Page 24 of New Orleans Rush

Revamp the whole damn place. He hated the notion of modernizing, but something had to give. He also planned to raise the stakes at next week’s poker game.

The Rolex would return to the pot, with Oliphant’s necklace hopefully joining the loot. If Ms. Terious showed up, he’d coax the gold from her fingers. He’d lure the stacked bills from Dazzling Delmar’s padded wallet. The crème de la crème was Horatio Heinzinger. That imposter couldn’t perform an illusion to save his life. He’d also inherited his father’s millions.

It would be a start, but not enough. Not if his acts didn’t bring in more business. “You made it look so easy. People loved you. There were lines out the door. Now I can barely usher people inside. You’d be ashamed of this place.”

He wasn’t living up to his father’s expectations. He wasn’t living a functioning life, period. For nine years, he’d dated a total of two women, both relationships ending over two years ago. Fixing up the deteriorating theater had taken priority. He’d become handy at basic plumbing and drywalling. Paying bills filled in his remaining hours. He’d watched as Axel had dated—carefree, living life no matter the cards he’d been dealt. Exactly what he wanted for his brothers, but a hint of bitterness often colored Huxley’s jokes when teasing him. Envy for what Huxley didn’t have: women, free time, fun.

Then Beatrice Baker had given him a pink pony and a smile, offering a glimpse of what he’d been missing. All he wanted to do now was test if she truly tasted like watermelon.

You’d be ashamed of this place. Bea had crept up to the theater wings and tucked herself into the curtain, scanning for the interloper invading her makeshift home. Instead of an interloper, she’d found Huxley, by himself, desolate voice adrift in the auditorium, and her heart splintered.

He must have been sitting there when texting her, so close, yet so far. He seemed to be talking to his late father now, sharing his troubles. She wasn’t sure how much the Marvelous Marlow Boys were struggling financially, but Huxley’s lament about not having time for fun, his blatant surliness, and his confessions at lunch and now, all pointed to an uphill battle.

It wasn’t her business. She’d only known him three days, yet she couldn’t paint her self-portrait without pieces of his profile filling in her gaps. She’d thought about him on and off all evening, returning to the warmth of his hand on her back, how he’d indulged her whims in the shops, his occasional smiles. He didn’t offer those smiles freely, each twitch of his lips a gift earned. It made her want to be sillier, goofier. Crazy. Anything to loosen up his stiff cheeks.

She also couldn’t imagine losing her father. Leaving Franklyn Baker to face his threats had been a first for her. In the past, she’d allowed him to apologize, accepting him for who he was. She would help scrounge for cash and lie for him. Because Franklyn Baker wasn’t all bad. Growing up, he’d thrown her the best birthday parties. Her classmates rarely showed, often leaving just the two of them, too much pizza, buckets of chocolate ice cream, and colored markers. He’d let her draw kingdoms on their walls. He’d get drunk and fall asleep and would wake up with a colorful mustache.

She’d always have those memories of him, but gambling was a sickness, one she didn’t want infecting her life. Not when it bred loan sharks who wanted to cleave her fingers. Leaving Franklyn Baker behind had been necessary, but dealing with his death would be harder.

Huxley’s obvious despair was partly linked to his father. She couldn’t help with that, but the theater problem could be solved. Huxley had listened to her music suggestion. The change hadn’t been implemented or proven, but she could divine more ways to fill the seats. For now, he deserved his solitude.

She peeked around the curtain, stealing a glimpse of him before she left, and her belly zigzagged at the sight of his handsome face. She told herself to turn. She tried to walk away.

Then Huxley Marlow of the Marvelous Marlow Boys said, “I met a girl.”

Understatement of the millennium. He hadn’t just met a girl. He’d met a fascinating woman who’d reminded him all clouds had silver linings. She’d been ridiculous today, making voices for dolls, tap dancing on the street. Each goofy display had had him drawing closer to her like a flower seeking the sun. He’d wanted his hand on her back or touching any place he could reach. He’d ached to put those lacy thigh-highs on her just so he could roll them down.

He’d just wanted to fucking live for once in his life and take a chance on kissing a beautiful girl, even if it complicated things.

“You’d love her,” he went on, but he chuckled, imagining his father’s outrage over their vandalized Mustang. “Actually, scratch that. You’d hate her. She destroyed your car. But she’s one of a kind.”

If he could redo today’s goodbye, he’d have circled his arm around Beatrice’s waist and drawn her close. He’d have dragged his nose up her neck and ear. He’d have told her he was ready for her brand of fun. That, in a few short days, she’d hijacked his life in the most stupendous way. He grinned, picturing her using that word.

Sadly, time travel wasn’t a trick he could perform.

“She makes me excited about magic again, about revamping the theater. The pressure sucks, and I’m drowning most days, but this watermelon girl manages to make me laugh. And I think I forgot how to do that—just laugh. Which is pretty damn sad.”

Until Beatrice Baker had sat on a barstool in bright pink pants and had called him a colon rectum, a fiery spark in her stormy eyes.

Bea pressed her cheek to the wall and flattened her palm on the surface. Her breaths brushed the velvet curtain, each one warming as Huxley spoke. She’d had boyfriends before, long term and short. She’d told a couple that she’d loved them, but she’d never felt this kind of ethereal lightness, like at any moment her feet would lift from the floor and she’d float away.

“I want to make you laugh,” she whispered, too quiet for him to hear. “I want to be your watermelon girl.”

She also wanted to show herself, walk on stage, and tell him he’d reinvigorated her art, too. That pieces of him were filling her self-portrait and she didn’t know why. But she wasn’t supposed to be crashing in his theater. She was also invading his privacy—the larger offense in her mind. And she had keyed his father’s car? Not Huxley’s car. His late father’s car.

Having defaced his Mustang was bad enough, but ruining something that sentimental was unforgivable. Yet he hadn’t held it against her. This solid, good man had let it slide.

If she thought she owed Huxley for damages before, she basically owed him a kidney now. And his privacy. She tried to leave again, tried to turn away and slip into the darkness, but he was talking about her. He’d called her one of a kind. She flattened her back against the wall and slid down its length, tucking her knees to her chest.

Huxley pictured his father sitting beside him, the two men shoulder-to-shoulder, sharing their hearts. He wondered how Max Marlow had wound up marrying Nadya, if his mother had been different back then. If she’d cared about things other than herself. She certainly didn’t now.

She’d yet to quit her conwoman activities. She may have inherited a sizeable chunk of change from Max Marlow’s life insurance, along with a letter asking her to support the theater, but she’d refused to help repair the building. She hated their block of real estate as much as she’d hated the man she’d married. Maybe his father had worked too much. Maybe they’d married too young. Either way, her numerous affairs had been far from secret, and she’d sooner hug one of her sons than donate a dime to the theater.

Then there was Beatrice, a woman who didn’t seem to have a selfish bone in her body. She didn’t even hold a grudge against her betraying father, because she smiled. She’d been swindled out of her savings, had been forced to start over from scratch…yet she still smiled.

What would it be like to wake up to her brightness every morning? To have that unbridled joy in his life. To slip his fingers through her red hair whenever he wanted, claim her lips in a bruising kiss. Every muscle in his body flexed at the fantasy.

“How do I do it all?” he asked the father who’d gotten ripped from his life too soon. “How do I focus on fixing the theater and find time to have a life? Because honestly, if you’d met her, you’d understand. She’s beautiful and sexy and fun, and she has this way about her that makes everyone around her smile. I’m different around her.” When he wasn’t fighting his interest in her, at least.