by Lucy Lennox
Body and Soul
Twist of Fate #3
Lucy Lennox
Sloane Kennedy
Copyright © 2018 by Lucy Lennox & Sloane Kennedy
Cover Images: ©Wander Aguiar
Cover Design: © Jay Aheer, Simply Defined Art
Copyediting by Courtney Bassett
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-13:
978-1984345301
ISBN-10:
1984345303
Contents
Body and Soul
Trademark Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
Prologue
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
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Epilogue
Afterword
Also by Sloane Kennedy
Also by Lucy Lennox
Body and Soul
Lucy Lennox
Sloane Kennedy
Trademark Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following trademarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
Armani
Balmain
Burberry
Calvin Klein
Dolce & Gabbana
Facebook
Google
Gucci
Jaguar
Jedi
Karl Lagerfeld
Miss Universe
Neiman Marcus
Pitch Perfect
Ralph Lauren
Sorel
The Flash
Tod’s
Tom Ford
Ugg
Vans “Off The Wall”
Vogue
Acknowledgments
A big thank you to our beta readers, Claudia, Kylee, Leslie and Courtney for their amazing feedback! Also thank you to Lori for being a second set of eyes for us. An additional thanks to Courtney for another great editing job.
Prologue
Jake
This had to be a joke. A colossal, the-world-gets-off-on-fucking-with-me kind of joke.
I stared in disbelief at the flashy red car stuck in a snowbank on the side of the road. A convertible Jaguar sports car? In the Rocky Mountains in November? No. Surely not. Whatever it was, it was blocking the long, secluded road to my cabin. I’d already met my quota of being social for the day, since I’d just finished my weekly run into town to stock up on groceries, so I was eager to get back to the solitude of home. Unfortunately, as much as I would have liked to just steer my truck around the ridiculous vehicle, my instinct to help kicked in, and I took my foot off the gas to let my truck roll to a slow stop, so I wouldn’t end up in the same predicament as the clueless driver in front of me.
A blur of white climbed out of the sports car as I stepped out of my own vehicle (after making sure to angle my tires and set the emergency brake like a sane person). My battered snow boots hit the icy ground with a thunk, and I grabbed my heavy parka from the passenger seat before slamming the truck door closed.
“Need help?” I asked unnecessarily while shouldering on my coat and zipping it up. The person–I could hardly even tell if it was a man or a woman at first–squeaked and hopped around to face me right before slipping on the icy pavement. I grabbed their arm to keep them from taking us both down and a shimmer of warmth cascaded through me as the slim body crashed into mine. My own feet began to lose traction as the figure let out a muffled “oomph” against my chest. I somehow managed to keep us both upright, but I had to grab onto more firm flesh than I would have preferred in order to do it.
“Shit! Hell, sorry!” the person blurted before locking eyes with me. And then it was like time itself came to a complete stop.
Magical blue irises sparkled in the late afternoon sun and fair skin bloomed pink in the cold winter air. The tall pine trees all around us gave the scene a kind of peaceful hush as the two of us just stood and stared at each other through a few inches of frosty air.
A man.
I could see that now. He was fucking gorgeous. Beautiful, like a… like a movie star or a famous singer, maybe. The kind of look that made sure you couldn’t look away. Was it just his eyes? Or was it…
What in the hell was he wearing? I was on sensory overload as I took in his long white-blond hair, which was covered by some kind of fur-lined cable-knit beanie that I swear to god looked like it was spun from the hair of angels. Angora? Was that a thing? I skirted my eyes lower to take in the rest of him and nearly went blind at the sight of all the white.
Because everything he was wearing was white.
Everything.
A chunky turtleneck sweater that framed his face perfectly, tight-fitting wool pants of some kind, and, Jesus Christ, were those Ugg boots? Please, no.
“Yooo-hooo,” the man said after pulling one of his arms free from my hold and waving his ungloved hand in front of my face to get my attention.
I snapped my eyes back up to his face and shook my head. “Uh, yeah?”
“I said I don’t need any help,” the man said as he stiffened his spine and jutted out his chin just a little bit. I almost laughed at both his words and his posture.
“Yes, you actually do,” I corrected, stepping aside. Before I approached the back of the convertible, I heard a high-pitched squawk from somewhere inside the car.
“Do you have a baby in there?” I asked. If so, the poor, poor child.
The man’s big, beautiful, fucking mesmerizing goddamned eyes widened. “Me? Hell no. Me? A baby? Oh, hell no. No. Just… no.”
I held up my hand in an effort to calm him. “Okay, fine. No baby. Who’s crying inside your incredibly inappropriate car?”
“What’s wrong with my car?” he asked in confusion. “It’s brand-new and has excellent safety ratings.”
If he hadn’t asked the question with complete and utter naïveté, I would have been certain he was just fucking with me. Before I could point out the ridiculousness of his statement, the flawless ivory skin of his forehead creased, and he threw his hands up slightly. “Oh, that’s Boo. Boo, baby! Ohmygod, Boo. It’s okay, BooBear. Daddy’s here,” he cooed as he slipped and slid his way to the open driver’s door of the car and leaned in, causing the back of his sweater to ride up and reveal a strip of perfect, creamy skin above the low waistband of his trousers.
A wave of heat crashed over me as my eyes automatically drifted lower to his ass. If the parka hadn’t been hiding my very sudden and very inconvenient arousal, I would have shucked the damn thing off to get some fresh air.
“Can you hold this?” I heard him ask as his arm came out behind him, a strip of fire-engine red fabric bunched up between his long fingers.
“What?”
I asked dumbly as my mouth went dry. How would those gorgeous fingers look on my skin? Better yet, how would they feel?
“Can you hold this?” he repeated sharply right before he began softly speaking to the other occupant of the vehicle again.
I stepped forward to take the fabric from him. It was some kind of wide scarf. At least he was finally getting some common sense and realizing how underdressed he was for the weather.
I forced myself to avert my eyes from his glorious backside as he leaned across the driver’s seat to release what had to be a screaming eagle from its bird carrier. “There’s my baby girl. Sweet girl. S’okay honey, that’s why Daddy made you wear that sweater, remember? Because it’s cold in our new place.”
New place? What the hell?
“Who are you?” I blurted.
He whipped around, holding a tiny ball of fur to his chest. Even his pet was white. He snagged the scarf from my hand and began working it over his shoulder. “Can you hold her for a second?” he asked before he pushed the bundle of fur into my hands. Since I still couldn’t tell exactly what kind of animal it was, I held it gingerly and as far away from my body as I could. The thing wasn’t much bigger than one of my hands, and I could have sworn its body fur was fake. Was this thing wearing a fur coat? And what were the sounds it was making? Was it trying to growl at me?
“You don’t recognize me?” he asked in surprise as he worked the soft red fabric over his body.
I tilted my head to study him. “Ah, no. Should I? Have we met before?” Not that it was possible because I’d have remembered a creature as lovely, and odd, as this one. I was about to point out that he’d messed up the scarf by slinging it over his head and resting it across his shoulder when he suddenly grabbed his pet from me and carefully tucked the little animal into the folds of the fabric.
“No,” he said absently.
No, what? What the hell were we talking about? Right, the fact that he thought I should recognize him.
“Well, then… maybe that’s why I don’t recognize you?” I murmured as he got his pet settled in his…
“What the hell kind of scarf is that?” I asked.
“Scarf?” he asked, his eyes widening. “It’s not a scarf. It’s BooBear’s happy place. It’s so she can be close to my heart… it helps calm her to know her daddy’s near. She was upset when the car…” he waved his hand at the car. “When that happened.”
Maybe he was a little off-kilter. “Sir, did you hit your head when you crashed your car?”
“No, I didn’t crash it. Exactly. Well, I mean, clearly, it’s in the snowbank there, but… well. I pulled over, or at least, I tried to pull over to look at my phone’s map, when this pile of snow just sort of… appeared. And stopped the car.”
I blew out a laugh. “Did it jump out and block your way?”
His chin came out, and his bottom lip looked pouty all of a sudden. Oh shit. No. The last thing I needed was for this gorgeous young man to look even more sexy on top of everything.
I felt my own nostrils flare in response. Jake, you fucking put your libido back in cold storage and don’t think for a minute that…
The man sighed, and the sound went straight to my cock.
“I was just in the process of looking for the snow tires option,” he said. “I’m sure that’ll fix me right up.”
“The snow tires option?” I asked, completely incredulous.
“Yeah, the guy at the dealer said snow tires were an option with this car when I bought it. But I forgot to ask him where the button was.”
I looked around us, certain I was being punked. It had to be Xander playing some fucked-up joke. He’d been complaining about the “funk” I’d been in almost nonstop since his move back to Colorado this past summer. I returned my gaze to the young man and shook my head. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“No, we’re fine,” he said as he cuddled his dog. “I think there’s enough room to get around me.”
As he began walking back to his car, I gently grabbed his arm. “What’s your name?”
“It’s Lair–ah, Oz.”
“Laroz?” I asked. That was the weirdest name I’d ever heard. But then again, it was one of a kind, like the man who owned it.
“No, sorry,” he sighed before smiling back up at me. Jesus fuck–that smile. It was like staring straight into the Jedi Force. “My name is Oz. And you are?”
“Jake,” I said.
A tiny growl emanated from Oz’s ball of white fur.
“Oh, and this is Boo.”
I tried not to grimace. I’d never been a fan of tiny dogs that fit in people’s purses. With all the hair sticking up on the animal’s head, I hadn’t actually seen its face yet, but its pathetic little growl was definitely trying to convince me it was a force to be reckoned with.
I ignored the dog and tried to focus on the task at hand. “Oz, you do know that snow tires aren’t an option on the car, right? They’re an option for the car. As in, you buy a whole other set of tires designed for snow and have them put on the car for the winter season.”
Oz’s face fell, and a bright stain of color bloomed over his cheeks. The situation should have been humorous, but it felt like I’d just kicked his weird-looking little dog. “No, um, sorry. No,” he stammered. “It’s my first car. God,” he whispered before his voice dropped off completely.
I took pity on him and asked, “Where are you trying to go? This road only goes one place, and I know you’re not going there.”
He seemed to steel his spine a bit before he lifted his eyes. “I’m looking for a cabin owned by Xander Reed. My directions say it’s down this road.”
My heart rate began to speed up. “Why are you looking for Bennett and Xander’s place?”
“Well, because it’s my place now. At least for a while, anyway. Why? You know it?”
Yeah, I knew it. And if that’s where he was headed, I was in big fucking trouble.
Chapter 1
Oz
Three days after moving into my adorable little cabin, I was taking Boo out for some fresh air and realized I hadn’t seen my new neighbor all day. Not that I was bothered by that, since the guy was a rude jerk. I felt my cheeks heat as I remembered how he’d looked at me after I’d told him that I’d been trying to find the button for the snow tires in my car. Okay, yeah, it looked pretty bad that I hadn’t known how any of that shit worked, but I’d lived in New York since I was sixteen. Driving your own car was practically a sin in the big city, and once I’d been discovered, things like driving hadn’t even been on my radar. What would the holier-than-thou Jake think if he knew I’d only gotten my driver’s license a few weeks ago? Didn’t matter because the guy was just like all the designers and photographers in my life. He saw me as nothing more than an airhead.
After I’d told him I was headed to Xander Reed’s cabin, he’d stopped talking to me altogether unless it was to bark orders at me to stay out of the way while he got my car out of the snowbank. He’d used a winch on the front of his own truck to pull my car out. Before I could even thank him, he’d told me to be more careful and then he’d gotten in his car and waited impatiently for me to get in mine, since I’d been blocking him. I’d shot him glances through my rearview mirror as I’d carefully made my way up the road, and he’d looked pissed enough to spit nails. When I’d pulled into the short driveway leading up to the cabin, he’d shot past me and flown into the driveway of the cabin next to mine. When I’d gotten out of my car, I’d been about to make a polite comment about how we were neighbors, but he hadn’t even spared me a glance before he’d stalked into his cabin.
I forced myself to let the incident go. I was here to work, not make friends.
The air was crisp with a breeze pushing straight through my Dolce cardigan to the soft T-shirt underneath. I’d learned very quickly that I didn’t dare wear my Tod’s Gommino slippers outside. I still wanted to cry when I saw what the wet snow had done to the leather.
So, I was sliding around
in an old pair of Vans, trying my best not to bust my ass, when I heard the familiar chime of a video call coming from my computer inside. I grabbed the closest section of railing along the front porch steps and used it to make my way toward the front door. How in the world had I not learned how to walk on ice when I lived in New York?
Oh yeah, because I spent most of the year in exotic locations on photo shoots.
I do not miss the beach, I do not miss being on location somewhere warm…
I slipped and grabbed the corner of the railing post, barely catching myself before falling down the stairs into the front yard. My legs and arms flailed as I ended up splayed in an awkward stance that was somewhere between standing and falling. I probably looked like a baby giraffe trying to figure out how to stand for the first time.
“Jesusfucking—”
I heard deep laughter coming from the direction of the cabin next to mine. There stood the sex god himself, holding an enormous stack of cut firewood in his arms. I took in the sight slowly and longingly without meaning to. His short dark hair was mostly covered by a black wool hat, and even though I couldn’t see his eyes all that well, I could feel their intensity. I wondered what they’d look like if the hardness was replaced with humor.