Captivated by The Beast

by Lindsey Hart

  CAPTIVATED BY THE BEAST

  By

  Lindsey Hart

  CONTENTS

  BOOK DESCRIPTION

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  EPILOGUE

  BOOK DESCRIPTION

  Beauty and a Mysterious Beast

  Charity Dunn’s modeling career did not really take off as she was expecting it to … but she badly needed money and was up for any job …

  Even strange jobs far out of the city …

  In a crumbling mansion surrounded by acres of abandoned land …

  With a very strange and reclusive man.

  He was the artist and she had been paid to be his model.

  She was going to be spending one whole month alone with this man.

  But everything about him was down-right strange and mysterious and she could not help but be drawn to him in the most elemental way …

  But what secrets was he hiding?

  Why was he living here in this mansion all by himself?

  Did he really need her here just to paint her portrait?

  Was she going to discover something she shouldn’t?

  This is a full length stand-alone steamy romance novel. No cheating. No cliff-hanger. And the kind of ending you will just love. HEA all the way!!

  COPYRIGHT

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, or transmitted by email without permission in writing from the publisher. While all attempts and efforts have been made to verify the information held within this publication, neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, omissions, or opposing interpretations of the content herein. The book is for entertainment purposes only. The views expressed are those of the author alone and should not be taken as expert instruction or commands.

  Copyright © Passion House Publishing Ltd 2018

  All rights reserved.

  You can contact the team at team@passionhousepublishing.com.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Lindsey Hart is a married mom of a two-year old and lives in Ohio with her husband and two furry ball Persian cats who take themselves as the owners of the house.

  She specializes in sweet to extra hot and dirty romance and strongly believes in happily ever after. If you are looking for a page turner, then you are in for a wild and naughty ride with feisty heroines and alpha male heroes.

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  Standalone book with the happily ever after that you’ll love.

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  CHAPTER 1

  Charity

  The McAllister place wasn’t anything Charity Dunn could have prepared herself for. In her wildest imaginings, in all the movies she’d ever seen, the books she’d read, nothing could have readied her for the sagging Victorian monolith.

  It was as out of place as an ocean-going vessel would have been in the middle of the dry, Kansas wheat fields. It stood, a testament to the passion and love that had created it, in defiance to the windswept and turbulent passage of time.

  The house had been yellow at one time. The paint was dry and cracked, peeling and flaking away, the wood beneath grey and splintery. It was the typical Victorian with the gothic turret and rounded windows on the top of the towering third story. Those windows were once, like the rest of the house, proud and full of life, perhaps even a cheery stained glass. Now, blonde boards backed them from the inside.

  The wrap around porch, once the glory of the house, was sagging badly. Part of the roof caved in on the side furthest from where the turret started. The cylindrical feature, lined with windows, some boarded up like those on the top stories, was capped with a pointed dome. The shingles, visible from the ground, were peeling as badly as the paint. Some had been ripped away by the notorious Kansas winds. Oddly enough, it looked as though the turret itself had been lined with wooden shingles, not the long, thin planks that made up the rest of the house’s siding.

  Heavy shutters blocked the rest of the windows from view. It was impossible to tell what the condition of their glass was. There were two windows just about the porch, a matching set. If Charity bent low to glance through her windshield, as she was parked at the top of the dirt driveway, she could almost see the other parts of the house, the irregular rooflines and juts, more boarded or shuttered windows, more peeling paint and old, grey boards.

  This isn’t just my job for the next month. It’s my temporary home.

  Joe McAllister, her new boss, wasn’t like regular bosses, at least if his house was any indication. It wasn’t exactly standard practice to phone a modeling agency and ask for a model to pose for a painting. At least not for a live-in assignment that lasted a month. No other girl would even consider leaving Kansas City and venturing three and a half hours out into the country where concrete jungle gave way to flat fields as far as the eye could see.

  Most of the other girls at the agency had the luxury of being choosy. Charity, who was new and barely hired on as it was, didn’t have the ability to turn down jobs, especially not one so lucrative. So far, the whole modeling thing hadn’t panned out like she’d planned. She wasn’t high in demand. She didn’t get the expensive shoots or the fashion-forward runway jobs. She was lucky if she got a call three or four times a month.

  It was pretty damn hard to make a living off that. She’d gone to school for graphic design, but after graduating the year before, hadn’t found a job. She was passably pretty and one day, while browsing through social media, came across an agency hiring models. She’d applied and been hired, after being instructed to lose twenty pounds.

  She hadn’t quite got there yet. She was just building a portfolio. She was told that she did have interesting features and that was a bonus. Her facial structure wasn’t like other people’s. She had a strong jawline, stronger than she would have liked. Her face had often been described as square. Her eyes were a strange grey and her hair somewhere between blonde and red without being the traditional strawberry. She also had the advantage of height, at two inches short of six feet. She wasn’t willowy like other girls. Her womanly curves were something she was proud of, at least until she’d been assessed and picked apart by the agency.

  Sometimes life gave you lemons and sometimes life told you that you couldn’t damn well make it on your own. Charity always had far too much pride. She couldn’t go back home and admit she’d failed. Her mother would never let her live it down. She wouldn’t let herself live it down.

  “So here I am,” Charity breathed. She maneuvered her ancient, rusty, silver sedan to the side of the road. The thing
purred like a kitten despite its two hundred and fifty odd miles. Which was a lucky thing for her, because a single repair could break the bank. “Pulling up in front of god knows where, in some little town that probably isn’t on a map. Ready to take a job for a man I haven’t even met. A man who must be a little off his rocker to live in a place like this.” Just like me considering I’m talking to myself right now.

  It had been a long drive. Charity was more than ready to get out of the hot July sun, out of a car that had no air conditioning and into somewhere cool. Her red maxi dress clung to her sweat-dampened body, outlining every single curve her agency so clearly detested.

  “No full body shots for me. Just faces. Hands. Feet. All the shitty jobs.” She stared up again at the ancient Victorian monolith. It was so different from any house around the area. It wasn’t normal, a survivor from another century. “People don’t live like that. Places like this just don’t exist in the middle of nowhere.”

  Charity gave her head a shake. She rammed her car into park and killed the engine. She’d had enough talking to herself for one day. It wasn’t a habit she usually indulged in.

  It’s the house. The thought sent a shudder racing up her spine. It isn’t natural. It’s creepy. And I’m supposed to stay not just the night or a few hours, but a month?

  She slowly opened her car door since the hot afternoon sun was unrelenting and she was beginning to roast inside the stifling, closed up car. Her duffel bag was in the backseat. She produced it slowly, all the while keeping sight of the house as if it could reach out and do something evil unexpectedly if she wasn’t guarded against it.

  Ten grand. For one month of work. That was her cut, after what the agency took. It was just another red flag. She’d been wary of the job, sure there was a catch. There was. The fact that it was a live-in position, outside the city, and a month long. No one else would even consider such strange circumstances. Normally she wouldn’t either, but she needed the money. It was take the job or lose her shit apartment that she’d been so proud of when she’d first moved in. It was either that or move home and live under her mother’s thumb again.

  I can’t go back. The constant demand for perfection was utterly exhausting. If she thought the agency was strict, she knew her mother was a hundred times worse.

  Charity straightened her shoulders. She shored up whatever courage she had left as she gripped her duffel bag in her right hand and hauled it out of the car.

  I need this. Ten thousand dollars is an insane amount of money. Her head swam with the thousand things she could do with that money. She was lucky she didn’t have any student loans. Part of her mother’s incessant planning had been to set aside money for post-secondary. She was behind on rent. She’d get caught up. Put some aside for emergencies, in case her car broke down. Sustain herself until she found a way to make a real living…

  As she straightened, a movement on the porch caught her eye. The front door opened slowly, like a black hole or a gaping wound. She tensed, half expecting a ghastly apparition. She was relieved to see the form of a man step out onto the porch.

  Even from a good distance, she could tell that he was handsome. Handsome isn’t the right word. He’s utterly… haunting.

  Just like the house he presumably owned, because she couldn’t see anyone else willingly living in the decaying monolith, Joe McAllister seemed to belong to another time completely. Long blonde hair flowed over his shoulders and shimmered in the sunlight like the ripe wheat fields that lined the dusty back road she’d traveled. Piercing blue eyes, bluer and far purer even than the sky, cut right through her. He had strong features, high cheekbones that jutted above a rigid jaw, a straight nose, high, unlined brow and lips that probably hadn’t smiled in a very long time. His skin was tanned golden. She had the odd sense, that if he took off the white cotton shirt he wore, that those impossibly broad shoulders and intimidating chest would be just as golden.

  He wiped his hands on a set of dusty black pants and her gaze fell lower, to a set of scuffed work boots.

  She blushed when his eyes narrowed and swept over her. She dropped her gaze, very aware that she’d been staring openly and rudely, gawking even.

  Introduce yourself. Charity forced her feet forward. Her duffel was heavy. It weighed her down and threw her stride off balance. She was anything but graceful as she made the trek down the dusty dirt driveway to the front porch.

  Joe, if he was Joe at all, didn’t move. He didn’t offer a hand. He didn’t even blink. His lips thinned out and a few lines appeared on his tanned forehead as he frowned.

  “You my model?” He finally asked. His voice was deep and rich, lyrical and musical in a way that was at odds with the surroundings, the question itself and the man who asked it.

  “Uh- yes.” Charity blushed furiously, and she hoped he would excuse the color on her cheeks as a result of the scorching sun in the cloudless blue sky and the utter lack of air conditioning the entire ride from the city. Not that he knew that. Of course, he didn’t know that. Although one look at her ancient car and he’d probably assume…

  “I’ll warn you right off the bat the house is old. Full of mice and bugs. Spiders and the like. No running water or indoor plumbing. No light. You good with that?”

  What the hell? Couldn’t he have informed the agency about this shit before I got here instead of springing it on me last minute? An even worse thought occurred. Maybe he did. Maybe they kept it from me. The commission they’re making off this is fifty percent. Meaning the guy was putting up twenty thousand for a month.

  “If you’re rich enough to hire me, why don’t you put some money into the house then?” Too late, she realized how rude her question was. She clapped her free hand over her mouth, but oddly enough, Joe’s thin lips quivered as though he was holding back a smile. She had the feeling he didn’t smile often, though on a man like him, it would have been dazzling.

  Get real. Dazzling? Seriously, I shouldn’t even be looking at him like I am. He’s my boss. Unfortunately.

  “The truth is, I don’t care about the house any longer and I don’t care to move away. The two of us, the house and me, we’re stuck together. I can’t leave her, and she can’t leave me. That answer your question?”

  Not at all. She wasn’t sure if the her in that sentence was the house or a woman. She had the odd sensation it wasn’t the house at all Joe was talking about. Charity couldn’t say what gave her the idea. Perhaps the sudden lost shimmer that appeared in the crystal sky blue eyes.

  Up close, she realized her new boss was taller than he had looked from a distance. He was probably three or four inches over six feet. Which to her, just about made him a giant. Those shoulders of his were even broader, his features more chiseled and defined. He was the kind of man women flocked to until his naturally broody personality drove them away. Or at least, the broody, strange personality Charity suspected he had.

  “I don’t like spiders,” she finally admitted when she realized he was waiting for an answer. “But I need the job. If I’ll do, then I’ll stay.”

  “You won’t like the outhouse then.” Joe actually smirked. His eyes traveled past her to her car. “You’ll do. I received your portfolio long before they sent you. If I wasn’t happy with you then you wouldn’t be here.” His stormy gaze traveled over her body, assessing her in the way that an artist assesses a thing. An object. A body, already calculating what her features and her shape would look like on a canvas. “Come on then. It’s sweltering. I’ll show you to your room and I’ll give you an idea of how an antiquated lifestyle works.”

  Before she set foot on the porch step, a step that was bowing with time and age, a step that doubtfully could hold her weight, she cast one longing glance back to her sedan.

  I can’t go back.

  She closed her eyes tight, took a deep breath and slowly walked forward.

  CHAPTER 2

  Joe

  He hadn’t had another woman in the house since Ginny died. This woman’s presence, so
unlike that of his wife, jarred him. She was a golden ray of sunshine, a presence so very alive and surreal in that place of decay. A place that was once destined for regeneration and happiness. It died another death with Ginny’s passing.

  The smell of floral perfume trailed out behind the woman. She was young. Probably just out of college, if that. It was summer. She might just be in her first semester. How the hell would he know? He was willing to bet he was twice her age. He hated the scent of flowers. Hated the fresh, womanly smell that would have clung to her clear, pale skin even if she hadn’t applied a manufactured scent.

  Most of all, he hated himself for giving in. He’d finally surrendered to desperation and loneliness. His hands, stilled these past five years, once again ached to pick up a brush. He didn’t need to work. He had enough money to last him three lifetimes. It wasn’t the money. It was the long, horrible, lonely hours. The memories. The constant haunting of his past.

  He couldn’t leave the house behind. He couldn’t leave her memory. It had been their hope and dream, the rebirth of the ancient monolith in place of the child they couldn’t have. They’d purchased the old place, intent on her restoration. It was a place they could live and laugh and love each other. Maybe adopt a child one day. He’d have his studio and Ginny, she’d have her garden, her kitchen, her indomitable spirit.

  She’d have her damn flowers and the perfumes she made and sold online. Ginny was scent. She was life. Until she wasn’t.

  And so, for the rest of his days, Joe McAllister would always hate scent. It betrayed him. Aroused dormant senses, gave him false hope. Sometimes in his dreams, he could still smell her. He’d wake up, his face covered with slippery, aching tears that unmanned him, expecting her to be beside him. Of course, she never was. The constant ache, arms that ached to hold his wife one last time, was the result of an unexpected ending to a love that should have lasted a lifetime.