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And this time it wasn’t his manhood that stirred.
It was something closer to his heart.
Must be gas from the pizza.
Had to be. Except he hadn’t had any yet.
Because Lucas Finlay was a man who didn’t want to feel little plinks near his ticker. Love or anything near it wasn’t something he wanted cluttering up the clear horizon in his life.
“Let’s go home, Charlotte.”
The little girl looked at him. “It’s not your home, Uncle Wucas.”
Point taken.
* * *
ADDY PLACED the freesia between the Stargazer lilies and squinted. Too much? Or just right?
“About to deliver the bouquets for the Richard wedding. Are there any deliveries you need made downtown? I’m headed that way,” Shelia Guillory asked as she hefted the long box containing the bridal bouquet and walked toward the back door.
“Nope. Slow day for flowers.”
“About time. We’ve been busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest,” her assistant and sometimes delivery person said with a chuff of relief. “Valentine’s Day nearly did me in.”
“Busy is good.” Addy murmured her standard reply.
“Says the owner,” Shelia said using her droll voice. It was one Addy was well acquainted with because Shelia lived for sarcasm, biting irony and fuzzy kittens. The latter she wasn’t droll about, merely passionate.
“You like eating?”
Shelia indicated her lush figure. “What do you think?”
The topic Shelia had brought up weeks ago about her buying into the business sat fat between them, but Shelia had sworn she wouldn’t leave if Addy didn’t accept her offer. Addy had told her she’d think about it and get back to her later...but she knew she didn’t want to sell part of the shop to Shelia. Fleur de Lis floral was her life, something she’d worked hard to buy from her aunt Flora after she’d retired. Addy had opened the business to a new market with her creative designs and couldn’t imagine letting even a small part of Fleur de Lis go. Luckily, Shelia hadn’t pushed nor said anything more about it.
Addy smiled. “I love the way you look, Shelia. Wish I had some of those dangerous curves. I’m a straight drive.”
“Eh, you do all right. I see the way Tom looks at you when he comes in for deliveries. If there were ranch dressing lying around, he’d dip you in it before he devoured you.”
“Wait, the UPS guy? Ranch dressing?”
“Yeah, Tom. And everything is good dipped in ranch dressing.”
“That’s trite, huh?”
“The dressing or Tom?”
“The cute UPS guy.”
Shelia raised eyebrows she’d penciled to perfection. “He looks pretty damn good in those shorts if you ask me. But I’m too old for him.”
“Bah.” Addy tilted her head. “His knees are nice, now that you mention it.”
Shelia’s robust laugh filled the shop as she scooped up the other boxes for the chapel. “You know what they say about a man with sexy knees, don’t you?”
Addy made a face, bracing herself for the sexual innuendo sure to follow.
“Wears a lot of shorts.”
Addy rolled her eyes and focused on the arrangement.
“I’m outta here. You got that last delivery?”
“Yes, and I can’t wait until Herbert is back. I hate knocking on strangers’ doors.”
“I know you do, baby. You going to the meeting tonight? I’ll be there.” Shelia paused, her dark eyes softening. Shelia wore a caftanlike shirt and jean stretch pants accessorized with three gold chains around her broad neck. Shelia called her look “ghetto funk” and Addy couldn’t imagine her friend and employee without a little bling. But as loud, sarcastic and bossy as Shelia was, Addy knew her to be the kindest of women, as evidenced by the love for the kittens she rescued and helped place in good homes for the past few years.
But Addy wasn’t the type to rescue things. Never felt compelled to pull someone from the fire...most of the time she tended her own fire, struggling to keep the flames of fear from consuming her. She wasn’t selfish, merely protective and cautious. So why had she agreed to help Lucas?
She knew. Something in his tone, his manner, his damned dented pride pulled her toward him rather than away. And there was that weird attraction thing between them.
“Actually I’m having company tonight.” Addy grinned, enjoying stringing her friend along.
Shelia’s thinly drawn eyebrows settled into a straight line as she eyeballed her. “Oh?”
“Yes, a big hunk of a man.”
“You watching 300 again?”
Addy laughed. “No, this one is real.”
“Really?”
Addy swept the stem trimmings into the plastic-lined garbage bin. “No. Well, not really. You know my neighbors?”
“The ones with that cute tabby that has white paws?”
“Yeah, and a proliferation of kids, lawn ornaments and sticky fingers. Ben deployed to Afghanistan but was injured. Courtney went to him in Virginia—I’m assuming Walter Reed—and left the kids in the care of Ben’s brother. Yesterday, the middle kid destroyed my new greenhouse. So—”
“The thing you just had built?” Shelia’s eyebrows made an even tighter line of outrage. Leave it to Shelia to be pissed off for her.
“Yeah, they’re coming over on Saturday to repair it, but tonight I’m sitting down with the hunky uncle to go over the kids’ schedule and see if Flora and I can’t help him out a little.”
“Really? Baby, I like the way you say hunky uncle, and it’s nice you’re helping your neighbor. Just tread careful.” Shelia’s wide, always glossed lips curving into a smile. She wasn’t one to push Addy to date, like some of her other friends, because she knew what it was like to have trust twisted and stomped upon. Shelia had married an abusive man, a man who had beaten her so severely she’d miscarried their child and had been forced to undergo an emergency hysterectomy. After years of enduring the abuse, she left him, only to have him stalk her and torture her for many more years. The abuse and terror had ended when Alfred ran his car into a tree. A bottle of Crown Royal and a wet New Orleans street saved Shelia from the gun the man had in his glove box...the same gun he’d already fired at her once before.
So, no, Addy’s assistant didn’t trust easily.
But she hadn’t given up on Addy finding love. She pushed gently, but she pushed. Just like Aunt Flora. And Addy’s mother. And her sisters. And...well, Addy could go on and on with the people who wanted to see her with a man and a baby on her hip.
But Addy wouldn’t be moved until she was ready. She’d learned long ago to listen to her instincts and step carefully where men were concerned. It took her a long time before she trusted. Which was why she couldn’t figure out why there was a sort of auto-trust when it came to Lucas.
“He’s hunky, but it’s not a date.”
“You’ve got weekend plans.”
“We’re rebuilding a greenhouse...with three kids.”
“Who knows what can come of some innocent hammering, nailing, screwing...uh-huh.” Shelia bobbed her head and performed the wave...which was hard to do holding a floral box.
“Go.”
Shelia’s laughter trailed behind her as she left. Addy locked the door behind her friend. Shelia had vacuumed the indoor-outdoor carpet and then locked the front door, but Addy scooted out of her back workstation and double-checked.
Like she did every day.
Then she located her purse, cell phone and pepper spray.
Like she did every day.
Fighting against fear wasn’t for the fainthearted. Addy’s nerves shredded every time she saw an unlocked window, a door left cracked or a shadow falling over her when she was alone.
Most people never thought about their personal safety, but ever since the day in November fifteen years ago, Addy had thought of little else.
Being stalked and attacked did that to a gal.
Of course, Addy knew she was likely safe in her corner of the world. Wednesday evenings in St. Denis Shopping Center in Uptown New Orleans was busy enough with shoppers, diners and looky-loos enjoying the early spring weather. No dark alleys or lonely stretches inviting violence. None of that comforted her. After all, danger lurked on the sunniest of days, in what seemed to be the safest of places.
Her safety routine complete, Addy’s mind turned to last night. Her thoughts had been haunted by Lucas and the feelings he stirred in her. Hungry, sweet thoughts claimed by the normal Addy, the woman who wanted to find love and peace with someone who completed her, who made her feel at home.
But the other Addy had pulled her mind from that hopeful thought to the letter she’d received from Angola State Penitentiary. From some random inmate named Jim McDade. Some decoy who likely owed Robbie Guidry a favor and most likely had no clue why he’d been asked to send the missive. Probably didn’t even care.
Inside the envelope was a drawing—well done—of a field of brown-eyed Susans. The cheerful yellow flowers with the brown center seemed to dance in the picture, their little faces turned toward the fading sun sinking against a streaked horizon. It had been folded carefully, a crisp tri-fold. Innocuous. Innocent.
But the image had caused Addy’s hand to shake so violently she’d dropped the paper to the floor.
Brown-eyed Susans.
A favorite flower for a brown-eyed girl.
Her father had sung that song to her when he strummed his guitar, winking at her, making her feel like the safest, most-loved girl in the world. Brown-eyed Addy. Daddy’s girl.
And Robbie Guidry, the twenty-five-year-old man who lived across the street from her family, three doors down on the left, had listened, smiling like the rest of their neighbors as he carefully absorbed everything about her life.
So the drawing wasn’t innocent.
It was a reminder.
An instrument of terror plied to take her to that sunny afternoon fifteen years ago—the day Addy learned what fear was, the day the darkness settled into her bones and refused to leave her. Before she went home she would drop off this latest drawing with Lieutenant Andre, who had worked her original case. The man kept a file of the “gifts” sent to her over the years, even though no physical evidence could tie the missives to Robbie Guidry. The nutso stalker wasn’t stupid and never, never allowed what he sent to be traced to him.
Picking up the bouquet of spring flowers, Addy scooped up her purse, her car keys in hand, her thumb firmly on the fob’s alarm, and turned out the lights. Her heartbeat sped up, but she was accustomed to that reaction. She inhaled, exhaled and became hypervigilant to the world around her as she pushed out the door that led to an open parking lot used by the employees of the shops. Open and in sight of a half dozen businesses. Safe. The rational part of her brain overrode the irrational.
Addy walked to her blue Volkswagen Bug, parked against the curb, noting her car needed a wash. Maybe she could get the kids next door to wash it. She could pay Michael and Chris fifteen or twenty bucks.
Three steps from her car, she froze.
Tucked beneath the windshield wiper was a single brown-eyed Susan.
The shattering of the glass vase made Addy jump and stumble backward. She hadn’t realized she’d dropped the flower arrangement. Instinctively she pressed the alarm on her fob, and the chirping wails bounced around the near-empty lot.
Breathing hard, Addy rifled through her purse for her cell phone. The purse-size canister of pepper spray was already in her hand.
The owner of the monogramming shop stuck her head out the rear door with a questioning look, but Addy ignored her and instead focused on the innocent flower sitting bright against the blue of her car. Another reminder from a man who hated her, a sharp left hook of a message meant to do exactly what it had done—scare her.
Addy sat on the curb, clutching her cell phone, not bothering to stop the car alarm. The world tilted, and she concentrated on taking deep breaths, rather than the short panicked ones sounding in her ears.
Breathe, Addy.
Think, Addy.
Robbie Guidry still sat behind bars, but Addy sat in a safe area. No one was an immediate threat. She stood, and looked around the parking lot.
Safe.
Who could have left the flower on her car? Who, either knowingly or unknowingly, could be aiding such a horrible man? She doubted she would get answers, but she would report it...not that it did much good. Without proof Robbie Guidry instigated the gifts sent her way, she had no leg to stand on in prosecuting him for harassment. It had been almost six months since she’d received anything from him. She’d hoped her lack of response had done its job.
But two things within twenty-four hours?
She shivered despite the sun on her shoulders and turned off her alarm. The woman at the monogram shop closed her door and Addy took out her phone to photograph the flower, sending it immediately to Andre’s email along with the date and time of the incident. She’d long since ceased bothering to call the NOPD with the threats—the responding officers made her feel stupid for wasting their time.
Addy tore the flower from beneath the wiper and tossed it onto the pavement where it would wither and be crushed beneath the wheels of the vehicles going in and out of the lot.
If only she could toss her fear the same way.
She looked at the cell phone she still clutched and, for some crazy reason, she wished she had Lucas Finlay’s phone number.
Chapter Four
LUCAS LEARNED the hard way that taking three kids to Home Depot was living hell on earth. As soon as they waltzed under the orange sign, Charlotte had to go to the bathroom. At first Lucas panicked. How was he supposed to take a little girl to a public restroom? Thankfully he spied something called a “family bathroom” and sent Chris in with her. Of course, Michael disappeared before he could be nabbed.
After a full ten-minute wait while Charlotte did her business, Lucas met Chris’s demand—a sports drink as payment for taking care of his sister’s “business” in a place where “any of the hotties from my school could see.” The kid drank three sips then asked Lucas to carry it. Michael remained MIA while Lucas juggled locating the right wood screws with pushing Charlotte in a race-car cart. Charlotte insisted he make engine noises like her father. Lucas found the whole thing embarrassing, but if it kept her from climbing out and playing on the lawn furniture display then he’d gladly rumble like a NASCAR engine.
He needed a drink...and it was only nine-thirty.
Not the ideal way to spend a Saturday morning, especially after Addy had canceled their Wednesday dinner, sending over Aunt Flora’s gumbo without a word on why she couldn’t meet. Flora had taken Chris to karate on Thursday, and outside of catching a glimpse of Addy wrapping her orchids in what appeared to be wet newspaper, he hadn’t seen her.
So much for finding a haven in the chaos. He’d been in survival mode for the past five days and now only wanted to get the damn greenhouse repaired and then get on with keeping the plates spinning, balancing on sticks he knew little about.
At the truck, Michael finally appeared with earbuds in, frown on his face. “Where have you been?” Lucas asked, hefting the lumber into the back.
