CARROLLTON NEIGHBORHOOD, NEW ORLEANS

The next morning, Jade stood in front of her mirror for a healthy pep talk.

“Do not be una idiota,” she warned herself while standing in cotton panties and a matching bra. Her wet hair hung in wild curls down her back, and a droplet of water trickled down her arm before she flicked it away. “You have a dream, Jade Lucia Harper. Don’t get sidetracked by a pretty face.”

Sure, the flirtation was harmless. Nathan Danvers probably flirted with everyone—he certainly seemed the sort. It wasn’t like she was special or anything like that. But, strangely, it wasn’t his easygoing smile that had stayed front and center in her dreams all night, but rather the quiet tension radiating from him when they had all sat at the dinner table.

Flirting with Danvers was a distraction she couldn’t afford; hoping to unravel his secrets was a distraction she had no reason to pursue.

She gave herself one more finger-wag in the mirror before donning what she deemed was her no-nonsense outfit: black slacks, plain black heels, and a white button-down shirt. Thirty minutes later, she pulled her blow-dried hair to the top of her head in a smooth ponytail, swiped a light gloss on her lips, and put on a pair of pearl earrings.

Jade felt like she could take on the world.

Starting today, she was leaving Predictable Jade behind. New Orleans wasn’t the place for that kind of girl—from what little she knew of the Big Easy or NOLA (as the locals called it, she’d learned), uniqueness and individuality was celebrated over what society deemed “the norm.”

Maybe, just maybe, she’d found her people.

But first, she needed to say thank you. Most important on today’s agenda was visiting Josh Cartwell to thank him for helping her to land a job. She still wasn’t entirely sure how he’d managed it, but she was way too grateful to ask about the particulars.

Plus, it wasn’t as though she didn’t have the relevant training. Jade was more than qualified for the position, perhaps even over-qualified if you wanted to really get into it, but she understood that starting from the bottom could ultimately work to her benefit.

As her dad always said, “Learn the ropes from the bottom, so by the time you reach the top, there’s nothing anyone can say to diminish your achievements.”

So, Jade would start at the very bottom.

An hour later she found herself standing in front of NOPD Headquarters. It was a massive 1960s-era building that practically screamed “law enforcement” with its white-and-black exterior and narrow windows. Off to the side, protruding from the ground, was a statue featuring the force’s crescent-shaped moon and star emblem. Jade felt a tingle of pride that she was a part of this, too.

As of Monday morning, she was officially on the NOPD’s payroll.

The tingle of pride burst into pure, undiluted excitement.

Skipping up the front steps, Jade sailed through the sensor-operated front doors. A bored-looking security guard stood off to the right, next to a metal detector.

“I’m here to see Lieutenant Cartwell,” she said brightly, sliding her oversized purse off her shoulder and into a plastic bin.

The guard didn’t seem impressed. “Watch?”

“Oh, right.” Flipping the back of her hand against her stomach, she undid the metal fastener and tossed the watch into the bucket. “Have a long shift today?” she asked as the guard dropped the bucket onto a conveyor belt and slid it through a scanning machine.

Once again, his only response was a gruffly given command to “walk through the metal detector.”

She did so without further ado, because Jade wasn’t about to add an arrest onto her already growing list of municipal charges in New Orleans. One traffic ticket was enough, thank you very much.

With her heels clicking against the marble tiled floor, and her ponytail swooshing against her back, Jade felt like there was no stopping her.

She’d moved to New Orleans with a dream and she was making it happen. Like Rita with hairdressing or Sammie with fashion design, Jade only envisioned good things in her future and—

The abrupt beeping of the scanner’s alarm silenced the happy tip-tap-tip-tap of her heels and she could have sworn her ponytail froze mid-swing. Slowly, she swiveled on the balls of her feet.

Her gaze lifted wearily, zeroing in on the Glock 9mm clutched in the security guard’s hand.

“This yours?” he asked, and he did not look amused.

Twenty minutes later, Jade found herself waiting in a random room on the second floor.

There was a bright side to all of this: she hadn’t been arrested and her wrists were cuff-free.

Oh, and there was a coffeemaker seated in the corner of her non-jail cell. It called to her like a stray beacon of hope while she listened to the security guard instruct her on “staying out of trouble.”

Strictly speaking, Jade was the non-troublemaker in the Harper family. Rita had a bad habit of running her mouth when she shouldn’t and Sammie enjoyed pressing society’s boundaries just to see how far they’d bend. Jade was the rule follower, both in her professional life and in her personal one.

Cue her lackluster relationship with John Thomas.

“Someone will be down in a sec to grab you,” the security guard, Lark, said as Jade stared longingly at the coffee. “How do you know Cartwell again?”

“Family friends,” Jade answered. “My dad and Lieutenant Cartwell worked for the NOPD together over twenty years ago.”

“Name?”

“Kevin Harper. I think he worked for General Assignment in the Sixth District before transferring out-of-state.”

The security guard stared at her steadily. “Never heard of him.”

She offered a tight smile. Wouldn’t Mr. Security Guard just love to know that Kevin Harper was Miami P.D.’s Police Chief?

Lark stepped back. Reaching to his belt, he unclipped her firearm and held it up. “This will be down at the front desk for when you head out.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He knocked the barrel of the gun against his palm. “Stay out of trouble.”

“You got it.”

She wasn’t entirely sure how trouble could find her in here, unless she decided to bore herself to death (cause: the Sports Illustrated magazines tossed haphazardly on the coffee table), but she nodded agreeably anyway. The minute the door closed, Jade launched at the coffeemaker.

Her first cup washed down like an IV drip clipped to her veins.

On the second go-round, her adrenaline slowed as she realized that the coffee tasted somewhere on a scale between stale pee and burnt toast. She lifted the cup to her lips, blew the steam away, and braced herself for another sip.

“Desperate, Jade?” came a familiar male voice from behind her. “You can’t get me to drink that stuff on a bad day.”

Las mariposas started their obnoxious fluttering in her belly as she whirled around.

Leaning casually against the doorframe was Nathan Danvers. Today, he was dressed in black slacks and a matching black polo. Dark hair was brushed back from his face as it had been the night before, and Jade felt the strangest urge to reach out and tousle the thick layers. Her gaze fell south, to where his hands were tucked into the front pockets of his pants, his thumbs pointing down like an illicit suggestion.

Jade drained the rest of her coffee. It was awful, but, thankfully, just the sort of distraction she needed to stop thinking about the bulge behind his fly.

Crumpling her paper cup, she tossed it into the trash. “Are your bad days all the days that end in Y, too?” she asked. “Or are those only your cheating days?”

“A little bit of both,” he said, a boyish grin quirking the right corner of his mouth. Jade felt that smile all the way to the tips of her toes. “But I guess that depends on what sort of ‘bad’ we’re talking about here.”

Staring at him pointedly, Jade crossed her arms over her chest and sent up a prayer that her shirt buttons stayed in their respective slots, because although this outfit was all about the no-nonsense, she’d theoretically outgrown it one bra size ago. One wrong move and Nathan Danvers would be privy to more than anyone else had seen in months.

“We’re not talking about your package again,” she said, subtly pinching the fabric of her shirt and pulling the material flat over her chest.

His gray eyes warmed as he studied her. “Should we talk about that ticket we never ended up discussing, or would you prefer that we discuss how you just made Lark’s day?”

“Hold on now.” She stuck a finger up in the air. “First, we’re not discussing that ticket—I’ll go to my grave pretending it didn’t happen.” Her middle finger shot up. “Second, I admit that I forgot I was carrying. Honestly, I think I was just too excited to be in a new city. I’m forgetting everything lately.” Her ring finger went up next. “Third, why are you here?”

Danvers pushed away from the wall. “First,” he murmured as he made a full circle around her like a lion stalking its prey, “if you don’t tell me, I’m going to let my imagination get creative. And I can get very creative.” He stopped before her. He was so tall that the top of her head came to his chin, and Jade had to look up, up, up to lock eyes with him. “Second, it happens to the best of us. And third . . . I work here.”

“You’re a cop?” She hadn’t meant to sound surprised, but at the shuttering of his gaze, she hastily tried to cover it up. “I mean, it’s just that your family didn’t mention anything about it last night.”

Danvers shrugged. “Mom’s outlawed police talk at the table.”

Jade nodded in understanding. Beth Cartwell definitely seemed the sort to lay down the law, and it wasn’t so different than the Harper household. Despite the fact that Kevin Harper ran one of the largest police departments in the country, Lucia had long since mandated that work talk stayed at work. She said that it made for a happier home life—perhaps Beth Cartwell felt the same.

“Do you work for your stepfather?” she asked curiously.

The warmth in his slate-hued eyes banked and he fell back a step. Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out a pack of gum and withdrew a foiled stick. He popped the pink strip into his mouth, tossed the foil into the waste bin, and slid the pack back into his pocket. She watched as his strong jawline worked the strip of gum like a piece of rubber, as though he were concentrating on beating it into submission rather than admit what was on his mind.

And Jade . . . dammit, but she was intrigued again.

“We work in the same department,” he finally murmured. “Lark said you were here to see him?”

She wasn’t sure what she’d missed, but she’d definitely missed something. Jade reached up to grip the leather strap of her bag. “I wanted to thank him for helping me to get the position.”

His gaze narrowed. “Crime lab, right?”

“Yes, I start on Monday.”

“One more weekend of freedom, then.” He motioned for her to follow him. The sharp staccato of her heels echoed in the otherwise empty hallway. “Do you have any plans?”

Jade laughed. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, you know”—she waved her hand in the air—“this and that. My apartment is pretty bare right now. I ordered a bed but it’s not due to come until Sunday.”

Danvers cut her a swift look. “Where’d you sleep for the last two nights?”

On the floor. It hadn’t been her finest moment, and there was no way she would ever mention her current living conditions to her mother. Lucia would be horrified to learn that her middle child was “slumming” it. Jade thought it was all part of the adventure, not that she wouldn’t be hands-to-the-sky thrilled when her furniture finally arrived.

“Jade?”

Lifting her gaze to his, she shrugged as they entered an elevator. Danvers pressed a button and the floor beneath their feet jolted as the elevator started its ascent. “Blankets are nice things,” she said, “very fluffy.”

The elevator doors pinged open, and yet the mountain of a man beside her didn’t move. Instead he stared at her, eyes narrowed. “You’re sleeping on the floor?”

Since he didn’t seem ready to do much of anything besides stare at her, Jade brushed past him. “It’s not so bad.”

In two long strides he’d caught up. One large hand wrapped around her wrist and gently pulled her to a stop. Immediately he let go, shoving his hand deep into his pocket as if he hadn’t meant to touch her at all. Jade subtly rubbed the spot where their skin had kissed.

“—slept on the floor,” he was saying when she mentally rejoined the conversation. “And it’s not comfortable one bit.”

“It’s really not so bad. I’ve got loads of soft blankets. As kids, my younger sister and I used to build blanket forts. Who knew it would come in handy in my twenties?”

Do not ask to join her blanket fort. Do not ask to join her blanket fort.

Nathan kept his gaze on Jade’s face. It was either that or get lost in the intimate fantasy of him, her, and a few blankets.

Clothing was optional.

He wasn’t what most people would consider “romantic,” but the woman squaring off against him apparently brought out his softer side. Fact was, Nathan had never troubled himself with relationships. Relationships required expectations, and Nathan didn’t do so well with the latter.

While he certainly saw the best of what relationships could be like (take his mom and Josh, or Brady and Shaelyn), he’d also seen the worst. And the worst, in his opinion, just proved that none of it—the dating, the marriage, the arguing—was worth it.

So, Nathan kept it simple. Dinner dates led to sex, and sex either led to more time spent between the sheets or a quick, “I’ll call you,” that never came to fruition. Sex without the roses and the “I love you’s” and the talk of marriages was clear-cut, easy, and, most of all, it was exactly Nathan’s speed.

Probably didn’t help matters that women seemed to only want sex from him. He was “Just Danvers”—the funny guy, the flirty guy, the guy you let rock your world in bed and then went on your separate way.

Usually, that suited him just fine.

So, why was he allowing himself to be so intrigued by Jade Harper? Sure, Josh had asked him to show her around town, but that definitely didn’t explain the nervous energy coursing through him when he blurted, “Do you need help setting up your furniture when it comes in?”

Jesus H. Mary, why had he offered that?

But then she gave him a grin that was nearly blinding, it was so happy, and Nathan wondered if this was what it was like to stand too close to the sun. He felt warm, his cheeks flushing with what he expected was a blush, but couldn’t be sure because he wasn’t in the habit of blushing. Ever.

“You’d do that?” she asked, her voice soft with gratitude.

He wanted to say no. He wanted to return to a place where one goddamn smile didn’t make him feel like he could walk on clouds. He wanted to pretend that the only effect she had on him was a physical one, but then he’d be lying.

Because, crazy as it was, he felt like grinning just for making her happy.

What the hell was wrong with him this morning?

She must have noted the hesitation in his expression, because she hastily added, “I’ll cook you food. What do you eat? Any favorites?”

A woman on top, preferably. He swallowed, hard. “Whatever you’ve got on hand will be fine.”

“Pasta with a red sauce?”

“Sure, I’m not picky.”

They paused at the entrance to the Homicide Department. Nathan rested his hand on the butt of his holstered Glock .40 caliber. “Cartwell’s office will be on your immediate left.”

Confusion momentarily furrowed her brow. “Aren’t you going back to work?”

Nathan reached up to rub the back of his neck. Technically he was getting back to work—real work. Work that did not include: filling up water for people, fixing a jammed printer for the fifteenth-millionth time, or reviewing his stepfather’s paperwork while his own career went through the shredder.

“I’m heading to a scene.” Damn, but that felt good to say.

Nathan watched as the light in her gaze turned somber.

“A homicide?” she asked quietly, her voice pitched low.

“I don’t know much yet but I believe so.” When Brady had called before Jade’s arrival, he hadn’t given Nathan all the details. “Are you good with finding Cartwell from here?”

With a quick nod, Jade lifted one hand to the office door and cracked it open. She glanced over her shoulder. “Thanks for rescuing me.”

“I’m sure you didn’t need a lick of saving.” Nathan balled his hands at his side to keep from tucking a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. “I’ll see you on Sunday, then?”

“Pasta and dessert.” A smile stole onto her face again. “You have no idea how much I appreciate the help.”

Nathan pretended to deliberate on her offer. “Any way I can convince you that chocolate-covered strawberries ought to be on the menu?”

Her full belly laughter met his ears. “Seems pretty fancy for you.”

He lifted one brow. “Can’t a man have fine tastes?”

“Your hatred for drip coffee makes sense now,” she teased. With her one hand still planted on the door, he wondered if she were reluctant to leave him. “Would you ever sink to such a level?”

Nathan pressed his right shoulder against the wall. “Only if Starbuck’s had never existed. I feel blasphemous just saying that.”

She made the sign of the cross over her chest. “I won’t tell a single soul.”

“Much appreciated,” he murmured huskily, because damn him if he wasn’t feeling mentally stimulated with all their back-and-forth. “I’m in your debt.”

Despite his overly flirtatious words, Jade laughed. “I live in the apartment complex on Carrollton,” she told him, rattling off the numbered address, which he mentally stored away. “Come by at noon?”

Nathan leaned forward, arm stretched above her head to push open the door for her. “Noon it is.”

So brief he wasn’t sure it even happened, she wrapped her free arm around his waist in a hug. Just as quickly, she released him and skipped off.

Leaving him to wonder if he’d imagined it all.

Leaving him to wonder, even more particularly, why he was upset that he’d have to go another full day without seeing her again.

On second thought, it didn’t require more second thought—Nathan wanted her and he wanted her badly. He scrubbed a hand over his face. It was lust, that’s all. A good case of lust, and damn it if it wasn’t inconvenient.