She said quietly, “All right, Mr. Boudreaux. You have a deal.”

She stood and held out her hand. I rose, crossed to her, and took it. Staring down into her beautiful brown eyes, I said, “How many times do I have to tell you to call me Jackson.”

Holding my hand and gazing up at me, she sighed. “I suppose if I’m going to be your wife, I ought to have a nickname for you. Does anyone call you Jax?”

Oh God, she moaned. God, yes. Please—Jax—

With a gargantuan effort of will, I pushed aside the memory of the intensely sexual dream I’d had about her after the first time we met.

“No,” I said, my voice rough. “No one calls me Jax. No one but you.”

When her lips curved up at the corners, I felt like I’d been living my life up to then at the bottom of a dark well filled with trash and slimy water, and someone had just lifted the lid and lowered me a ladder.

FRENCH QUARTER BEIGNETS

Makes about 3 dozen

1½ cups warm water

½ cup white sugar

1 envelope active dry yeast

2 eggs

1¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup evaporated milk

7 cups all-purpose flour

¼ cup shortening

1 quart vegetable oil

3 cups confectioners’ sugar

Preparation

Mix water, sugar, and yeast in large bowl and let sit for 10 minutes.

In another bowl, beat the eggs, salt, and evaporated milk together. Stir egg mixture into yeast mixture.

Add 3 cups of the flour to the egg/yeast mixture. Stir to combine.

Add the shortening and mix. Continue to stir while slowly adding the remaining flour until all ingredients are well combined.

Place dough on lightly floured surface and knead until smooth.

Cover dough with plastic wrap or towel. Let rise at room temperature for 2–3 hours.

Preheat oil in a deep fryer to 350 degrees.

Roll the dough out to ¼² thickness and cut into 2² squares. Deep fry in batches, flipping constantly, until golden. (If beignets don’t pop up, oil isn’t hot enough.)

Drain on paper towels.

Shake confectioners’ sugar onto hot beignets. Serve warm.

NINETEEN

BIANCA

I left the same way I arrived: in a cab, by myself, fraught with anxiety.

If my mother knew what I’d just agreed to, she’d slap me silly.

She knew I’d gotten the twenty thousand from Jackson for the catering event, but admitting I’d be getting a million for marrying myself off to him so I could try to save her life was another situation altogether.

Knowing there would be a nondisclosure in our contract was actually a relief. It meant I had a legal obligation to keep my mouth shut about my real reason for marrying the Beast.

Now I just had to figure out what fake reason I was going to try to sell.

“He’s so charming I couldn’t help but fall in love with him, Mama!” I muttered sarcastically to myself. The cabbie shot me a strange look in the rearview mirror, but I had more important things to worry about than his opinion. Before I left, Jackson told me that we had to be married and living together by his birthday, which was in just over two weeks.

Two weeks. I had to think fast.

“Unplanned pregnancy?” I mused, garnering another stare from the cabbie. I thought about it a moment, then shook my head. “Not unless you want to pretend you’ve been sleeping with a man everyone thinks you hate and then fake a miscarriage in a few months.” I sighed, watching sunlight glitter off the lake as we sped by. “Temporary insanity? Hmm. Probably the most reasonable explanation, other than suffering a recent head injury. Lord, this is bad. How am I gonna get anyone to believe I married him for love when all we do is fight?”

The cabbie, a young black man wearing a New Orleans Saints cap backward, said, “Slap, slap, kiss.”

Startled, I looked at him. “Excuse me?”

He grinned, exposing an impressive set of gleaming white teeth. “It’s a popular film and TV trope where the writers put two characters who can’t stand each other in close quarters and let them verbally spar, until one of them suddenly kisses the other, and they both realize they’ve had mad sexual chemistry all along and the fighting was just a cover for it.”

I stared at him with my mouth open.

He shrugged. “Just brainstorming with you. I’m a writer. Or trying to be. I spend lots of time studying this trope stuff. It’s actually how stories are told. Even Shakespeare is filled with tropes.”

I said drily, “You don’t say.”

“Oh yeah,” he replied vigorously, warming to the subject. “For instance, Much Ado About Nothing? That play is stuffed so full of tropes you could choke on them! But the bottom line is that two of the main characters, Beatrice and Benedick, have this history of seriously hating on each other, but everyone else can see they’re perfectly matched. I mean, the opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s indifference. They wouldn’t fight so much if they didn’t care so much, right?”

I said, “It sounds like a really dysfunctional relationship, if you ask me.”

The cabbie’s grin grew wider. “Yeah, but all the best ones are. It’s not true love if you don’t want to kick his teeth in every once in a while.”

According to that definition, Jackson and I were a match made in heaven.

I was silent for the rest of the ride home, grateful for the time to think. When I got home, I changed into my work clothes and headed over to Mama’s to check in on her before I went to the restaurant.

And nearly had a stroke when I saw the motorcycle parked at the curb outside her house.

“Why that low-down, dirty dog!” I said, staring in outrage at Trace’s bike. Then I marched up the stairs and barged into the house.

Mama and Trace were sitting in the front parlor drinking tea, smiling and chatting, thick as thieves. They broke off when I came in.

“Well here she is now!” said Mama, setting her teacup on the table beside her chair, which had a huge bouquet of fresh flowers on it that Trace had obviously brought. “Your ears must’ve been burning, chère, we were just talking about you!”

I glared at Trace. “I don’t know about my ears, but my ass is certainly on fire!”

“Bianca!” Mama exclaimed, scandalized. She lifted a hand to her throat. “I did not raise you to speak like that! You apologize right this minute!”

“It’s all right, Mrs. Hardwick. It’s probably just the new influence in her life,” drawled Trace, rising from his chair. He smirked at me. “I hear that Jackson Boudreaux fella Bianca’s been spending time with has really earned his nickname.”

“One more word, Trace,” I said, “and I’m gonna get my daddy’s gun out of the garage and turn you from a rooster to a hen with one shot.”

“Now stop it, Bianca, I won’t have this kind of behavior in my home!”

Mama’s voice was loud, but wavered. When I looked at her, she appeared to be struggling for breath. She tried to rise from her chair but swayed unsteadily. I rushed over and helped her ease back down.

“What are you doing out of bed, Mama?” I said crossly, kneeling in front of her.

She was indignant at being treated like a baby. “I’m sick of being in bed, Bianca, and I’m feeling a little better today, so I got up and had breakfast. Then Trace called and asked if he could come by, and I was in the mood for a little visiting, so I said yes.”