by Stasia Black
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Coming April 19th 2017
WOMAN NAMED RED
a standalone novel in the Crush Me Series world.
Chandelier club owner Kennedy Benson likes everything in his business and personal life ordered just so. He’s the prince of his little corner of world, working to conquer more and more territory until he becomes king. But he never bargained on meeting Scarlet Brown, a woman who will not only knock him on his ass but threaten everything he thought he held most dear.
Continue on for a peek of Woman Named Red following the acknowledgements!
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About Stasia
Stasia Black is an author who’s drawn to romantic stories that don’t take the easy way out. She wants to see beneath people’s veneer and into their dark places, their twisted motives, and their deepest desires. She likes to toss her characters into the tempest and watch them hurt, fight, bleed, and then find out what, if anything, comes out the other side. Come along for the journey because it’s one helluva ride.
Acknowledgements
As always, I thank my gorgeous husband, lover of my heart, body, mind, and soul. I love you more. Haha, it’s here in writing, so it must be true ;)
Thanks to some fabulous beta readers and their stellar feedback: Karina L., as always, you rock! Belinda D., thanks SO much again for your quick read of the series and your encouragement. Lindsay Johnston (sorry for being so evil and taking forever to get this book to you, won’t happen again! Aimee, zomg, what would I have done without your detailed edits? I will never understand why some words are hyphenated and others not, lol, and you are a genius and a God-send (or is it Godsend?)! And Kristin L. J. thank you so much for your edits—your eyes right at the end gave me just what I needed to nudge this to the next level so I knew it was absolutely perfect.
And thank you again, you gorgeous reader! Without you literally none of this would be possible. Thanks for taking a chance on a new author :) If you want to continue discovering sexy romantic stories that ride the motherf#@ing edge, I’ve got several more books coming out in the coming year.
Sneak Peek of WOMAN NAMED RED
Coming April 2017
Chapter 1
“Remind me what I’m doing in this shithole again?” I ask my PA Stella as I lift a ladle to stir a huge pot of some sort of indiscernible stew. I drop the ladle in disgust and take a step back when I get a whiff of the noxious concoction. Christ, my new Salvatore Ferragamo shoes are sticking to the grimy floors. I don’t give a fuck if it’s not manly to be so brand conscious. I appreciate the finer things in life, so what?
Not that you’d know it to see me now.
“I’m Kennedy fucking Benson,” I hiss, looking around at the grungy kitchen and dirty brownish walls that I can only assume were once supposed to be cream-colored. No one else is around, though no doubt someone will come back in at any second to continue pulling out trays of food to serve.
Ugh. As if they can call this shit food. “My brand can’t be associated with…whatever this is.”
Stella stares me down, admittedly impressive since she’s just five-one to my six-two. “Your brand is the reason why we’re here in the first place. Do I need to remind you that when you cheated on Hollywood’s latest indie film darling, Dakota Harrison, you took a giant shit all over our brand?”
I feel myself shrinking under her glare. She takes a step forward, bringing up a finger to wag at me like an angry school marm. Oh fuck, not the finger. I cringe back from her but she has no mercy.
“Because someone had the genius idea when we started all this to make his name synonymous with the brand. So guess what? When Kennedy Benson fucks up, Benson’s restaurants take a hit. Even Chandelier,” she mentions the name of the popular club I own. “Dakota tweeted that everyone should party at our competitors and guess what? Our revenue was down eight percent last weekend.”
She reaches to a table beside her, grabs a stained apron with KISS THE COOK written in atrocious cartoonish letters and shoves it in my hands. “So voila, you’re spending the afternoon at this lovely soup kitchen. Now get your ass out there and give some service with a smile so the paparazzi I paid to be here can snap some pics of you making nice with the homeless.”
I stand there a moment staring her down, jaw ticking. Only Stella can get away with talking to me like this. She’s been with me from the beginning, nine years ago when I was fresh off working as a sous chef at one of the best restaurants in Paris and finally had the financial backing to start up the first Benson’s House in San Francisco’s Nob Hill district.
So yes, Stella’s been my employee, sounding board, friend, and confidant for over a decade now. I was the best man at her wedding to her wife Kiara. Most of the time I like having at least one person who isn’t constantly sucking up to me because I’m one rich and increasingly powerful son of a bitch.
Today isn’t one of those days. “I broke up with Dakota before I slept with Kaitlyn.” I frown and look to the wall. “Or was it Katie?” I wave a hand dismissively. “Anyway. It wasn’t cheating.”
Stella lets loose and punches me on the arm.
“Ow!” I rub my arm and step back. Stella boxes and she packs a mean fucking punch.
“You broke up with Dakota over text message. That doesn’t count.”
I just stare at her. “Yeah it does. I gave notification. It’s not my fault she didn’t read it before she came up to visit. She’s an actress. Of course she’s going to dramatically overreact to the whole thing.”
Stella breathes out through her teeth, but if her red face is any indication, she’s only getting more pissed. “Kennedy, I’m trying really hard to remember you have good qualities right now, because you sound like a pig. Just,” she shakes her head, her hand slicing through the air in a sharp motion. “Go out there and don’t you dare say anything about Dakota, or break-up texts, or anything else stupid that will make me want to punch you again. Think you can manage?”
One of the soup kitchen volunteers comes back through the swinging doors into the kitchen. The young woman smiles wide at me and I manage to arrange my features in something I hope comes off as more grin than grimace. Stella gives me a thumbs up sign, paired with her death stare that warns, don’t fuck this up.
I give her my lady-killer smile—all teeth and easy-going charisma. Her thumbs up turns to a middle finger as she exits through the back door. Now that gets a genuine chuckle from me.
“Mr. Benson, can you help with this pot of soup?” asks the volunteer, a short brunette with badly done highlights and too much eye make-up. “It looks heavy and you’re so strong.”
Then she lifts her hand and bites the tip of her forefinger. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” Her voice goes all breathy. “Your restaurants are so successful.” She arches her chest out.
Wow, really? Zero points for subtlety with this one. When I was first introduced to the team, I think her shirt was buttoned all the way up, but now several buttons are undone, revealing a lacy blue bra and the tops of two small curved breasts. She’s pretty enough but so young she looks like she might still be in college.
She takes a step toward me. “I’ve always wanted to meet you. I saw that special about you on TV, how you overcame adversity and became one the of the city’s top restaurant and club owners.”
That damn TV show. It was just a small local documentary that I thought might get a little publicity for Chandelier. I’d only had experience with restaurants and was nervous about the club doing well, so I said yes to almost every publicity opportunity that came my way.
Mistake.
Especially when the documentary got picked up by Netflix and suddenly the world was so captivated by Kennedy Benson, San Francisco’s fa
vorite tortured bachelor with a tragic past. One line from the review in the Chronicle became a catchline that I’d be taunted by for months afterwards from friends and strangers alike—the American Dream has never looked so sexy.
And it was true—I was the American Dream packaged perfectly in an hour and thirty-nine minute docu-drama. I’d pulled myself out of poverty by my bootstraps and all that bullshit. My sharp cheekbones and wide shoulders didn’t hurt ratings either, apparently.
I didn’t know how the filmmakers would spin everything or that they would focus so much of the show on me rather than my restaurants and the club. If I had, I never would have signed on. But, as Stella reminded me so bluntly a moment ago, I’ve become synonymous with my brand. If the public became fascinated with me, well, it only meant good things for my businesses. Hell, maybe it’s the reason Chandelier became such a hot spot for celebs. I’m not going to be one of those assholes who’s all woe-is-me about his success.
The brunette reaches me and puts her hand on my chest. Then she runs her forefinger down the center of my sternum.
I just stare at her. This isn’t the first time a woman has approached me so boldly and touched me like this. Seriously, what the fuck gives people the idea that molesting me a minute after meeting me is cool? Am I an animal in a petting zoo? I mean, I should invite a sociologist to follow me around and study this shit.
“Maybe after we’re finished here, you could take me back to your place,” she says, not even bothering to whisper now. “You must be so lonely. Losing your mother like that, I can’t even imagine—”
“Enough.” I gently but firmly remove her hand from my chest.
I release her and take a step away, ignoring her startled cry. I wasn’t rough. In fact, I made sure to be overly gentle when I touched her. The last thing I need is any fucking lawsuits from one of these situations.
“Where’s the hand sanitizer?” My voice is cold.
“What?” She’s still gazing at me with her chest thrust out, though her eyes have filled with confusion.
I raise an eyebrow at her like she’s slow to catch the plot. “I don’t like strangers touching me.” I lift the hand I used to pull her off me. It takes a second, but when the words register, the slight pink of her cheeks burns all the way red.
“Oh.” She ducks her head for a second. Then her head whips back up, eyes narrowed.
“Fucking asshole.” She spins away from me. She stops before pushing through the doors I assume lead to the dining room and looks over her shoulder. “Here’s the hand sanitizer,” she says acidly, pointing to the wall beside the doors. There’s a soap-like dispenser there. She makes a big show of pumping it once, rubbing it on her own hands, and finally shoving out of the kitchen.
I just shake my head. I’ve never understood how I get labeled asshole for shit like this. I’m not going around touching people without their permission.
A ping sounds from the phone inside my pocket. I pull it out and read the message from Stella.
STELLA:Don’t fuck this up.
I roll my eyes and turn off my phone without replying. I swear half the shit I get into isn’t even my fault. Okay, sure, half of it probably is, but the other half? I’m totally innocent.
When the documentary came out and Chandelier was an off the charts success, okay sure, I was a horny fucker in my mid-twenties. Chicks throwing themselves at me left and right? Fuck yeah I was cashing in on that. Life was a constant party if I wanted it to be.
But unlike all those fuckers rich from birth, I still had shit to do the next day. I had a job. I was running multiple businesses. I knew better than anyone how quickly everything could be pulled out from under you. So I did the drinking and fucking every hot chick who wanted to throw herself on my dick for a while, but it got tiresome pretty quickly.
Well, except the hot chicks part. Aka, the mess that got me in my current dilemma. I shake my head. But really, I’m done landing a different chick every night. All of them are just like the brunette, users wanting a piece of the Kennedy Benson. I don’t need that shit. Still, that didn’t mean I was going to put up with Dakota’s constant relationship rollercoaster drama bullshit. I shudder. Fuck, nothing was worth that.
And because I didn’t want to deal with her hitting the roof by breaking up face to face, I thought I’d take a less…confrontational approach. Finally, thank fuck, it was over. So then, well, I celebrated.
I wince. Yeah. Less than classy on my part.
And now I’m here. I look around the grimy kitchen and grimace. There’s no way this place would pass the health code inspections my restaurants’ kitchens regularly go through. I pride myself on making perfect scores on that shit. If we don’t, I’m famous for doing regular drop-ins myself to test the kitchens until we pass perfectly every time. I expect excellence of my staff and push myself just as hard if not harder.
Which means I better get my ass out to the ‘dining room’ and get this shit done if it means doing damage-control for whatever harm I might have brought on the Benson’s brand. My shoulders fall but I’ll man up now even if I didn’t with Dakota.
I walk over and grab the huge pot of…whatever the hell it is, and head through the swinging doors. Long tables are set up as a makeshift cafeteria with volunteers standing every few feet. They’re already serving a long, serpentine line of the homeless stretching out the door of the church activities room.
“You,” barks an older woman wearing a shirt that reads Jesus Saves, along with acid wash mom jeans. “There.” She points me toward an empty half of one table in the middle.
I shuffle over and set down the giant soup pot. The other side of the table is occupied by stacks and stacks of… well, they’re shaped like pizza slices and have cemented circles of what might be pepperoni on them, but they smell like dog shit. And if that’s cheese, it’s so far removed from the cow that it might as well be dried glue.
I try not to gag.
The volunteer beside me laughs at my reaction. He’s an older hippie-looking guy with long, white hair in a ponytail and a beard that would rival Dumbledore’s. “Hey man, pizza is pizza to these fuckers. Pizza joints donate their pies at the end of the day. We freeze ‘em and reheat ‘em and this is how they turn out.”
Then he shrugs. “Plus, it’s the end of the month. Food stamps are all blown by now. It’s this or nothing.” He glances down at my hands. “But make sure to put gloves on. You don’t want to catch nothing. Swear I’m always itching for three days after I leave here, sure I’m walking away with lice.” He rubs his bearded chin against his shoulder.
“I’m Bob by the way,” he says as he pulls a pair of plastic gloves from a box underneath the table and hands them to me. I quickly don them.
“Kennedy,” I offer back.
“That soup?” asks a woman who’s missing a couple of front teeth as the line passes by our table. She gestures at my pot.
I hesitate just a second as I look into the pot, but then nod. She waves a knobby, gnarled skin-spotted hand at her tray. “Well gimme some. What the fuck are you doin’ jus’ standin’ there like a dumb fuck?”
I grit my teeth and smile, ladle the mystery stew into a chipped plastic bowl, and set it on her tray. She harrumphs at me and then snatches two pieces of pizza before Bob can offer them.
Our next ‘client’—that’s what Bob says we’re supposed to call them—is a cool middle-aged dude who quietly takes his food and moves along down the line. We get all sorts over the next hour and a half. Loud, belligerent, talkative, fucking nuts, you name it.
Lots of the last two category—the crazy and talkative seem to go hand in hand.
“Trump stole this election, I’m telling ya,” says a greasy-faced man who might be in his forties. His skin is so weathered by sun and, I assume, substance abuse, that he could actually be a decade older or younger and I just can’t tell. “Trump said it would be rigged and for once he wasn’t tellin’ a lie. You know them Russians.” He looks over his shoulder and then lean
s across the table to Bob and me. An unfortunate stench follows him and I pull back.
“They’re always watchin.’ You can’t have nothing digital. Facebook, Insta-twit, they’re watching. Big Brother, he’s fucking real. They’re making lists. Lists and lists of everybody’s name. Any day now, it’s gonna come,” He smacks his hands together, eyes wide and wild. “Boom and the government’s putting chips in your kids’ arms. Bam,” another dramatic hand clap, “and no one’s getting medicine’s less they got a barcode on their goddamned forehead.” He smacks his head repeatedly with the palm of his hand. “It’s all gonna be yes, commandant and no, commandant because Russia’s gonna move in and… Man, just last week, some government agent was tryin’ to take my shit and lemme tell you, I—”
“Here’s your soup, sir.” I smack the bowl on his tray. “Now, would you like some pizza?”
The man jerks back at my abrupt motion. He eyes me suspiciously. “Are you tryin’ to silence me? ‘Cause I got rights. I know about the first fuckin’ commandment! I got free speech!” He looks around to the room and yells louder. “I got free speech!”
Jesus Saves lady frowns and lifts her phone. I don’t know what the normal protocol for this kind of thing is. Maybe she’s just texting one of the other volunteers?
“Hell yeah you do,” I say to the dude, figuring the path to de-escalation won’t be to remind him that the first commandment is actually about God, not free speech. “Beautiful thing about this country of ours.” I smile affably. “Where are you sitting? Maybe when this line is through I can come sit by you and we can chat some more?” I lean over the table. “I just know everyone behind you is hungry too. I always like talking over food. Me and my uncle used to talk politics over a big meal. Still one of my favorite things to do.” I pull my plastic glove off and hold out my hand for a shake.