THE FRENCH QUARTER, NEW ORLEANS

“I need another drink,” Lizzie announced to the table, her empty margarita glass raised in silent demand.

Shaelyn Lawrence, Lizzie’s friend, snorted into her wine. “You might be a YouTube star, girl, but you aren’t Kim K. Sit your butt back down.”

Grumbling, Lizzie dropped back to her seat and leaned over toward Jade. “I don’t know why we put up with her. She’s so mean.”

“More like realistic,” Shaelyn said with a cheerful laugh. “When you reach Kardashian levels, we can talk more.”

Anna, Shaelyn’s beautiful blonde cousin, laughed and then gestured to the server for another round of drinks for the table. “Lizzie, we need to talk about this channel of yours. Why haven’t you done a special on the boutique?”

Apparently Shaelyn and Anna co-owned a lingerie boutique in the French Quarter called La Parisienne. This would have been more exciting if, of course, Jade had need for sexy lingerie. With the way things were going, she’d be trading in her thongs for granny panties in no time at all.

In reply to Anna, Shaelyn threw in, “Because she doesn’t want to get in front of millions of people in lingerie?”

Tanya, who’d only shown up tonight with the promise of a free drink on Jade’s dime, announced, “I’d do it if I had the body for it.”

Everyone gave her a disbelieving look. The woman was built for prancing about in her underthings. “All right, all right,” she said, “I’d do it if I had Lizzie’s body.”

Lizzie waved a dismissive hand. “Nah, I don’t care about any of that. I’d totally wear a bedazzled bra on camera. I can already see my outfit now. Hair pulled back in a high ponytail, decked out in a push up bra. A little silver mascara, maybe a pop of green contacts . . . ”

Jade held up a finger. “Question. Would green eyes really make a difference when you’ve got blue eyes?”

Danvers’ sister gave Jade a hard stare. “Um, yes. Green eyes are mysterious.”

Anna, who was the proud owner of blue eyes, pointed her wine glass at Lizzie. “Hold on. If green eyes are mysterious, then what are blue eyes?”

Four pairs of eyes turned on Lizzie, who was better known as ThatMakeUpGirl on YouTube. Lizzie shrugged. “Blue eyes are common.”

“I thought brown eyes were common.” Jade should know. Hers were nearly black. Soulless, some might say—or at least that was the joke with her sisters. “Statistically, more people in the world have brown eyes.”

“I don’t disagree.” Lizzie leaned back as the server brought over their drinks. To everyone’s delight, she tapped the server on the butt. He jerked upright, nearly upending his loaded tray. When he saw the identity of the butt-touching culprit, his pissed-off expression morphed into a welcoming smirk.

“Can I help you?” he asked, leaning down so he could be heard over the pulsating music.

“You certainly can.” Lizzie propped her elbow on the table, swirling the tip of her finger around the rim of her empty margarita glass. The server’s gaze dipped to her finger, attached to her breasts, and then belatedly bounced back up to her face. Lizzie didn’t even flinch. The slow smile she bestowed on him was one for the record books. “What do you think of green eyes?”

His decidedly coffee-brown eyes hit on every woman on the table, intelligently taking note of each of them. He turned back to Lizzie. “Overrated,” he said simply.

“Hmmm,” Lizzie murmured, still tracing the mouth of the glass with her fingers. “And brown eyes?”

Again, the server scoped them all out. Jade gave him a pitying smile. Lizzie was on the prowl, and the kid didn’t even know he was about to be swallowed up by a professional.

“Pretty,” he said finally, “but not as pretty as blue eyes.”

“My life is now complete,” Tanya intoned sarcastically to Jade. She owlishly blinked her black-liner-rimmed blue eyes before cackling into her drink.

“What about fake tits?” Lizzie asked, a mischievous kick lifting her lips. “How do you feel about them?”

The server’s cheeks bloomed tomato red. “I, uh . . . ”

Bursting into laugher, Lizzie swatted his arm. “I’m just kidding.”

The server’s shoulders drooped with relief. “Oh, oh okay.”

“Just kidding!” Lizzie threw her chest out. “I got these bad girls a few weeks ago, but I’ve discovered I still have a lactating problem.”

This time the server didn’t even wait to hear what else might come out of Lizzie’s mouth. He turned on his heels and sprinted to the other side of the bar, crashing into one dancing couple as he went.

For a moment, the table remained silent.

“Lactating silicone boobs?” Shaelyn finally murmured. “That’s new.”

Tanya glanced down at her rather large chest and rearranged the girls. “Never had that problem myself,” she quipped. “Thank God.”

Ever the businesswoman, Anna appeared unfazed as she said, “I bet we have a bra at the boutique that could solve that issue for you.”

“Really?” Jade asked, her curiosity getting the better of her. “You’ve got a bra that could solve lactating breasts?”

Shaelyn sipped her wine. “It’s called a pump.”

“Y’all,” Lizzie said loudly, “I do not have fake boobs.”

“Huh. I couldn’t tell.”

Lizzie twisted to look at Tanya, who was theoretically the newcomer to the group, although Jade wasn’t so much ahead of her. “What do you mean, you couldn’t tell?”

Tanya shrugged. “You’re obviously wearing a great bra.”

“It’s one of mine,” Anna pointed out. “We sell everything from crotch-less panties to push-up bras.”

“Also, sometimes sex toys,” Shaelyn murmured, “depending if we’re working in collaboration with The Dirty Crescent for an event.”

Tanya’s blue eyes went wide with awe. “The sex toy shop?”

Shaelyn nodded. “The very one.”

“Love them.” Tanya exchanged her watered-down cocktail for the new one. “I wish I had known about y’all when me and my ex were on the fritz and ‘makeup sex’ was our motto.”

Lizzie elbowed Jade in the side. “Maybe you should give that a go.”

All eyes flew to Jade, who, in turn, glared at Lizzie. “Don’t you have a filter?” she hissed.

Danvers’ sister grinned saucily, throwing a wink in for good measure. “Nope.”

Figures.

As Jade mentally catalogued all the ways she could get away with murder, Shaelyn tapped her wine glass with a silver knife until everyone quieted. She cleared her throat with a loud ahem. Then, “Are you telling me that you are in need of makeup sex lingerie?”

Jade cast a beseeching look about the table. There she’d been, minding her own manners, doing her own thing, and now . . . “I plead the fifth.”

“Guilty!” Tanya thumped her fist on the table. “No one ever pleads the fifth unless their asses are steaming.”

Shaelyn paused in her interrogation. “I like you,” she said to Jade’s coworker. “I don’t know you, but I like you.”

Tanya flashed a smile. “Thanks.”

Jade wondered if she’d stepped into an alternate universe. She placed her linen cloth on the table. It was time to escape. Now. “I think I’m going to use the restroom.”

A hand yanked on the back of her shirt and Jade’s ass hit the leather bench. Lizzie shot her an innocent smile. “We’re talking about you sexing with my brother.”

“Oh, my God,” Anna exclaimed. “You and Danvers?” She jerked forward in her chair, instantly killing the image of smooth, unfazed entrepreneur as her elbows hit the table, hard, and rattled all the drinks. “How was it?”

“Wait,” Tanya said, hand up in the air, “Who are we talking about here?”

“Nathan Danvers” came from three different mouths, none of them Jade’s.

“Oh, my God.” This now from Tanya, her blue eyes opened wide in shock. “Oh, my God. You did the no-no cha-cha with Danvers? Every time I see him out in the field, I just want to lick him.”

“Who says that?” Shaelyn asked. “Horizontal tango, I can see. The naughty dance? I’m still following. But the ‘no-no cha-cha’ can’t count.”

“It can.”

“It really can’t,” retorted Shaelyn. “Call me old-fashioned, but when I’m getting down and dirty with my boyfriend, doing the cha-cha is the last thing on my brain.”

With a mischievous glint in her gaze, Anna reached out to give her cousin’s hand a sympathetic there-there pat. Then, she went in for the kill. “That’s because you and Brady lack imagination. Very orderly sexy times.” She covered her mouth as if imparting a deep, dark secret and leaned in toward Jade. “So . . . you had sex with Danvers?”

Jade dropped her face into her palms. The lot of them were worse than Rita and Sammie put together, and that was saying something. Her private life would never be private again if she kept up these budding friendships. Strangely, or maybe because she was secretly a masochist, she couldn’t imagine being anywhere else than at this table, in a strange dive-y bar, with a group of women she didn’t know but strangely liked.

Except, maybe, for Lizzie Cartwell, the Spiller of Secrets.

Lizzie clapped her on the back. “The answer to your question, Anna, is yes, they did.”

“Wow.” Tanya sat back, a surprised expression on her face. “I’ve been trying to achieve that for years now. I’m with Anna; tell us how it was.”

The women waited in silence as Jade tried to summon the words to explain the best experience of her life. Admitting too much wouldn’t do. Since stalking out of his bedroom three days ago, she hadn’t heard a single thing from him.

Sure, she could chalk up his avoidance to masculine stubbornness or even immaturity. But she had a sneaking suspicion that wasn’t the case at all. Instead, she couldn’t help but wonder if her words had struck a chord with him. If her lengthy speech had resonated a whole lot more than he’d shown when she’d walked out.

And then, of course, there was the Zeker case. Shawna had been released from jail yesterday. No one had been announced as her husband’s murderer. She knew that all the missing blanks in the case had to be driving Danvers crazy.

She only wished that he’d realize that asking for help when things got tough wasn’t a sign of weakness.

“Jade?” Shaelyn pressed.

Wrapping her fingers around the wine glass, Jade stared down at the burgundy liquid. “Hot,” she admitted. “Melt-your-pants-off hot.”

Breathlessly, Anna said, “And the panties?”

Jade slid a knowing glance toward the fashionable blonde. “What panties?”

Aside from Lizzie, who looked simultaneously pleased and revolted by the admission, every woman at the table sighed. This even included Shaelyn, who was apparently obsessed with her hotshot boyfriend, Brady Taylor, who was Danvers’ best friend.

“So, if it was that hot, why the sad face?” Anna asked.

Lizzie sucked on her straw. “Because my brother is an idiot.”

Jade hated the idea of someone speaking badly about Danvers, even if that someone was his sister. “He’s not an idiot,” she said, “It’s just that he needs some time to . . . think things over.”

Lizzie nodded as though Jade had proved her point. “Like I said, he’s being an idiot.”

“How do you know all of this?” asked Tanya.

“She told me.”

Jade narrowed her eyes on her friend. “Which I won’t be doing again.”

“Utterly. Heartbroken.”

Was it wrong to wish for someone else’s demise? Jade had never been the sort to do so, but she was quickly coming to realize that Lizzie Cartwell was just as much of a pain in the rear-end as Danvers claimed her to be.

Granted, it was part of her charm.

Jade contented herself with flipping Lizzie the bird. To the table, she said, “He’s not an idiot. We had some differences.”

“Maybe you need to seduce him,” suggested Tanya, which earned nods from everyone else. “Give him a ring and get him into bed. Differences are overrated when you’re too busy getting it on.”

Raising her wine glass into the air, Shaelyn added, “I second that. I seduced my boyfriend—before he was my boyfriend.”

“I wouldn’t call scheduling sex ‘seducing,’ Shae.” Anna glanced conspiratorially at the table, her blue eyes glittering with laughter. “They’re not a very spontaneous couple.”

“What? We’re totally spontaneous.”

“I seem to recall someone mentioning vanilla sex . . .”

Shaelyn’s hazel eyes narrowed to slits. “It was an inside joke, Anna.” She turned to the rest of the group with an air-jabbing finger. “For the record, we’re plenty spontaneous.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure,” Jade hastily muttered at the same time Tanya nodded enthusiastically and Lizzie quipped, “Non-vanilla sex, got it.”

Satisfied, Shaelyn delicately sipped her wine. “So, back to more important matters . . . I’m guessing sex with Danvers was non-vanilla?”

Seeking coolness, Jade pressed her ice water to her forehead. “So not vanilla. And considering . . . ” She trailed off, the words I’ve only ever known boring sex hovering on the tip of her tongue.

Fact was, she might not have been a huge fan of John Thomas, but she didn’t enjoy bashing the man. But how did you go about admitting that one sexual experience trumped all the others, not because the others were bad, necessarily, but because the latest one was just so good?

Somehow, almost without quite having realized it, Jade found herself spilling her guts to her new friends. Maybe it was the liquid courage speaking, but she found herself admitting how her relationship with Danvers was terrifying, soul-frightening.

Quietly, so quietly that Jade saw the words form on her lips rather than heard them, Shaelyn said, “You love him.”

Jade’s head snapped back so fast that she could have sworn she heard a creak of her neck. “I don’t,” she emphatically told the group. “We aren’t talking love. It’s not on the table.”

“Doesn’t matter if love isn’t on the table if you’re still feeling it.”

But she wasn’t “feeling it” . . . was she?