Sultry, curvy Lily Melancon is going through a rough patch. Like, glass shards on top of sandpaper rough. She managed to get out of an abusive relationship only to have her ex kidnap their 4-year-old son just days before the custody hearing. Lily has become so difficult to be around that her best friend, Alexa, has finally given up hope and abandoned her in Shorty’s Pub. Gerrit Rousseau is an oasis of calm in a stormy world, downplaying his smoldering good looks as he tends bar and keeps his head down. His emotions are not easily stirred, but the brazen, tattooed Lily is lighting a fire. There’s something about her, something beyond her looks, that gets his blood pumping to all the right places. Sexual fireworks are inevitable with these two, especially during Mardi Gras—but things in New Orleans are never as simple as they seem. When a man turns up dead and Lily admits to Gerrit that she was directly involved, all hell breaks loose in the Crescent City. Gerrit is compelled to get to the bottom of the twin mysteries of the death and the missing child, but first he must figure out where the mysterious Dani Weeks and her son Riley fit in.