Beauty and the Wolf Read online

  Beauty and the Wolf

  by Bridget Essex

  Synopsis:

  Even a beast can be beautiful...

  Bella has lived her whole life in the little town of Paris, Vermont. Her family's restaurant, the Rose Garden Diner, has been a point of pride...until they're forced to sell it. Unfortunately, the diner's buyer is Andrew, a cruel bully, and when he fires Bella's friend for stealing food scraps, Bella's had it up to here.

  But Bella's fierce loyalty hasn't gone unnoticed. Every day, a mysterious woman comes to the diner for lunch. Mel Grim enchants Bella, and when Grim makes her an offer she can't refuse, Bella goes to work for her.

  But it seems that everyone in Paris has their secrets, and Grim's secret might be the strangest one of all. Is their love strong enough to overcome the truth? Or are they destined for an unhappily ever after?

  "Beauty and the Wolf"

  © Bridget Essex 2017

  Rose and Star Press

  All rights reserved

  No part of this e-book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Rose and Star Press except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews. Please note that piracy of copyrighted materials is illegal and directly harms the author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication:

  For my wife, always.

  You're my home.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1: The Beginning and the Beast

  Chapter 2: The Firing

  Chapter 3: The Proposition

  Chapter 4: The Cold Meal

  Chapter 5: The Odd Welcome

  Chapter 6: The Argument

  Chapter 7: The Beast

  Chapter 8: The Fight

  Chapter 9: The Roses

  Chapter 10: The Moment

  Chapter 11: The Woods at Night

  Chapter 12: The Wolf

  Chapter 13: The Port in a Storm

  Chapter 14: The Second Secret

  Chapter 15: The Break

  Chapter 16: The King of Roses

  Chapter 17: The Dance

  Chapter 18: The Truth

  Chapter 19: The Thing About Stories

  Chapter 1: The Beginning and the Beast

  “Heads or tails?”

  “What are we flipping for this time, Pam? A pay raise?” I tease, shifting the collection of dirty plates on my tray so that they're better balanced. Lunch hour is at its peak, and the hum of laughter and energized conversation in the diner is rising to a roar.

  “No. Like we're ever getting one of those!” Pam wrinkles her nose and snaps her gum, glancing off toward the kitchen.

  I laugh humorlessly.

  We're both acutely aware that Andrew—leading contender for the worst-boss-in-history award—isn't ever going to give us a raise; it's a common topic of conversation between the two of us.

  Pam shakes her head of auburn curls and stabs a fuchsia-colored fingernail in the direction of the far corner, a frown souring her pretty face. “No,” she repeats, “we're flipping on who gets to serve the Beast this afternoon.”

  “Pam...” I sigh the most withering sigh that has ever been sighed before I angle a glare at my best friend. “Come on,” I mutter, stepping closer to her; I don’t want our customers to eavesdrop. “We talked about this. It’s rude. I mean, honestly, what if she heard you? And would you like to be called a beast?”

  Pam crosses her arms defiantly and sticks her nose in the air. “Frankly, I don't know what else to call her,” she sniffs. “And unless you can come up with a better nickname, it's going to be the Beast from now 'til eternity.”

  Pam's least favorite diner's name, obviously, isn't really “the Beast,” but we don't know her real name. We should know it by now. This customer has, after all, been a frequenter of the Rose Garden Diner long enough to stake a claim to the little wobbly table in the back. She comes in to eat twice a day, every day, and has for about a month now, like clockwork. Unfortunately, also like clockwork, she’s annoyed the heck out of Pam—for reasons I can't quite grasp.

  I peer around the partitioning wall and there, seated at the very last table, as usual...is “the Beast.”

  Granted, Pam is straight, so when she looks at our mysterious lady customer, she probably doesn’t experience what the kids these days are calling “feels.” But me? Yeah, I kinda do.

  Don’t get me wrong—I’m as lesbian as a Dinah Shore weekend, but I don’t find every single lady in the whole world attractive. I mean, we've all got a type, right? And my type is the long, lean, slightly rugged (wearing cowgirl boots is always a plus) lady with a smoky voice, a smoldering eye, and a swagger that makes your heart forget to beat.

  So, full disclosure, I gotta say this: I think our new customer is approximately as hot as hell. Or as hot as the surface of the sun, depending on your religious beliefs.

  The nameless diner has these cheekbones that Lucy Effing Lawless would be jealous of (actually, I take that back: Queen Lucy is too awesome to be jealous. May she live forever and star in a thousand more episodes of Xena, including the reboot. Don’t get me started on that...). And she's taller than me by a few inches, and...well, there's something about her that's powerful-looking.

  I mean, she's got the kind of build that suggests she has a lifetime membership to a gym—and actually uses it. She's muscular, the slope of her shoulders something glorious; I can't help but stare. (I don't think she's ever caught me staring, thank goodness. I try my best to be discreet.)

  She has short, blue-black hair that often drifts in front of her eyes, the forward-falling strands cut just below her chin. Her hair shimmers beneath the dusty bulbs of the diner.

  And—last I checked—those eyes? They're the definition of smoldering. They're this weird amber-brown color that looks golden in the right light; when she glances at me, my insides melt. And don't even get me started on her mouth. Okay, well, if you insist... Her mouth is full, sumptuous, her lips typically pursed in a soft frown, as if she’s thinking about something deeply, diving down through all of the layers to find the truth of the matter.

  To be perfectly clear: the frown makes her look sullen, brooding, and hot.

  It might be obvious by this point that I have occasionally swooned over this particular woman. Yeah...once or twice. She gives off serious lesbian vibes—little rainbow waves emanating from her pores—and I'm really into the strong, silent, mysterious, brooding type. That's always been the sort of woman I fall for, the sort of woman I date...and, eventually, break up with.

  So that’s the problem. Notoriously, being in a relationship with my type hasn’t worked out well for me. I’ve found that, in the end, strong usually translates to arrogant, silent to sullen, mysterious to closed-off, and brooding to, well, asshole.

  I don’t know the Beast (er, Nameless Customer), though. I don't know her personality, her story. So when I glance her way, she still represents pure, potent possibility. She represents a relationship that might actually work out.

  And she’s going to continue to represent that possibility, because, rainbowy vibes notwithstanding...I’m just never going to go after her.

  I'm a coward. Heck, lately I haven’t been brave enough to order takeout from the new fast food joint that just opened up on the edge of town. And that means I'm not even close to being brave enough to date anyone new right now.

  And I’m sticking to that resolution.

  Besides, the Beast is an enigma. (A sexy, sexy enigma.) We might be total opposites. Totally incompatible. I know nothing about her
other than the fact that she’s as hot as our Fire Alarm barbecue sauce, and that she broods over a cup of coffee roughly twice a day.

  But Pam... Pam seems to know a thing or two about her. Things she hasn't shared with me.

  “Hey, what's your beef with her, anyway?” I ask Pam, stepping closer to her so that I can whisper.

  Pam wrinkles her nose, shrugging uncomfortably. She doesn’t even need to think about it. “She eats her meat practically raw.” Pam begins to tick her reasons off on her fingers. “She frowns too much. And she won't speak to me. Like, she doesn't say a damn thing! Well, okay,” she snorts, when I raise my brows disbelievingly, “sometimes she tells me 'thank you,' but mostly, she's just a moody jerk.”

  I frown a little, glancing around the corner at the Beast again. Her head is bowed, and her amber-colored eyes are focused on the newspaper opened in front of her, her mouth pursed in a thin, hard line.

  “Just because she doesn't say much doesn't mean she's a jerk,” I tell Pam reproachfully, narrowing my brows to indicate that I'm stating the obvious. “I mean, we've been through this, Pammie.” I aim my chin over my shoulder, back at the counter where Old Jeb is sitting, taking small forkfuls of apple pie into his mouth and staring straight ahead. His dirty baseball cap hangs low over his eyes. He’s a walking, talking stereotype—light on the talking. “Old Jeb never speaks. You just know he wants pie a la mode, and you don't expect him to do anything but grunt at you.”

  “Well, I know Old Jeb, have for years,” Pam argues flippantly. Than her frown deepens. “Look... There's just something about her, okay? Something I don't like.” And then Pam's rubbing the back of her neck, actually shivering a little.

  I stare at my best friend, perplexed.

  “She gives me the creeps,” Pam finally admits, arching a brow. “There, are you happy? The Beast gives me the creeps. Like, Saw-level, deep-seated, complete-and-total creeps, and I just don't want to deal with her today, okay? I've got a headache and...” She trails off and regards me with large, hopeful eyes.

  I tilt my head at her. My shift is going to be up in a few minutes. But I don't think Andrew would notice if I stuck around just a little while longer. I sigh and nod to my best friend, positioning my tray on my other shoulder.

  “Just for you.” I give Pam a little grin. “Sure, I'll serve her.”

  “Thanks. I owe you some pudding, kid.” She winks at me, and then she's skirting the edge of the counter and heading toward Old Jeb, who looks as if he might want another slice of pie—something he would never actually ask for. But he’s got that pie-look to his eyes.

  Yes, there is a pie-look.

  Sometimes, waitresses just know things. Call it waitress-intuition. That’s why it’s kind of weird that the Beast gives Pam the creeps, because to me? She's never been anything but nice. I haven't gotten any weird vibes from the woman at all.

  I empty my tray of dirty dishes on the rack and then turn toward the back hallway, tucking my tray under my arm, ready to ask the Beast what she’d like to order—even though she always orders the same thing. Hey, you never know when people are going to shake things up. But I stop in my tracks when I spot a small group of people coming into the diner.

  Oh, no.

  It's Betty and her kids.

  I bite my lower lip nervously, and my stomach sinks.

  So, it’s common knowledge around town that my dad used to own this restaurant. The Rose Garden Diner was our family business going back three generations, and we all loved it; we worked hard to make it succeed. That was before Dad got sick, of course, and before he was forced to sell the place. All of my growing-up years, many of my happiest memories...sold to the highest (and only) bidder.

  The day that Andrew bought the diner was one of the saddest days of my life—second only to the day that I lost my mom, and the day that my father was diagnosed with lung cancer.

  I sigh, and my eyes flick over the tables, the counters, the linoleum-covered floor. I grew up here. One of my earliest memories is of handing a menu to a little old lady—whose name I can’t remember anymore. I would draw pictures in crayons on the paper place mats. I learned to walk here, toddling down the narrow aisles. Nearly every major milestone of my life took place between these comforting dark red, grease-spattered walls.

  It was always pretty much understood that I would run the diner once Dad retired, but after his health failed, we realized that our insurance wasn't so great, and the medical bills kept piling up. We needed money fast. So we had to sell our family legacy to Andrew, the only person who was in the market to buy, and he offered us half of our asking price.

  As I've mentioned before—and will probably mention again—Andrew's a first-class asshole. Let me figure out how to accurately describe him...

  Okay, I've got it.

  Remember that big dumb jock guy in school who would make fun of everyone and grope all of the girls, as if it was his right to do so? Yeah, you know the one. Most people pretended to worship him because he was such a bully that they didn't want to risk getting on his bad side.

  Imagine that guy grown up, raking in a hefty inheritance, and becoming even more insufferable as he reaches the conclusion that he is God's gift to the world. Now imagine him trying to turn tiny Paris, Vermont, into his own little empire, buying up every property and business he can to make sure everyone in town knows that they owe him for keeping the town alive. Fun fact: in his spare time, he enjoys canned hunting—traveling overseas to shoot a corralled wild animal point-blank, and then posing with his gun beside his sad, bewildered kill, a shit-eating grin on his face. He'd probably hang the heads of his taxidermied victims in the diner if it weren't against health regulations.

  Everything bad in the world, wrapped up in one bad-cologne-scented package: that's Andrew.

  I used to have this solid rule in my life that I would never apply the word hate to any of my fellow human beings... But I kind of hate Andrew. I know I should be grateful to him—after all, it's because of him that my father was able to undergo treatment for his cancer so quickly—but I just loathe the man.

  After he bought the diner, Andrew—out of the “kindness” of his “heart” (frankly, I doubt that he possesses that particular organ)—allowed me to continue working here, but only if I agreed to a criminal pay cut. And he reminds me every single day that he “won't do me any favors,” and that I have to work just a little bit harder than everyone else to prove that I belong here, because, after all, “there are no free rides in life.”

  Yeah. The guy's a peach.

  A rotten peach.

  Crawling with worms.

  Anyway, back to the woman who just walked through the diner door—Betty. She used to work with me here, started the job right after graduation. We were friends in high school, and my dad hired her because she really needed a job, but also because she's a nice person and a super waitress. She's warm, genuine, kind, and everyone who frequented the diner loved her to the moon and back, and they tipped her to prove it.

  The thing is, Betty got pregnant when she was eighteen, and her jerk boyfriend ran out on her, left for Boston and disappeared, so she was stuck with the kid all alone, with no one to help her make ends meet. Her parents—crappy people—wanted nothing to do with her after she got pregnant out of wedlock; they refused to offer any support for the baby.

  So, Betty got by on her own. Soon enough, she found herself pregnant with a few more kids. And she continued to be the nicest person you could ever meet; she just had really bad luck with guys, but she never let that get her down. She loved her children fiercely, and she took care of them, fended well for herself. She was stronger than anyone else I knew—still offering a kind smile to everyone, never letting the hardships of her life make her bitter.

  She kept working here at the diner after Andrew bought it, because why wouldn’t she? Even he could tell that she was excellent at her job; all of the regulars loved her as if she were their own daughter. So, everything carried on for her exactly as it had
before—that is, until one day a few months ago.

  Andrew happened upon Betty in the kitchen, scraping leftovers off of one of the diners’ plates into a to-go box to take home to her kids.

  Think about that for a second: she was, essentially, taking trash home, because she needed it, because her kids were hungry. Trash that would have, otherwise, been thrown away. But Andrew chose not to see the situation that way. In fact, the moment he spotted her, he blew up (I had the great misfortune of being present), and he screamed over and over again that she was “stealing” from him.

  I don’t think I need to tell you how ridiculous that claim was. Just like every other restaurant on the planet, we always toss out all of the food left on our customers’ plates. It's of no use to us. It's already been paid for. It's garbage.

  But Andrew—in his “infinite” wisdom—had gotten it into his head that Betty was a thief. And there was no changing his mind.

  And, just like that, he fired her.

  To recount the matter in plain English: he fired her for taking food scraps home to feed her hungry kids.

  Yeah, like I said, Andrew is the worst boss/person/living being ever.

  I...have no words to describe how angry Betty's firing made me. I argued with him. I nearly lost my job because of how vehemently I railed against the stupidity of his decision, but there was absolutely no moving Andrew. He wouldn’t back down, wouldn't reconsider, not even when all of the diner's waitresses threatened to walk out on Betty's behalf. We're family here, and we hoped Andrew would pick up on that.

  But he didn't. Or, more accurately, he didn't care.

  And he called our bluff. There are very few employment opportunities in Paris, Vermont. It's the definition of a small town, stuck smack dab in the middle of nowhere, and Andrew knew we were held captive to our damn jobs...

  So, in the end, our protest fizzled, and Betty stayed fired.

  But...there's more than one way to butter a biscuit. I stewed about Andrew's actions until I was so angry that I just couldn't take it anymore. I was going to explode. And maybe it was foolish of me; I need this job, after all.