Enchanting the Beast Read online

  Enchanting the Beast

  Barely a Fairy Tale

  Maggie Dallen

  Copyright © 2019 by Maggie Dallen

  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.

  Image © DepositPhotos – Fotofabrika

  Cover Design © Designed with Grace

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Epilogue

  Homecoming Promise

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Coward. The plate full of cookies in Holly’s hands taunted her as she hovered in front of her new neighbor’s door.

  Liar. She frowned down at the cookies.

  Cheater. Okay, maybe it wasn’t the cookies talking. Her conscience was the far more likely candidate. But since she’d solemnly vowed to silence her obnoxious goody-two-shoes conscience until this job was over, she blamed her hesitation on the deceptive and sugary confections in her hands.

  Cookies weren’t typically deceptive—unlike muffins, they didn’t try to hide their unhealthiness behind words like bran. Still, these cookies were her way of weaseling in to some poor schmuck’s life, and for what?

  She had no idea.

  But whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. No one paid a woman to befriend a stranger for altruistic reasons. Something told her she wasn’t here to surprise him with a winning lottery ticket. Whatever Charlie and his friends wanted from this guy, it would lead to trouble.

  It had sounded harmless enough when her sister’s boyfriend had come to her with the idea. Eve was the one who typically did this kind of work. In fact, she was supposed to be the one standing here in the hallway, waiting to meet the mark. But when she’d had her accident, all her plans were put on hold, including her latest con.

  Maybe “con” was too harsh a word for it. Her sister had always hated that term. Eve always insisted she was an actress. But actress or con artist, it didn’t change the fact that Eve was lying in a hospital bed in a medically-induced coma. She’d live, thank goodness, but she’d survive just to drown in debt for the rest of her life. After singlehandedly supporting Holly and their youngest sister, Lexy, she’d wake up from her coma to find that they were broke. Again. Back to the desperate situation they’d found themselves in after their parents had died leaving them with nothing. Eve, the eldest of the three, had been nineteen, old enough to be their legal guardian but without the experience or education to get a good job. They’d accumulated a mountain of debt those first few years on their own. Eve had pulled them out of that situation but she knew her sister lived in fear that they would be poor again.

  But they wouldn’t. Not if Holly could help it.

  Money, that’s what this assignment was about. The thought of that money helped her overcome her cowardice. A quarter of a million would be enough to pay their rent, Lexy’s tuition this semester, and some of the larger hospital bills. And all she had to do was be friendly. She could do that in her sleep.

  But there was friendly and then there was friendly. Just how far was she willing to go to save her family from being broke again?

  Her new boss had been miserly with the details. He’d told her to call him Uncle Jack, conveniently leaving out his last name as he sat across from her and Charlie at Charlie’s nightclub in Williamsburg. She refused to think of her new employer as “uncle” anything. She had enough creeps in her own extended family, thank you very much. The man wasn’t her uncle—she wasn’t even convinced his name was Jack—but his offer had been too good to pass up.

  Too good to be true, more like.

  Shut it, cookies.

  This guy was lonely, Jack had said. He kept to himself. She’d be doing him a favor by showing him some neighborly kindness. She’d point blank asked just how friendly Jack expected her to get with the hermit and her new boss had shrugged as if it were a moot point.

  She might be desperate enough to take one of her sister’s “acting jobs” but she wasn’t going to stoop to being a paid escort for this Spencer guy.

  Spencer was the mark. There was no other way to think of him. She might be able to convince herself that this was an acting gig, but there was no way around the fact that Spencer was not in on the act.

  All Jack had told her about him was that he was a recluse. The poor dupe rarely left his apartment. Her new boss tried to convince her that her intervention in his life would be a godsend. He’d managed to make it sound like he was sending her in to befriend him as some sort of charity case. Jack had said he just wanted to make sure an old friend was doing all right.

  She hadn’t bought it. When she’d asked what he wanted with him, Jack had shrugged. “It’s just business.” According to Jack, he and Spencer used to do business together but had a falling out. Her job was to butter him up. Earn his trust and then lead him to her boss and help get him to come back to the fold, whatever that meant. It was a uniquely vague expression but one she didn’t ask him to explain. She had a feeling he would just shrug again and tell her it was just business.

  The question then was, what kind of business? She hadn’t asked. She hadn’t wanted to hear the answer.

  Coward.

  She was definitely a coward, but she also had a healthy fear of guilt by association. The less she knew, the better. Nothing about this Jack guy seemed legit. She would play the part of the friendly, persuasive neighbor and get him to agree to a meeting with Jack. That was it. After that, it was none of her business. She’d get paid, and then go home to take a long hot shower to wash away any remaining feelings of ick over her role in conning this poor schmuck.

  She took a deep breath and knocked before she found a reason to chicken out. It was now or never.

  As soon as her hand connected with the door, she wished she could take back that knock.

  He wasn’t alone.

  There were voices. Two of them. Male and female. Jack had told her Spencer lived alone. That he was always alone. A lone wolf, those were his exact words.

  She heard the voices heading toward the door and panic had her frozen in place, undecided over whether she should run or stay. Instead she found herself standing in his doorway like a deer in headlights as he threw open the door.

  Shock had her smile freezing in place as her gaze dropped down. The man who answered the door was in a wheelchair.

  Good old Uncle Jack had sent her to con a crippled man.

  She was so going to hell. She didn’t need the cookies to tell her that.

  Once she got over the wheelchair shocker—thanks for the heads up, Jack—she took in the man before her, who was staring back with an unreadable expression.

  He looked smart. That was a weird thing to think, and maybe she was just a sucker for stereotypes, but he had the whole wire-rimmed glasses and buttoned-down dress shirt thing going on. His tousled short brown hair gave him the air of an absentminded professor.

  But his appearance wasn’t the only thing that spoke of high intelligence. It was the unnerving way he studied her. Though she’d worn a wrap dress that accentuated her curves, she didn’t get the feeling that his head-to-toe assessment was of the lecherous kind. If anything, it seemed clinical. Like he was taking stock of her parts for future reference. When his gaze returned to her face, she felt the blood rush to her cheeks. She hadn’t blushed since high school. But
then again, she also hadn’t tried her hand at acting since her failed turn as Frenchy in her high school’s production of Grease.

  She was officially regressing.

  His appraisal made her mentally rehearsed greeting stick in her throat. For one paranoid moment she was sure he knew exactly why she was here and who had sent her. The cookies begged her to run away. It wasn’t too late. She could still back out.

  But then the silence between them was broken. Not by her, Spencer, or her cookies.

  “Are you seriously not going to answer my question?” a female voice demanded from Spencer’s lap. “Spence, stop ignoring me.”

  Holly’s gaze moved to see where the voice was coming from and she found herself staring at his crotch.

  Wonderful. That wasn’t pervy at all.

  Spencer picked up the tablet that was resting on his lap and held up the screen so she was face to face—sort of—with a pink-haired woman who he’d obviously been skyping with.

  “I wasn’t ignoring you,” Spencer said. “I was answering the door for this lovely young woman.”

  Holly cursed herself for blushing again at the “lovely” part. Seriously, how old was she?

  “You have a friend over?” The shock in his friend’s voice was telling. Clearly this guy didn’t have a lot of company.

  One corner of his mouth tilted up in a lopsided smile that made her heart do a weird flip-flop. “I wouldn’t say ‘friend;’ I’ve never met her before in my life.” His gaze never wavered from hers despite the fact that he had yet to speak to her or her to him. They both seemed content to let the woman on the screen lead the conversation.

  “Oh.” The woman on the screen sounded disappointed. “Then what’s she doing there?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, his tone filled with amusement. “Let’s find out.” He gave her a questioning look as he held the screen up higher so his friend could see her as well. “What are you doing here?” His voice had lost its friendly tone now that he was talking to her. Not only was it not friendly, it was borderline accusatory, which threw her for a loop.

  “Um—” Her brain froze. Oh, this was so not going as planned.

  His friend made a tsking noise. “Spence, don’t be rude.”

  Holly and Spencer ignored her. Spencer was waiting for her to speak and she finally found words. Shoving the plate in front of her she blurted out, “I brought cookies.”

  Ugh. Self-disgust had her wincing before she could catch herself. What kind of idiotic line was that? She was supposed to be effortlessly charming and charismatic like Eve, not an awkward dork like she’d been in high school.

  I brought cookies. She might as well have said, “I carried a watermelon.” At least then she’d make Lexy laugh when she told her this story. A hardcore love of Dirty Dancing was a shared Hallister sister trait.

  Spencer wasn’t even trying to hide his amusement at her complete and utter awkwardness. He kept eye contact with her when he told his friend, “It seems she brought me cookies.”

  “Oh, how sweet!” the woman said, sounding surprisingly genuine. “Thank goodness someone’s looking out for you while I’m gone. I was afraid you’d start turning into Howard Hughes on me.”

  Spencer looked up to the ceiling as if praying for patience. “Muting you now, Andie,” he said, though he made no move to adjust the volume so they both heard her whining.

  “Ah, Spence, don’t mute me. I’ll be good, I swear.”

  He didn’t respond. Instead he looked up at Holly with that blank expression and all-seeing gaze. “So, what’s with the cookies?”

  She licked her lips. “Uh, they’re just your basic sugar cookie.”

  She heard herself talking but barely recognized the voice. Why on earth did she sound so high-pitched? She tried to take a deep, calming breath but then he frowned and her stomach twisted with nerves.

  “No,” he said slowly, like he was talking to a dimwit. Or a stranger who’d arrived on his doorstep with cookies and a voice that was meant to lure neighborhood dogs. “I meant, why are you bringing me cookies?”

  “Um….” She hadn’t known what to expect from this assignment but she never would have imagined someone taking such a hostile attitude toward cookies. Not that he was overtly hostile, but she sensed suspicion beneath that unflappable demeanor.

  Smart man.

  He arched a brow as if in challenge and in her mind she heard the whistle from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

  “I thought you might like them.” Her voice had lost its dog-whistle sound but it was still breathy as though she’d taken to impersonating Marilyn Monroe.

  His brows lowered in a scowl and the panicky sensation was back in full force. “I mean, I just moved into the apartment down the hall and I thought Christmas cookies might be a good way to introduce myself and—”

  “So you’re bringing cookies to all the neighbors.” It was a question posing as a statement.

  “Yes.” She experienced a flash of pride at not having paused before that little lie. Maybe she was getting better at this.

  He leaned forward in his wheelchair. “I didn’t hear you at the Fischers’ or the Cabrals’.”

  Who the heck were the Fischers and Cabrals? It clicked a second too late. The other neighbors on this floor. She’d never been any good at lying, why did she think she could start now?

  Because her family needed her to, that was why. Desperate times, called for blah blah blah. No time for pep talks, she had to think quickly. She’d read that the key to a good lie was staying as close to the truth as possible. She let out the breath she’d been holding. “I haven’t gone to their apartments yet.”

  He pounced on that. “Why not? Why start with me?”

  She blinked in surprise at the harshness in his tone and for the first time some of her nerves faded, replaced by irritation. She’d brought the guy cookies. It wasn’t like she was robbing him blind.

  Andie’s groan cut through the tension. “Way to go, Spence. A hottie bombshell shows up on your doorstep and you start grilling her.”

  Holly’s mouth opened but she only got out a choked sound. She suspected this Andie lady thought she was muted. If there was any doubt, the woman continued on as Holly stood there in shocked silence.

  “Come on, doofus, invite her in already.”

  The doofus in question was still giving her that challenging look but she saw amusement flicker in his eyes at his friend’s blithely ignorant voiceover of this ridiculous scene. That glimmer of amusement made him seem a hundred times more approachable and she overcame her nerves long enough to speak. “I heard voices coming from your apartment,” she said. That was true enough. “I figured you were home. I’ll be bringing cookies to the Fischers and the….” She blanked on the other name but it didn’t matter because her vow to bake cookies for the other neighbors was rudely interrupted by a loud groan coming from the tablet on his lap.

  “Ugh. You’ve got a hot woman on your doorstep practically begging to come in and you’re playing cookie police? Invite the girl in and make your move already.”

  The woman made it sound like she was there propositioning him with her cookies. Holly licked her lips, trying desperately to hide her embarrassment. “I’ll, uh, I’ll give them their cookies later but since you were home I thought you might want some—”

  Andie’s voice took on a ludicrously raunchy tone as she lowered it about ten octaves. “Aw yeah, he wants some.”

  Holly’s eyes widened and she hurried on before the woman could keep talking. “I-I was baking….”

  “Come on, Spence, invite her in. What are you waiting for?”

  “And I thought maybe it might be nice to share them….”

  “Holy jeez, this chick is hot and you are single. Take that woman’s cookies while they’re hot.”

  “I wanted to meet my neighbors and—”

  Andie’s “Bow chicka wow wow” was so loud and so crass Holly could no longer pretend like she was oblivious. She couldn’t even remem
ber what she’d been rambling about.

  Spencer finally, mercifully put an end to her misery. “Andie, darling?”

  There was a short pause. “Yes?”

  “We can hear you.”

  There was another longer pause before Andie spoke one syllable in a small voice. “Oh.”

  Spencer grinned and she found herself blinking rapidly at the sudden transformation. His smile made him…sexy.

  He wasn’t handsome—not by traditional standards, anyway. His features were a bit too sharp. There was something hard and angular about him. But when he smiled…oh wow. It softened the harshness and added distinctively adorable new features, like creases around his mouth and crinkles near his eyes. He might not be handsome but he had sex appeal in spades.

  She was staring. The moment she noticed she dropped her gaze back down to the cookies. It was too late to hope that she could make a success out of this visit, but she could at least accomplish what she’d set out to do.

  In a quick motion, she shoved the cookie platter in his direction so he was forced to take it from her. She started backing away before he could give it back.

  She needed to regroup and come up with a better game plan. Plying her new neighbor with baked goods had been an epic failure, but she could try again. And that pretty blue platter that held her cookies? That would be her in.

  With a wave and another broad smile she backed out the door and fled back to her temporary apartment.

  This was not failure, it was a tactical retreat.

  “Why didn’t you want to take that woman’s cookies?” Andie demanded the moment his mystery neighbor left.

  He ignored the question, instead asking, “How do you manage to make the word ‘cookies’ sound so dirty?”

  “It’s a skill, and you’re avoiding the question.”

  She was right. He was avoiding. Maybe it was because he felt an unfamiliar prickle of guilt at the way he’d made his visitor so uncomfortable. Not that he could’ve helped it, really. Becoming a jerk was just what he did when he met someone new. Particularly when that someone was a stranger with an agenda.