Getting Off Easy: Boys of the Big Easy Read online

  Getting Off Easy

  Boys of the Big Easy

  Erin Nicholas

  Copyright © 2019 by Erin Nicholas

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN: 978-0-9998907-7-6

  Editor: Lindsey Faber

  Cover design: Angela Waters

  Cover photography: Wander Aguiar

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  About Erin

  More from Erin NIcholas

  1

  “I don’t suppose you know anything about babies,” James said as Harper Broussard swung her door open.

  He watched her gaze go from his to the white blanket in his arms. Her eyes widened. “A baby what?” she asked, her tone and expression wary as she leaned back.

  Holy shit, he almost laughed.

  He had not expected that.

  From the moment his boot had hit the landing at the top of the steps, his night had been completely off kilter. The second his eyes had landed on the pale blue laundry basket outside his apartment door, he’d known that his plan to pick up where he and Harper had left off two nights ago was out the window. But he’d been expecting a basketful of kittens. He really had. Which had immediately led to him thinking that he’d be able to cross the landing to Harper’s door to ask for help with yet another life that needed intervention. This was hardly their first rodeo.

  They’d probably curl up on her super-comfy couch and watch reruns of NCIS: New Orleans—her addiction—while they bottle-fed a lapful of kittens. He’d watch her tuck her hair behind her ear and lick her lips, and every time she shifted on the cushions, he’d see her shirt pull up to expose that strip of skin on her side he was obsessed with.

  But when he’d looked down into the basket and saw the face of a human, he’d felt his world tip and a very deep, sincere sense of oh fucking hell go through him.

  In the past, the tree, the lizard, the drunk girl, and the dog had all been reasons to talk to and interact with the out-of-his-league woman who lived across the landing from him. He’d sauntered over, knocked, flashed her a grin, and asked for her help each time, slowly wearing her down with his charm and his see-I’m-a-good-guy-that-people-trust-with-other-living-things shtick.

  Tonight he’d sprinted to her door and pounded on it like his ass was on fire.

  Her soft, French-accented voice always worked to make him feel calmer—and yeah, horny. At the moment, his heart was thudding so hard he hadn’t believed either of those emotions could possibly make it through the ones swirling in his system. But they did.

  He actually felt the corner of his mouth curl just slightly. “A baby boy.”

  Her eyes flew to his. “How did you get this baby?”

  Okay, that was a fair question. He didn’t think for a second she was insinuating he’d stolen the kid. He was certain she knew fire stations were safe havens—specified places where people could leave infants without question or penalty—which begged the question: why hadn’t this person left this baby at the fire station?

  “He was in that.” James leaned to the side so she could see the basket still sitting outside his door. “I just got home and found him.”

  Her eyes, amazingly, got even rounder. “Oh my God!” She reached out, grabbed James’s arm and pulled him into her apartment.

  James couldn’t help but compare that reaction to the first time he’d ever knocked on her door and asked for her help with something.

  Six months ago

  “I don’t suppose you know anything about ficus-ing?”

  James Reynaud watched his across-the-hall neighbor raise a single eyebrow. God, she’d even come to the door with her hair up in a messy bun and the red-framed glasses perched on her nose. He felt his cock stir. He didn’t go for staying-in-reading-in-my-favorite-chair-with-a-cup-of-tea types. But his body wasn’t listening. Every time he saw Harper Broussard—Professor Harper Broussard—across the outdoor landing that separated their front doors on the third floor of their building, he thought damn.

  She was a freaking linguistics professor at Loyola, for fuck’s sake. He wasn’t even entirely sure what linguistics was. She had the librarian thing going strong though. She was a little older than him. Definitely classier and smarter than him. And entirely unimpressed by him. In spite of the fact he’d left his work boots out by his door so she’d note he was a firefighter. In spite of the fact that he’d fixed stuff in her apartment with his shirt off. Twice. In spite of the fact that he’d left his window open so she’d hear him practicing on the piano. He was good, dammit. Really good. But none of that had seemed to do much for her.

  Yet here he was, asking her about trees.

  He might have been running out of ideas to get the professor to notice him.

  And he never had trouble getting women to notice him.

  So why did he care if she noticed him? He didn’t go for the bookworm type anyway.

  It was a challenge, pure and simple. Probably. That had to be it.

  “Pardon me?” Harper asked.

  “Ficus-ing. Taking care of ficus trees.” He leaned to the side so she could see the four-foot-tall potted tree behind him. “I’ve become a father to a tree. And I don’t know much about them. I don’t suppose you do?”

  She tipped her head, took in the tree, then looked back up at him. She had to look up about four inches. “I do, actually.”

  He grinned. “Awesome.”

  “Did you think that ficus-ing sounded like innuendo and would come off as flirtatious?” she asked.

  James felt his grin dim. “Uh… yeah. Maybe a little.”

  “It didn’t.”

  Got it. “Duly noted.”

  “Ficusing isn’t a word, of course,” she went on. “And it doesn’t really sound anything like fooling—as in fooling around—or fucking.”

  He blinked at her. Had the seemingly uptight professor just said the word fucking?

  “Just because the words start with the same letter, doesn’t mean that inserting ficus into that sentence makes it seductive.”

  James sighed. “Okay. Thanks for… that.”

  She just looked at him.

  He had no idea why he was going to pursue this, but he said, “Will you help me with it?”

  “Will I help you take care of a ficus tree?” she clarified.

  “Yeah.”

  “Sure. Let me know when you get one.”

  He blinked at her, then looked over his shoulder. “That’s not a ficus?”

  “That is an olive tree,” she told him. “An Arbequina olive tree, to be precise.”

  She had this lilting voice, with a soft French accent around the edges, that made his gut tighten. His grandmother was a French immigrant and spoke her native language ninety percent of the time. He supposed he associated that accent with love and comfort and exasperated affection. And that was as far as he was going to go into why he thought this woman and her accent turned him on, thank you very much, Dr. Freud.

  “I like olives.”

  She nodded. “Probably a good thing.”

  “I don’t suppose you know anything about taking care of an Albuquerque olive tree?”

  “No.”

  “Is that different from taking care o
f a ficus?”

  “I don’t know what an Albuquerque olive tree even is,” she said.

  He looked at the tree again then back to her.

  She just watched him, patiently-ish. Wow, this woman didn’t give an inch. “What’s it called again?” he asked.

  “An Arbequina olive tree.”

  “Arbequina. I was close.”

  “Because there was an A and a Q in both words?” she asked.

  “And an R and an E,” he said. Okay, he was assuming about the E, but he was ninety percent sure about the R.

  Yeah, that unimpressed look was firmly in place. “Words and names matter,” she said. “It’s disrespectful to not make every attempt to get them right when speaking to or of a person, place, or thing.”

  James blew out a little breath. She was a ballbuster. Definitely not his type. He was used to women who were inclined to say or think, “Oh, you’re a cute, charming firefighter who’s also a musician? Here are my panties.” Not women who were inclined to lecture him about being disrespectful in how he referred to trees.

  Still, he said, “I didn’t mean anything disrespectful by it.”

  “I can’t take seriously your desire to take care of this tree if you can’t even take seriously what kind of tree it is.”

  He was half expecting her to give him detention. And not the naughty-professor-and-bad-boy-student type of detention that, with any other woman, he would have teasingly suggested.

  He found himself straightening. “Right. Okay, point taken. Do you know anything about taking care of an Arbequina olive tree?”

  “I assume there is sun and water involved,” she said. “I also assume that there is information all over the internet about it.”

  And, of course, the professor was going to give him homework rather than answers. “Want me to write a three-page paper about it?” he quipped before he thought about the fact that this woman actually kind of intimidated him.

  She took a step back and put her hand on the door, clearly indicating she was about to close it. “Yes. And as soon as you turn it in, I will use it to help care for the tree while you’re at work.” Then she shut her door. More or less in his face.

  But she’d offered to help. While acknowledging that she’d noticed his work schedule. A twenty-four-hours-on, forty-eight-hours-off firefighter’s schedule was odd to most people, but James loved it. It gave him time to indulge in his love for jazz music and take care of the plethora of activities, errands, and responsibilities that filled up his life. But, yeah, if he was going to keep something alive while also being gone for twenty-four hours straight and having an erratic schedule during the forty-eight hours he wasn’t at the station, he might need some help. It was just a tree but… he wanted to take care of it. It had been Amos’s tree, and Amos had given it to James to look after.

  It had been in Amos’s room at the nursing home as long as James had been visiting him. The older man had played with the jazz band James joined on his nights off. Amos had played trombone for eighty of his ninety-two years. He’d been amazing. When he’d gone through surgery and then chemo for pancreatic cancer and had been too weak to play with them all night, he’d still come to the club, do a couple of numbers, and then sit at one of the front tables and listen while nursing a gin and tonic. When he’d gotten sick again and finally had to go to the nursing home, James had visited twice a week. And that tree had always been there.

  Amos’s funeral had been yesterday.

  This morning, Amos’s favorite nurse had brought over the trombone and the tree with a note that just said, “Give these to James. He’ll take care of them.” A trombone didn’t need special care. It was in a place of honor in James’s living room, but it could be left there for days without trouble. But a tree needed a little more effort.

  He didn’t know why he’d thought of asking Harper first thing. Maybe because she gave off an air of knowing everything. A theory that definitely had not been disproved by her knowing the tree was an Albeq—no… James thought and came up with Arbequina after just a second—an Arbequina olive tree and not a ficus.

  He smiled. He’d gone over because it had been a reason to talk to her. Not a fantastic reason, but he was out of his depth with her. He didn’t have to come up with reasons to talk to women. They came to talk to him. Every single night at the jazz club, but also at Trahan’s Tavern, the bar and restaurant up the street from the station where some of his buddies hung out. He’d gotten to know the Trahan brothers, who owned the place, and it was a great stop after a long shift for food and drink. And yeah, women.

  Hell, the only thing easier than meeting women in New Orleans was getting drunk in New Orleans. Especially for a local guy who was a firefighter and a musician. He didn’t do any of that to seduce women. He loved it for his own sake. But the willingness with which women took their clothes off for him was absolutely a perk.

  He headed back inside his apartment, hoisting the tree with him. He had a paper to write.

  For the buttoned-up professor across the hall who was in no hurry to take anything off. Even those I-don’t-give-extra-credit glasses of hers.

  Five months ago

  “I don’t suppose you know anything about lizards?”

  Harper looked at the tank James held up.

  “Do you know what kind of lizard that is?” she asked.

  James noted she didn’t grimace looking at the animal. He hadn’t known what to expect and had to admit he’d been curious about her reaction to it.

  He had been expecting her to ask that, though, so he’d made sure he had the answer. “It’s a bearded dragon.”

  She crossed her arms but gave him a look that was a little skeptical but also a little intrigued. “Why do you have a bearded dragon?”

  “It was sitting in front of my door.”

  Her eyes widened slightly at that.

  “In this tank,” he added.

  “So someone brought it to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like the tree.”

  “Yes.”

  “With a note?”

  He’d told her all about Amos in bits and pieces over the past month. “Yes. It said, ‘I know you’ll take care of Henry.’”

  “The dragon’s name is Henry?” she asked.

  “Apparently.” He held up one hand as if to stop what she was going to say next. “And I know that you have a thing about names and words. The kids named him, so I don’t feel like I can change it even if there is something possibly more meaningful out there.”

  “The kids?”

  “Yes.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Were the kids the ones who brought him over?”

  “Well, I’m guessing it was Simon.”

  “Who’s Simon?”

  “One of the little boys in the third-grade class I spoke to the other day,” he said.

  He liked that she seemed a little interested in this and planned to milk it for all he could. He was great with kids, and people trusted him to take care of things, and he’d never miss a chance to remind her that he was a firefighter. “I do classroom talks about fire safety,” he said. “Simon is a kid I met last year. He thinks I’m amazing.”

  She pursed her lips almost as if she were fighting a smile. “I see.”

  “When I was there a couple of days ago, he was telling me that their regular teacher is out for the rest of the year having a baby and the substitute hates Henry and wants to get rid of him. She’s been asking the other teachers if they’ll take him and even told the students that one of them could have him. No one wants him, and Simon’s mom and dad won’t let him keep Henry. He then asked me if I like bearded dragons.”

  “And you said yes.”

  “I said I had never met a bearded dragon that I didn’t like. Which is true.”

  “You’ve met other bearded dragons?”

  “No.” He gave her a grin.

  “So Simon got it into his head that you would take Henry, and the teacher is desperate enough to be rid
of him that she went along with it, and somehow someone talked Simon’s mom and dad into bringing him over here to you?”

  “They actually brought him down to the station. But we were out on a call, and our smart-ass dispatcher said there was no way in hell she was letting Henry hang out with her, so she gave them my address and said it was fine to drop him off here.”

  Harper pressed her lips together and shook her head slowly. “Wow.”

  “So… can you take care of Henry when I work?”

  “What are Henry’s other options?” Harper’s eyes were back on the tank now.

  “Hunger, neglect, probably years of therapy.”

  She sighed. “Can’t let that happen.”

  James grinned, feeling like he’d just gotten an A from the toughest professor on campus. “I’ll bring him over on my workdays.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “You go into the station at the crack of dawn,” she said.

  “You’ve noticed.”

  “You’re noisy.”

  Uh-huh. She’d noticed. “I gotta go protect the people of our great city.”

  She gave a little eye roll. “Just get me a key to your place, and I’ll go over and check on Henry on my schedule.”

  Give her a key to his place, huh? Was Professor Broussard the type to go through his drawers? He’d like to think so. “Okay,” he said. “Will you know what to do once you’re in my bedroom?”

  Ah, there was that you’re-not-nearly-as-charming-as-you-think-you-are look she was so good at. And that made her look so fucking hot for some reason. “I assume that was supposed to be flirtatious, too? And then I was supposed to say something about you having a dragon in your bedroom to which you would quip, ‘already do’?”

  He flat out laughed at that. She called him on his shit, and he liked it. He would not have expected that. The liking-it part. He’d expected the other from the very first time she’d done it. “Yeah, probably something like that.”