“Blondie, give me the keys.”

Jesus, she was freaking him out. Since the moment Jules had called her, she hadn’t said a word. Mechanically, she’d pulled on her clothes, allowing him to zip up her dress and untangle her hair from beneath the fabric.

It had been Luke who offered to drive her home, even though he had no idea where she lived and even though he hadn’t driven a car in what felt like years. But the way Anna had shut down on him . . . there was not a single chance in hell of him letting her handle whatever it was alone.

They were together.

They were a pack.

He fucking loved her in a way he’d never loved anyone before.

“Keys, sweetheart.” He clapped one hand on the top of her vehicle, and then motioned with her to hand over the goods with the other. “Let me be there for you.”

The words must have done the trick because she handed the keys over and silently climbed into the passenger’s seat.

Good, that was good.

Step one, done.

He followed suit, dropping his big body into the driver’s seat, his knees kissing his chest since she had the seat pulled so far forward.

“Sorry.” The words were weak, her throat sounding scratchy like she was on the verge of tears.

Luke yanked the lever back, and sucked in a relieved breath. “Don’t be, Blondie. You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. Now tell me where I’m heading.”

She listed off her address, her hands clutching her purse to her stomach. Moonlight spotlighted her panicked expression, and he took one hand off the wheel to set it on her thigh. “Breathe,” he murmured, “you have to breathe.”

Her answering nod was jerky. “I’m trying.”

Luke’s gaze tracked oncoming traffic as he directed the car toward the I-10 W on-ramp, the quickest way to her house. He’d been out of the city for so long, but New Orleans was ingrained in his brain. Always had been, even thousands of miles away.

Right now, when Anna looked so lost, he had to keep her here, mentally, with him. “You asked me earlier whether or not I want to work with my mom on a permanent basis. I don’t. It has nothing to do with her shop—hell, maybe all those herbs have calmed me down since I’ve gotten back. But it’s not what I want with my life.”

The passenger’s seat creaked as she took him in. “What do you want?”

“Besides you and Jules?” He squeezed her thigh again, hoping he’d made her smile, at least. “What I want and what’s realistic are probably two very separate things. I need to be active, Blondie. Sitting at a register all day isn’t my speed, literally. My hip is strengthening, and I think, maybe, with a few more months of P-T, I want . . .” He just had to put it out there, voice the hopes he’d been hiding for weeks now. “I’d like to try and get on with the NOPD. It might be nothing but a pipe dream. I mean, the army discharged me. There’s a good chance I won’t even be able to pass the physical with the police department, but I want to try.”

“You’ll get on.”

He grinned into the darkness. “Gotta say, I love your blind faith in my abilities, but—”

“It’s not blind faith, Luke.” Her hand slipped under his, so that their palms kissed. “You said that you joined the military because you wanted to take care of your family. You spent thirteen years doing just that. You came back to New Orleans, and once again started helping your mom.”

He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “She helped me out, Blondie. Financially, I’m solid—saved everything I could while in the army—but she helped me to keep my sanity, to work my way back into regular life.”

“Yes,” Anna said, “but you helped her just as much. As a mother, there is nothing more important than seeing your son home and—” She broke off, her fingers tightening around his.

Luke pulled off the highway. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“Tony called Jules.”

“Tony . . .?” She tried to tug her hand away, and he held on tight. Anna’s car bounced over the city’s shitty streets as he headed toward her neighborhood up by the Mississippi River. “Tony, who?”

Her shaky sigh was loud in his ears. “Mardeaux. Anthony Mardeaux.”

Why the hell did that name sound so fucking familiar—

Luke's gut churned. Hell no. There was no way that the man who had nearly ended Brady’s career last year would also be calling Julian, a fourteen-year-old kid who had no connection to a murderer except that his cousin’s fiancé had arrested the douchebag.

Unless . . .

“Jesus Christ.” His hand gripped the steering wheel so tightly he was surprised it didn’t snap. “Anna—”

“This is it.” She pointed to an Arts-&-Craftsman house to their right. “You can pull up behind that car.”

He did so, steering wheel still clenched tight under his palm. “Anna,” he tried again, “please tell me that I’m wrong. That Mardeaux isn’t Julian’s—”

“Father?” Her voice was quiet, resigned. “I wish that I could tell you that he wasn’t.”

Before he had the chance to respond, she was out of the car and charging up the short walkway to her front door. Get your head back into gear, he warned himself before climbing out of the car.

His hip twinged as his left foot hit the walkway at an odd angle, and he bit back a curse. For both Anna and Julian’s sakes, Luke needed to be on top of his game. There was no way he’d let her handle the brunt of tonight’s events on her shoulders, alone.

Not going to happen.

The front door was cracked open when he reached it, and he shut it behind him. His ears pricked at the sound of voices coming from the second floor. He eyed the flight of stairs. No matter how much he’d progressed, stairs were still his worst enemy.

Didn’t look like he had a choice.

Grasping the balustrade, Luke hauled his sorry ass up the stairs. Each step was a little tougher than the last, but he didn’t stop until he’d reached the top. Then, he didn’t stop until he’d found Anna and her son, camped out in what could only be Julian’s room.

The kid must have heard Luke’s heavy footfalls, because his chin jerked up and he met Luke’s gaze. Those familiar blue eyes were red, as though he’d been crying.

“Jules.”

The minute the kid’s name left his mouth, Julian’s shoulders slumped and he clambered to his feet, swaying as though he wanted to dart over to Luke but wasn’t sure if it was okay.

Luke wasn’t the kid’s dad, biologically or otherwise. But in the course of a month, he and Julian had grown to be close friends, and that was a start to hopefully, one day, being looked at like a father figure. It was for that reason alone that he opened his arms, and said, “C’mere, kid.”

Julian didn’t wait.

He hit Luke’s chest, head ducked down, and Luke met Anna’s gaze over her son’s blond hair.

Dammit, but he felt his own eyes sting at the way Jules clung to him. “You’re good, kid, you’re good,” he murmured, palming the kid’s back between his shoulder blades. Moira had done that to him when he’d been younger, and it had always made him feel better. “Did you tell your mom what happened?”

With a shake of his head, Julian pulled back. “He called my cell phone while I was at Kevin’s.”

“It’s almost midnight.” Anna stood, her arms banding around her stomach like she was trying to hold herself together. “There’s no way the prison would let him make a call this late.”

“Earlier,” Julian corrected with a downcast look at his bare feet. “He called earlier.”

“You didn’t say anything?”

The kid shoved a hand through his hair, tugging at the strands. “You had your party, Mom. I didn’t want to bother you.”

Anna gave a little cry and swept forward, grasping her son by the elbows so he had no choice but to meet her gaze. “You come first, Jules. Always.”

Young blue eyes found Luke, questioning the validity of that statement. “Always, Jules,” Luke confirmed, speaking the truth. “I plan to marry your mother one day, and even then, you’ll come first—to both of us.”

Blondie’s head whipped in his direction.

Yeah, you heard that right, he wanted to say. But all he did was smile wickedly, letting her interpret his words however she wanted to, for now, at any rate.

Her mouth pulled into a tremulous smile before turning back to her son. “Tell me what he said, Jules. What did Tony want?”

“He . . . he knows about everything.”

That stopped Luke cold. Heart thundering in his chest, he grunted, “What do you mean that he knows everything?”

“He knows about Sassy.” Julian swallowed, his skin taking on a greenish color. “He knows about you running La Parisienne, Mom. He knows about . . . how much money you make.”

Anna’s pallor now matched her son’s. “How the hell does he know any of that?”

“Language,” Julian teased weakly, licking his lips. “But he also knows about you and Luke.”

What. The. Fuck.

Luke’s brain went into overdrive. For years, he’d been a part of covert operations around the world. For years, he’d played both sides of the fence, depending on what was needed of him at that time.

The enemy.

The ally.

There were many things that he’d done over the years that he wasn’t proud of, but one thing he’d been unfailingly good at, was seeing to the crux of a problem. Working out the puzzle, deciphering codes.

“He wants something.” Luke twisted at the waist, wanting to rest his hip but refusing to sit down. He met Julian’s gaze head-on. “He told you what he wants, didn’t he?”

Julian swallowed, hard. In a pained voice, he whispered, “He wants Mom to hire him an attorney to get him out of jail.”

Luke let out a bark of laugher. “The asshole is in jail for murder. I remember that, right before I left for deployment last year. I remember his name being plastered over every news station. I remember Brady—” He cut off, planting his hands on his hips as he drew in a deep breath. Calm, he needed to remain calm, even though he wanted nothing more than to kill the bastard for trying to exhort anything out of Anna. “Point is,” he said, voice tightly leashed, “he’s in jail. He has no rights, Jules. He can’t actually demand anything.”

Anna’s hand went to her throat, her feminine fingers brushing the underside of her jaw. “Why now?” Her eyes squeezed shut. “The interview today. Someone must have told him about the interview with Claudia.”

“Blondie,” Luke said, “did you hear what I said? He can’t demand anything from you. There’s no way any of that would fly in the court of law.”

“He promised to contact the media if we don’t.”

Luke’s eyes flew to Julian. “Explain, kid.” He gentled his tone. “What are you talking about?”

“If Mom doesn’t get him an attorney, he said that he’d contact the news and tell them that he’s my dad. He said that everyone would know—TV people wouldn’t want to work with Mom anymore, and everyone at school would find out that I’m a . . .” Another swallow, this one accompanied by his eyes slamming shut. “Everyone would find out that I’m the son of a murderer.”

“Fuck him.”

Julian’s eyes cranked open at Luke’s words. “What?”

“You heard me, Jules. Fuck. Him. Will he say something? Who the hell knows? But will it affect you?” He moved forward, his limp more pronounced than it had been in weeks. “You know who my dad was?”

The kid shook his head, not that Luke expected otherwise.

“My dad was a member of the Dixie Mafia.” Luke pushed at the memories, recalling his mother crying the minute his dad had decided he’d prefer to save his own life than protect theirs. He’d left and never once looked back. “He killed, Jules. He stole. He ran white-collar operations like he was born to it. And then when he’d pissed off the wrong guy, he came under fire. You know what he did?”

But it wasn’t Julian who answered but Anna. She stepped forward, her shoulders straight, her blue eyes glued to his face. “He left,” she said, and then slipped her hand into his. “He left you and your mom and your sister.”

Luke swallowed at the love he saw in her eyes. She hadn’t yet said the words, and neither had he, but he knew that she felt the same way he did. In a hoarse voice, he muttered, “He did. He left, and for all I know, he was killed on his way out of Louisiana.” He looked to Jules. “But I’m nothing like him, kid. I’ve spent my life serving my country, protecting my family. And there are people, not as many anymore, who remember what my dad did for a living. If they judge me for his actions, that’s on them. If Hollywood, or the kids at your school, judge you or your mother for crimes that y’all didn’t commit . . .”

“Fuck them.”

Anna didn’t even correct her son, for once. Instead she whispered the words, too. Her gaze latched onto her son. “I love you, Jules. Stay with Luke, all right? I need to call the attorney, just in case. I want to make sure we have everything covered.”

“It’s midnight,” Julian started.

“This is what I pay him for.” Anna tugged at Julian’s short sleeve, and he dutifully dipped his head so she could kiss his forehead. “Stay with Luke.”

She squeezed Luke’s hand on the way out, blowing him a kiss as she hurried from the room.

For a moment, neither he nor Julian said anything.

And then: “I love your mom, kid.”

Julian shuffled, then grinned. “I know.”

Luke nodded. “But I know you’re not telling her everything.”

This time, the kid grimaced.

“How did Mardeaux know about any of this? The interview? Your mom and me? Sassy? They don’t get TV in jail, Jules. Which means he was given that information through another source. You know who told him.” Luke lowered his voice, his gut telling him he knew exactly who the snake was. “It’s the same person who gave Mardeaux your cell phone number.”

“It is.”

Yeah, he thought so. Luke drew in a deep breath through his nose. “Which house is his?”

“The red one, the one to our right.”

He looked at the face he hoped would one day be as familiar to him as his own. “Stay here with your mom, Jules.”

“Luke—”

“Stay with your mom.”

He had a goddamn vet to take care of.