Beauty Shot (Hope Parish Novels Book 5) Read online

  Beauty Shot

  A Hope Parish Novella

  By Zoe Dawson

  Published by Blue Moon Creative, LLC

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright by Karen Alarie. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your preferred vendor and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Author Note

  I make every effort to research thoroughly all subject matter, but I’m not infallible. If you find anything in my novels that I have incorrect, please feel free to let me know.

  ISBN: 978-0-9909075-4-1

  Find Zoe Dawson on the web!

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  Cover Design by Zoe Dawson

  Acknowledgments

  I'd like to thank beta readers Sue Stewart and Leisha O’Connor. Thank you, also, to Faith Freewoman for her excellent advice and editing skills.

  Dedication

  To being true to yourself…always.

  Chapter One

  Deke

  Leaving home wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Sure, I’d be going on a new journey. I’d be preparing for my future. I’d be learning and growing, making new friends. But that also meant I was leaving behind old friends. Supportive people, like my family. People I worked with and hung out with. People who’d made up my whole freaking life until now.

  At times like this there is excitement. There is anticipation, but don’t let anyone tell you there isn’t also nostalgia, sentimentality and just plain sadness.

  There is also some fear.

  I was only eighteen, and I was normally a confident guy. I always knew what I wanted, when I wanted it, and had no problem going after it.

  But I wasn’t just heading somewhere new. I was heading somewhere big. From tiny Suttontowne, Louisiana to New York City, where my accent would sound funny and my ways would seem old-fashioned.

  And I would most likely be judged based on my looks. I wanted Columbia to be different. I wanted them to see me differently, look past my pretty-boy looks and see who I really was. But, as always, it was up to me.

  I would teach New York City a thing or two. Yeah, shoot, I would. The anticipation wasn’t just about getting to know a new place and conquering it. Columbia University had given me a full ride to study computer science, and would prepare me for what I’d always wanted to do. Game design.

  No, there was someone in New York I had a powerful interest in. Someone who had recently been in Suttontowne and knocked me ass over teakettle, stirred me beyond the word hunger and made me want to howl at the moon.

  Which was quite fitting, because she had a witch’s name and the charisma to go with it. Minerva Tattersall or, as everyone now called her around here, Minnie.

  When Verity was carrying Boone’s baby last year, scared and alone, Minnie had taken her under her wing. Verity had proven to be so talented, Minnie recently offered her a partnership and Verity accepted.

  Thinking about Minnie made my dick harder than stone, my lungs seize, and my heart pound. I felt the connection the moment we met. I know she felt it, too. It was obvious, but she’d held me off, kept me at arm’s length. I wanted to know what kind of barrier stood between us. I aimed to find that out, come hell or high water.

  Day was melting into night, and my going away party raged happily behind me. I stood on Braxton Outlaw’s deck staring out into the deepening gloom, thinking my thoughts. My momma often said I thought too much, and maybe she was right.

  I had been too smart for my britches, leastwise that’s what my momma said. I didn’t quite fit into any of the crowds at school, and I was okay with that. I couldn’t buy into some of the juvenile shit going on around me, and I guess my momma was right, maybe I was too smart for my britches.

  The high temperature and humidity of late summer in Louisiana prevailed, and the tail end of August was holding tight onto the heat.

  It had rained earlier, leaving everything dripping and glistening. The clouds had cleared a path for a melted bronze sunset that cast the swamp in silhouette. The air was fresh, but the mysterious undercurrent of the bayou lingered as always. My eyes drifted from the still water to the dense wildness that lay around me.

  I’d grown up at the edge of the Atchafalaya, and the swamp was an unforgiving place. Steamy and seductive and secretive. Death was commonplace here, a part of the cycle. Trees died, fell, decayed, became a part of the fertile ground, so more trees could grow from them. Mayflies were eaten by frogs, frogs by snakes, snakes by alligators. A death would find no sympathy here. It was a realm of predators.

  New York City wasn’t much different. It had its own cycle, and wasn’t any less dangerous than the swamp, but it wasn’t a natural order. In New York City there were human predators.

  “What are you doing hiding out here?” Booker said, coming up and standing next to me.

  “I’m not hiding, Book. Just…contemplating.”

  “Aside from Aubree, you are one of the smartest people I know, Deke. You’ll do fine.”

  I nodded. I had no doubt that I would.

  “It’s natural to feel sad and even a bit uneasy about leaving what you consider home. I’ve only been in New Orleans with Aubree for about a week. She’s busy with classes, and I’m trying to find my writing rhythm in the bustle of a city when I’m used to the silence of the bayou.”

  “I’ll find my footing once I get there, I have no doubts about that. You’re right about leaving home. I’m excited, but it’s hard, too. You’ll find your rhythm, too. Just a matter of time.”

  When he slapped me on the back, I noticed the wrapped gift in his hand. He followed my look and grinned. “This is for you. I have always found a great deal of wisdom in it. I think you will, too.”

  He held out the flat offering and I grabbed it, grinning back. I ripped at the brightly-colored paper I was sure Aubree had picked out and wrapped for me. I looked back inside and saw her standing at the sliding glass door, a winsome smile on her face. I acknowledged her with a nod and a smile and she nodded back. Her eyes touched on Booker and my heart ached over the way she looked at him. So much in just a look. It was as beautiful as the bayou.

  I hoped to make the same kind of connection with Minnie.

  I looked down at the book and then up at Booker. “What the hell?” I snorted. “This is a kid’s book.”

  “Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are isn’t just for kids. It’s chock full of wisdom about human nature and imagination. There are solid life lessons in there that you’re smart enough to figure out. Read it again from an adult perspective, and you’ll see what I mean.”

  I laughed and grabbed Booker around the neck. Leave it to him to force me to think. He was the most cerebral of the triplet Outlaw brothers, and more reasonable and laid back. Just as intense as Boone and Braxton, but tempered.

  I was two years their junior, but I remembered them from high school, and remembered how they hadn’t once let this town get
them down.

  I took a page out of the Outlaws’ book. New York City wasn’t going to get the best of me. United in their unholy trinity, the Outlaw brothers had been as steadfast and true to their own natures as the bayou was true to its natural order.

  Now the Outlaws were exonerated, and I was even prouder to be considered part of their extended family, all because I had been lucky enough to snag a landscaping job with their brother Boone.

  “Don’t think too hard, though…” Booker glanced back at Aubree, and she gave him a sultry look, “…life is too short not to…ah…get to the good stuff.”

  “Got it.” Boy, did I want to get to the good stuff.

  He chuckled and left me, slipping his arm around Aubree, nuzzling her neck as he slid back the screen door and they walked back through the open sliding glass door.

  I shoved back my shoulder-length hair, looking down at the book.

  “Leave it to Booker to give you something…what the hell? A kid’s book,” Boone demanded, yanking it out of my hands.

  “You know Booker.”

  “Yeah, I do. Listen, I wanted to tell you, because I don’t tell you enough, or at all. But, damn son, you were the best employee I’ve ever had. You’re amazing with a hammer, can do math in your head like Einstein, and made sure that everything you did was done to your own exacting standards.” His voice got hushed, his eyes going serious. “Plus you saved Verity’s life when you came by that day, and, man, you saved mine, because she is my life. Now I have a family…it’s humbling.”

  “Aw, Boone. You’re the best. Don’t make me go all mushy about it.”

  He nodded. “Okay. My brothers give me a hard time, but it’s important to say things you mean and that mean something.”

  “Okay. Meaning accepted. I’m going to miss working for you. I’m even going to miss Savannah.”

  Boone laughed, then sobered. He pulled a plastic baggie from his back pocket. “These are for you. You planted them for me in the back, near our bedroom window, because Verity loves them. That was all you. I appreciate it, and now you can take a piece of both the bayou and us with you to New York.”

  “Dahlia seeds. You think I can grow them in my dorm room?”

  “I know you can. You have the magic touch. Maybe you’ll give them to someone special, just like I have.” He gazed at Verity, who was talking to River Pearl, looking radiant and happy. A chill ran down my spine thinking about how Verity might have died. I was very glad I’d been my usual conscientious self that day.

  “You take care, and Verity and I will be in touch when we get there in a couple of weeks for Fashion Week. It’ll be a reunion.”

  “I’m looking forward to it already.”

  The sun dipped into the horizon, and the streaks of bronze deepened into thick, dark shadows. I would take all this with me when I went.

  “Hey, you’re not mooning about leaving, are you?”

  I turned to find Braxton leaning against the side of the house, one hand on his belt buckle, the other holding…a box.

  He pushed off the clapboard and walked over. “These are for you.”

  He tossed the box at me and I grabbed it. “Condoms.” I gave him a sidelong glance. “Booker gave me a book, and Boone a bit of the bayou and you give me…condoms.”

  “Yeah, head, heart, dick. Just make sure you think with the right head, son.” He grinned like the devil he could be sometimes. “They’re more essential than a book and memories of the bayou. You do know where babies come from, right? I could give you a book about that, but here’s a hint. They don’t come from the strawberry patch.”

  I snorted and nudged him.

  “And here’s another hint. Learning how to make them is damn good fun; just don’t plant any seeds. That’s where the condoms come into play.”

  “I know where babies come from, Brax,” I said.

  “But you ain’t never been with a woman.”

  “How the hell did you know that?”

  “I bet folks think you have, ‘cause of the way you look, but I know you haven’t. I can tell. You’re saving it up for someone special.”

  I stiffened and glared at him. He had hit the mark so hard I felt bruised.

  I hated being treated like an object. It was degrading and insensitive, and, as far as I was concerned, beauty was skin deep. I knew I had looks, but that didn’t make me any better than anyone else. I’d even used my looks to get my way a few times, but I also saw the way girls looked at me, and how they were more interested in what was in my jeans than what was in my heart. Automatically assuming I was a dumb blond. “I don’t need a talk about the birds and bees from you. And there’s nothing wrong with saving it for someone special,” I growled.

  Brax might still be recovering from a gunshot wound, but he was still full of sass. He smirked. “Don’t get your scuff up, huckleberry. There is in your case, ‘cause I bet you’ve had plenty of offers and plenty of temptation. But you held off. Didn’t you?”

  I turned away, embarrassed to be talking to the town’s notorious skirt chaser about being an eighteen-year-old virgin, but Brax grabbed my shoulder. “I won’t tell anyone, Deke. In fact, I admire it.”

  “What? You?”

  “Yeah.” It was his turn to look inside to the woman that he loved, and I got it the minute he did that. “I wish I’d been the first.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Yeah, I know you do, ’cause you’re an egghead. I bet you know what to do with your dick. You’ve probably had enough practice,” he quipped, laughing.

  I shoved him and laughed. “Jerking off isn’t the same.”

  “I’m here to tell you, not even by a long shot, but…” He grinned. “…practice makes perfect,” he mocked over his shoulder as he sauntered away.

  “Screw you, Brax,” I had to laugh. There wasn’t anything else I could do with an Outlaw.

  “No, I’ll leave that to you. Something tells me she’s got a head of riotous, red curls and speaks with a very proper British accent.”

  My heart jumped and started to race. Damn Braxton and his knowing ways.

  Yeah, New York City. I always knew what I wanted, when I wanted it, and had no problem going after it.

  He was right. Minnie Tattersall. She was what I had been saving up for, and it was time to experience a woman who didn’t look at me, but into me, like I was the answer to all her breathless questions. A woman who didn’t just see my looks, but also saw my heart.

  I clasped my Outlaw presents and went back inside just as it started to rain again.

  I suspected it would be my biggest challenge. Getting her to believe I saw her the very same way.

  #

  Minnie

  I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t inhale. Couldn’t exhale, couldn’t bleeding draw a breath. I was on my knees, staring, just staring.

  He was lying on his side, completely naked, gazing into a whirling kaleidoscope of water. His eyes when they fastened on mine weren’t a normal, everyday blue. They were hot blue, sizzling, revealing to me everything he was. His heart was in his eyes, and I trembled with the gift, the stripped power of him.

  His golden blond hair spilled on the ground, and where it touched, flowers bloomed. It was clear he was aroused. It wasn’t that I could see it, it was more that I could feel it, the rawness of his desire. He was more than naked, more than vulnerable, sexually desperate, wholly exposed, and it made me ache.

  I crawled because I couldn’t stand, and when I got to the pool and gazed where my reflection should be, I couldn’t see anything. I was just gone, and when I looked at him again, he was no longer there either. I had nothing but a deep, dark hole inside that swallowed me up.

  I gasped awake and sat up, breathing hard. Before I’d even caught my breath, I rushed to the bathroom mirror in a blind panic because the dream had been so vivid. But my face looked back at me. I dropped down on the loo. This came from staring at way too many hot, handsome men for the upcoming campaign for our men’s Bespoke label. I got u
p, washed my face, and slipped on my robe. Then I went down the hall to my office and turned on the lamp over the desk. Settling into my chair, I picked up a bunch of photos, since I wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep anyway. Maybe this batch would have the model I was looking for.

  The meaning of the dream wasn’t lost on me, nor the identity of the man in my dream. He had been showing up in my thoughts and dreams frequently since I returned to the harsh reality of New York. Here I’d believed I would get him out of my mind, eradicate him, but instead he seemed to have taken up residence in my dreams…bloody hell, in my waking thoughts, too.

  It was clear and simple. There was no way I was going after a guy who was five years younger. I left that kind of thing to my mother, Angela Harding the starlet who always had one young cutie pie on each arm. I certainly wasn’t going to follow in her footsteps. He was a baby. Eighteen, for God’s sake. Ha! For my sake. I stopped babysitting a long time ago. I couldn’t help thinking he was probably a conceited jerk anyway.

  But it was clear my subconscious mind had no intention of letting him go, even though the reasonable, uptight part of me insisted.

  When I met him, he hadn’t acted like a boy. He hadn’t looked at me like a boy, and he hadn’t talked to me like a boy. The things he had said…damn, they still made my skin hot, and when a redhead like me blushed, there was no hiding it on my pale skin. I was sure he’d made dozen of conquests before he was even sixteen, and I wasn’t going to be his first “mature” one.

  I turned over one picture after another, but always found something wrong with the next handsome face that gazed up at me.

  I dropped them in exasperation. I had a busy day tomorrow, so I’d better try to get back to sleep. Blimey, maybe this time I wouldn’t dream about Decon West.