The Belle and the Beard

by Kate Canterbary

  The Belle and the Beard

  Kate Canterbary

  Vesper Press

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

  Copyright © 2020 by Kate Canterbary

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any forms, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the author.

  Trademarked names appear throughout this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, names are used in an editorial fashion, with no intention of infringement of the respective owner's trademark(s).

  Editing provided by Julia Ganis of Julia Edits and Erica Russikoff of Erica Edits.

  Proofreading provided by Jodi Duggan.

  Cover design provided by Sarah Hansen of Okay Creations.

  Cover photography provided by CJC Photography.

  Cover modeling provided by Jake McManus.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  About The Belle and the Beard

  Before you dive in…

  Preface

  1. Linden

  2. Jasper

  3. Linden

  4. Jasper

  5. Linden

  6. Jasper

  7. Linden

  8. Jasper

  9. Linden

  10. Jasper

  11. Linden

  12. Jasper

  13. Linden

  14. Jasper

  15. Linden

  16. Jasper

  17. Linden

  18. Jasper

  19. Linden

  20. Jasper

  21. Jasper

  22. Linden

  23. Jasper

  24. Linden

  25. Jasper

  26. Linden

  27. Jasper

  28. Linden

  29. Jasper

  30. Linden

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

  Also By Kate Canterbary

  Acknowledgments

  About The Belle and the Beard

  Jasper-Anne Cleary's guide to salvaging your life when you find yourself publicly humiliated, out of work, and unemployable at 35—not to mention newly single:

  Run away. Seriously, there's no shame in disappearing. Go to that rustic old cottage your aunt left you. Look out for the colony of bats and the leaky roof. Oh, and the barrel-chested neighbor with shoulders like the broad side of a barn. Definitely look out for him.

  Stop wallowing and stay busy. It doesn't matter whether you know how to bake or fix things around the house. Do it anyway. Dust off your southern hospitality and feed that burly, bearded neighbor some pecan pie.

  Meet new people. Chat up the grumpy man-bear, pretend to be his girlfriend when his mother puts you two on the spot, agree to go as his date to a big family party. Don't worry—it's only temporary.

  Cry it out. Screwing up your life entitles you to wine, broody-moody music, and uninterrupted sobbing.

  Get over it all by getting under someone. Count on your fake boyfriend to deliver some very real action between the sheets.

  Move on. The disappearing act, the cottage, the faux beau—none of it can last forever.

  Linden Santillan's guide to surviving the invasion when a hell in heels campaign strategist moves in next door:

  Do not engage. There is no good reason you should chop her wood, haul her boxes, or pick her apples.

  Do not accept gifts, especially not the homemade ones. Disconnect the doorbell, toss your phone over a bridge, hide in the basement if you must, but do not eat her pie.

  Do not introduce her to your friends and family. They'll favor her over you and never let you forget it.

  Do not intervene when she's crying on the back porch. Ignore every desire to fix the entire world for her. By no means should you take her into your arms and memorize her peach-sweet curves.

  Do not take her to bed, even if it's just to get her out of your system.

  Do not, under any circumstances, fall in love with her.

  Warning: This hot, modern take on Beauty and the Beast includes a meet-burglary, an immortal cat, a biohazard of a banana bread, a meddling mother, fancy toast, and a temporary fling that starts feeling a little too permanent.

  Before you dive in…

  If you need some tunes to set the vibe, check out the playlist accompanying The Belle and the Beard.

  Join Kate Canterbary’s Office Memos mailing list for occasional news and updates, as well as new release alerts, exclusive extended epilogues and bonus scenes, and cake. There’s always cake.

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  Preface

  Into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.

  ~ John Muir

  1

  Linden

  To be clear, I never truly believed she was breaking into the house.

  Anyone would have questions if they saw a strange woman walking up to a vacant house with a crowbar and power drill in hand. I was reasonably curious about the situation.

  But I didn't assume she was a burglar. I didn't assume a damn thing. I just wanted to know what was going on over there.

  If there was anyone guilty of assumptions, it was my brother. Ash reveled in figuring everything out before anyone else. Big on having the right answer, he was.

  "There's a person breaking into the house next door," he called from the front door in lieu of any proper greeting. "Were you aware of that?"

  I didn't look up from the newspaper. It didn't hold much of my interest but the meeting I was about to have with my brother promised to hold even less. "Was I aware of an in-progress felony? No."

  Ash set his laptop bag on the chair across from me at the kitchen table and gave me a slow-blinking stare that explained he didn't appreciate my response. Even if I hadn't known him for the past thirty-six years, I would've known that. My older (by twenty-nine minutes) brother was an easy read.

  "I don't appreciate that response." He glared at me as he rounded the table and selected a glass from the cabinet. "Anyway, don't you think we should check it out?"

  "And skip our monthly discussion of my business accounts?" I closed the newspaper, folded it in half. There was nothing going on next door. Nothing ever went on over there, not anymore. "I didn't realize your brain knew how to generate that as an option."

  He elbowed the refrigerator shut as he shook a bottle of cold brew coffee. "We'd check out the crime in progress first, review your statements after. Obviously."

  "Obviously." I pushed away from the table, strolled to the front window to get a better look at the alleged burglar.

  The bungalow next door, the only other house at the bottom of this dead-end street tucked into a shady edge of Wompatuck State Park, looked as forgotten as it'd been for a couple of years, since Maureen "Midge" Misselbush passed away. The paint was peeling and the wood trim was surrendering to woodpeckers and rot. On the opposite side, the back door had been boarded up since a tropical storm that blew through last year left the glass shattered. The curtains were drawn and the windows gave off the dim, milky haze of abandonment. Save for the diehard hydrangea bushes and several trees now sliding into the gilt of autumn, the place was a ghost town.

  Midge would've hated that. She would've been out there on her r
ickety, rusty ladder, scraping away the paint and then sampling ten or twelve new colors before banging on my door to announce she was sticking with the same "good old-fashioned gray" she'd always used.

  I didn't see anyone though I couldn't get a good look at the front door from this angle. The car parked half in the driveway, half in the street, coupled with the broad daylight, suggested this burglar wasn't aiming for stealth. More than likely it wasn't a burglar at all. Probably a salesperson or someone following bad directions. Maybe a mixed-up address issue. No one veered down the dogleg bend of this street otherwise.

  See? No assumptions. Never did I assume.

  "Since when does anyone use an old-as-stones Volvo station wagon as a getaway car?" I asked.

  Ash came up beside me, iced coffee in hand. "Valid point." He jerked a shoulder up. "Still strange. Definitely looked like that person was trying to get the door open."

  We stood together, staring at an empty house and a parked car, and said nothing for a minute or two.

  "How long has it been? That it's been vacant?" he asked.

  "About two years."

  "Long time."

  I nodded. Midge didn't have much family and they didn't live here in New England but it annoyed the shit out of me they hadn't bothered to visit since her death. Hell, I'd been the one to board up that back door after the storm.

  "I wonder who is paying the property taxes." Ash would wonder this. That sort of thing dawned on him. It did not dawn on me. "Probably the estate. Do you know who the executor is?"

  I shook my head. "Nope."

  "Nothing's happening here. No breaking and entering, no robbery. I don't have time to watch the grass grow. Let's deal with your finances."

  Staring out the window while waiting for nothing to happen was far preferable to any discussion of finances, ever. Even with my brother, the accountant. I knew it was a privilege to say I didn't care about money and I was fortunate the demand for arborists was reaching all-time highs but having a booming business didn't mean I wanted to talk about business. "Can you give me the quick rundown and call it a day?"

  "I mean, yes, of course, I can. As always, I'd rather you know something about your most recent profit and loss—"

  "Because you think I'll do something with that information?"

  Ash ran a hand down his face. I smothered a laugh. I hated talking business but I loved the opportunity to bust my brother's balls. As the youngest of a set of triplets, it was one of the few privileges bestowed upon me. It was my birthright to rile up Ash and our sister Magnolia every chance I got, regardless of our age.

  "Will you alter your day-to-day work as a result of last month's P&L? No. Your overhead is extremely low and your revenue streams are stable, which makes a fine case for keeping your focus on the tree doctoring rather than the accounting."

  "I enjoy when you make my arguments for me," I said.

  "Will you take last month's P&L as further evidence that you should consider Magnolia's partnership proposal which would open you up to greater—"

  "Hold that thought."

  My hands braced on the window frame, I leaned toward the glass to watch a white woman walking toward the Volvo. But to say she was simply walking was a gross understatement. This was striding, each step purposeful and sharp, as if she wanted the earth to know she wasn't about to repeat herself. Energy radiated from her, far from warm but not exactly cold either, and it was clear she could stomp one of those pretty high-heeled shoes, crack open a chasm deep enough to fully digest those who got in her way, and be finished with them without getting so much as a smudge of dirt on her hands.

  I couldn't tell you the color of her hair or eyes, or anything about her body, but I knew everything about her from the way she walked.

  And that did something to me. Something I couldn't explain. I couldn't even begin to examine the rattling, rumbling hum it ignited inside me.

  I gestured toward the woman. She wore a dress that looked like an artifact from the 1950s. "Is that your burglar?"

  "I think so."

  Jabbing a finger in her direction, I continued, "What kind of burglar is that?"

  "I'll admit she appears to be an unorthodox burglar." He edged closer, his shoulder bumping mine as he shifted. "What is she carrying? Is that a tire iron?"

  "No, that's a crowbar and—oh, for fuck's sake—a power drill." I took a step back, reached for the doorknob. "Let's go. Come on. Let's see what this is all about."

  My brother fell in step with me as we reached the end of the driveway where a dense row of roses separated my property from Midge's. "What's the plan here?" he murmured, still clutching his iced coffee.

  I cut him an impatient glance but there was no changing my brother's hardwiring. He required a strategic plan to make a roast beef sandwich. Ignoring him, I called to the woman, "Good morning. Need some help?"

  She pivoted from Midge's door, the drill in hand and the crowbar tucked under her arm. She didn't smile when she replied, "Hello there. Good morning. I'm all set, thank you."

  In a silent dismissal, she turned back to the door.

  Ash lifted his coffee, saying, "Should we call someone?"

  "Unnecessary. We've got this." Leaving my brother behind, I stepped around the roses and crossed into Midge's yard, stopping a good distance from the door. Regardless of what was happening here, I wasn't going to be the guy who trapped a woman on a porch. Especially when that woman possessed several weapons and a thick cloud of fearlessness. "Excuse me. What are you doing?"

  She shifted to face me again, her cocked hip the only visible reaction to my questioning. "I'm prying open the door as this lock is not interested in my key."

  "So, you—you have a key."

  She held up a chain, a single key dangling from the ring. A bedazzled charm in the shape of a peach winked from the other end of the chain. "I have a key."

  There was honey in her voice, something warm and southern and completely at odds with the rest of her unhinge the jaw, drag you into the ocean, and crush your bones and destroy you like a kraken vibe.

  "This is Midge's house," I replied. "And I'm sorry but I don't know who the hell you are so I'm gonna need some more information before I let you bust open her door."

  "Before you let me. Mmhmm. That's fascinating."

  I fisted my hands on my hips. "Is it?"

  She blinked at me for a second before that expression of authority shifted into something much more terrifying. Her eyes brightened and her lips pulled up at the sides in the faintest whisper of a smile, and the trap of her momentary amusement distracted me long enough to realize she was gorgeous. Hair like rich bourbon, dark eyes, full, luscious curves. She reminded me of summer—screen doors banging in the breeze, ripe strawberries, and the kind of oppressive heat that sent sweat rolling down your back.

  This, too, did something to me. I couldn't explain any part of it but I knew I was bothered enough by my reaction to continue arguing with her.

  "Your concern is appreciated though unnecessary. Midge is my aunt. Rather, was my aunt."

  "Your aunt," I repeated. I didn't remember hearing anything about a niece and I'd heard a whole fucking lot of Midge's stories. "She was your aunt?"

  "That's right. She left this house to me."

  Because all I could do was repeat her words back to her, I said, "She left the…house. To you. This house."

  "That's what I said."

  "Then why didn't she talk about you? She talked about every other damn thing that came to mind," I said.

  "As I'm sure you're realizing, I have no way of answering that." She shifted and my belly flipped at the way she moved. Rather than bending at the waist, she crouched down, dropping her backside in a manner that caused her dress to fall around her legs like the curtain at the end of a play. It was dignified in a modest, vintage sense that didn't align with busting a door open or haphazard parking jobs.

  I didn't get it. I didn't get anything about this woman.

  And all of this really
bothered me.

  "I was the one who mentioned Midge. How do I know you're not breaking in and playing it off as being her long-lost niece?"

  "Mmhmm. It seems we are well on our way to playing this little game." She set the drill and crowbar on the porch, sanded her palms together, and stood. "You mentioned Midge but you didn't mention she'd passed away. Yes, you could checkmate me there and suggest I was on the lookout for run-down homes and tried my luck with this one but then I'd have to ask you why I'd choose this polka dot of a house for my heist. It doesn't make good sense, not when there are multimillion dollar homes sitting empty down on Cape Cod and gullible doormen at every high-rise in Boston. The truth is, as it usually is, far less exciting than a whipped-up story of me as a mastermind burglar. Maureen Misselbush left me this place though I was unaware she'd left you in charge of enforcing the perimeter. That note wasn't in her will." Holding out her hand as she descended the steps, she said, "I'm Jasper-Anne Cleary. How do you do?"