Nathan’s arms.

Nathan was a dead man.

He stood, gathering his milk glass and looking pointedly at hers. “More water?”

She glanced down at her full glass.

“I think I’m good,” she murmured, “Thank you, though.”

“Yup.” Nathan grabbed the milk jug from the fridge, filling his glass to the brim. “What department is your dad in? Narcotics? Homicide? K-9—”

“He’s the police chief.”

Perhaps he’d misheard. “Of Miami?”

“No, of Timbuktu.”

He heard rustling, and he turned around to see her remove her sweatshirt, revealing an itty-bitty tank top with the thinnest, flimsiest of straps . . . and no bra. Under the fluorescent lighting, he could make out dark nipples poking at the thin cotton of her shirt.

Nathan groaned. “You’re killing me,” he muttered, his hand wrapped tightly around the milk glass. He was surprised it didn’t shatter in his hand. “Put your sweatshirt back on.”

She stared at him like he’d gone nuts. “I’m hot.”

“I’m fully aware.” And he was also fully aware that they weren’t talking about the same thing. “Sweatshirt. On.”

Her chin came up, and the heavy black waves of her hair slipped down her back. “You’re being condescending again.”

Condescending was the last thing he was being. Hell, he deserved a badge of honor for keeping his hands to himself. Maybe a blue ribbon that he could pin to his workbag, so everyone knew he hadn’t totally violated the daughter of Miami’s police chief.

Nathan kept his ass pressed to the cabinets, as far away from temptation as he could possibly get.

“What were we talking about?” he asked, mentally rummaging through his brain for a safe topic. One that didn’t involve nipples and tips and anything else remotely sexual. “How about this great weather we’re having?”

Smooth, Danvers, so fucking smooth.

When it came to Jade, it was like every flirty line he’d ever had in his arsenal was nonexistent.

He watched as she rose up from the stool and approached him, hips swaying enticingly. His fingers itched to reach for those full hips of hers and pull her flush against him. Almost desperately, he kept them on the lip of the counter, nails biting into the cork underside.

He’d never fought so hard to remain in control. It was the modern-day equivalent of a peasant boy striking up flirtation with the daughter of the lord of the manor.

Sure, Nathan might not be hanged, drawn or quartered, but that didn’t mean that Old Man Harper couldn’t do some other serious damage.

Jade’s fingers brushed the waistband of his drawstring shorts, and he sucked in a breath at the coolness of her fingers on his naked skin. “I thought you said you were hot,” he grumbled, wrapping his hands around her wrists. He kept them captive under his own on the countertop behind him.

They both moaned as the position threw her chest against his, her pert nipples rubbing mercilessly against his chest.

Her lips kissed his left pec, right above the crazy beating of his heart. Head tipping back, she looked up at him. “I wanted to keep your mind wandering.”

“Trust me,” Nathan said huskily, “it is.”

With a small shake of her head, she gave his chest another kiss that was heart-wrenching in its simplicity. “I mean, I want to keep your mind wandering about us—not about the fact that my dad is a police chief.”

She was so damn perceptive. If she could recognize when he felt uneasy, what else did she see? His throat jammed with anxiety. Could she read his fears without him having to tell her about them? He hoped not. Shoving the unnerving thought from his brain, Nathan brought her hands to his abs, hiding a satisfied grin when she instinctively ran her palm over the hard ridges of his stomach.

Dropping his mouth to her ear, his tongue gently touched the delicate lobe, sending a shudder rocking through her body. He needed to focus on this—on their mutual attraction. Stay in the moment, he told himself, stay in the moment. “Honey, my mind is wandering right now.”

“Yeah?” He heard the excited quiver in her voice. “Where’s it wandering to?”

To his past, where it didn’t belong. But when she skimmed her hands over his naked torso, the past slipped from his brain. God, he needed her—to get lost in her warmth, to hear his name fall from her lips. Nathan kept his mouth next to her ear, his voice a low, seductive murmur that was unmistakable. “You sure you want me to tell you?”

Her whispered, “yes,” was more of a drawn-out sigh than anything else.

“I don’t think so.” His hands curved behind her head, his fingers tangling in the wavy mess of her hair as he lowered his face to hers for a deep kiss. She arched onto her tiptoes, her nails scraping down his chest as she gave as good as she got. When he pulled away, she let out a sound of frustration and flicked his bicep.

“Are you going to tell me?” she demanded.

“No.”

“Seriously?” Her fingers went to his shorts’ drawstring, as though she could tempt him into spilling all of his secrets.

His hands wrapped around her wrists, encaging them against his chest. “As much as you’re begging right now, I think you like the unknown.” He brought her caged wrists to his mouth, so that he could drop kisses onto her knuckles. “You crave adventure.”

Her lids fluttered shut and she rocked into him. “I thought you said you weren’t kinky.”

He wasn’t normally, but maybe she brought out that side of him. Nathan still didn’t consider himself kinky—what he considered himself was good at reading the woman in his arms. Good at reading the way her dark eyes lit up at certain things and how her body language spoke a rare dialect only he understood.

And while maybe he could care less about the how’s of sex with Jade—as long as there was sex with Jade happening—he could sense that her needs and wants weren’t of the missionary sex variety.

“Do you want an adventure, honey?”

She sniffed, her nose tipping up in the air. “Ten minutes ago you were cowering in fear.”

“Not cowering,” he told her, slipping his thigh between her legs. “Any man who says that the possibility of becoming a eunuch isn’t frightening is a liar.”

Her narrowed gaze landed on him. “Dad wouldn’t make you into a eunuch.”

“If he knew what I planned to do to you, I’m sure he would figure out something much worse than just cutting off my dick.”

Her burst of laughter echoed in the kitchen, as he wrapped his hand around hers and pulled her along behind him. “So I’m worth the chance of becoming a possible eunuch? How romantic.”

Nathan stopped to turn and stare at her. She bumped into his chest and he steadied her. “No more talking of eunuchs.”

She made a show of zipping her mouth shut and grinning up at him with a tight-lipped smile.

Rolling his eyes, Nathan started back up the stairs again. “Have I told you today that you’re a piece of work?”

“Only twice,” she piped up happily from behind him, “which is actually less than the amount of times you’ve mentioned becoming eunuch’ed.”

“That’s it.”

Nathan swooped down low and hooked his arms around her thighs, lifting her into the air, and tossing her over his shoulder. “If I hear the word ‘eunuch’ one more time from you, you can bet that’s one more time I’ll make sure to remind you that this teeny-tiny umbrella isn’t so teeny-tiny at all.”

Her laughter and shouted litany of, “eunuch, eunuch, eunuch,” echoed all around him until he threw open his bedroom door and tossed her bodily onto the bed and locked the door.