The New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal
Best-selling Beauty Series is now available in a single
volume.
BEAUTY FROM PAIN:Aussie winemaker Jack McLachlan and American musician Laurelyn Prescott agree to a three month relationship while keeping their true identities secret.
BEAUTY FROM SURRENDER:
A heartbroken Laurelyn Prescott returns to Nashville to pursue her music career and finds the success she’s always dreamed of. Jack Henry McLachlan spends three months searching for his beloved but their reunion doesn’t come easy. Will she be able to see beyond the glitz glamour and visualize a life that includes him?
A heartbroken Laurelyn Prescott returns to Nashville to pursue her music career and finds the success she’s always dreamed of. Jack Henry McLachlan spends three months searching for his beloved but their reunion doesn’t come easy. Will she be able to see beyond the glitz glamour and visualize a life that includes him?
BEAUTY FROM LOVE:
Life for Jack Henry and Laurelyn is beautiful until their post-wedded bliss is cut short when his dark past springs
Life for Jack Henry and Laurelyn is beautiful until their post-wedded bliss is cut short when his dark past springs
into their present happiness. He wants to shelter Laurelyn
but keeping her untainted by his previous life proves impossible when
yesterday’s sins insist on returning to haunt him. Will it be possible for them to
find happiness in their forever with a past like
his?
Beauty from Pain
Excerpt
Jack McLachlan’s POV
I sit in the dark corner and scan the room like a
starved predator searching for prey. I haven’t chosen her yet, but the woman
who will share my bed for the next few months is in this room right
now.
I watch a
lovely blond approach my table. “What can I bring you?” Hmm. A waitress—not at
all my usual taste.
I have a type.
Attractive. Mature. Refined. This barmaid meets the attractive requirement well
enough, but she’s void of refinement or maturity as displayed by her choice of
apparel—a white, barely there tank top and frazzled cutoff denim shorts. She
doesn’t do it for me. Plus, my last two companions were blond. I want a different
flavor this time, but no redheads. I want a brunette. A beautiful
one.
I remind
myself I’m not in Sydney where I have an endless variety of sophisticated women
from which to choose. My choices are more limited in the small town of Wagga
Wagga, but that doesn’t mean I have to settle for the first attractive woman I
see.
“I’ll have a
Shiraz.”
I’m prepared
for a more prolonged relationship this time—three whole months instead of the
usual three or four weeks. I’m looking forward to keeping this one around a
little longer, and that’s all the more reason to be certain I make a wise
choice.
I begin my
search of the club with the first table toward the front of the room. A
brunette beauty sits with a group of women. I watch her for a while, but decide
she’s too friendly with the woman sitting next to her. Lesbians aren’t in my
repertoire.
I spend the
next hour scanning the club and come up empty-handed. I’m discouraged. No one
stands out as the one and this club is by far my best bet for meeting single
women in this town. Maybe I should consider coming back another time when it’s
not open mic night. Tonight, the place is crawling with boozed college
students.
Tonight’s
search has been a failure, but at least the karaoke was
entertaining.
I’m finishing
off the last of my wine before I leave when an announcer from the club takes
the stage and asks for the next singer to step forward. A small group of people
across the room nominates one of its own. My view of the poor bastard is blocked
by the crowd of intoxicated kids standing between us, but I’m certain this is
going to be another delightful train
wreck.
The club
erupts into cheer and chants. “Do. It. Do. It. Do. It.” A young woman walks
onto the stage and stands with her back to the crowd as she lifts a guitar from
its stand. She lifts its strap over her head and then tosses her long brown
hair over one shoulder. When she’s finished settling the guitar into place, she
circles around and sits on the stool in the middle of the
stage.
She’s
beautiful. And somehow overlooked during my
search.
She’s wearing
a short ivory dress and a denim jacket with brown cowgirl boots. She bares her
thighs as she lifts her feet to rest on the bottom rail, but she’s careful to
push her dress between her legs so she doesn’t provide a peep show to the
crowd.
She strums the
borrowed guitar a few times and then leans into the microphone. “Is everyone
having a good time tonight?”
She’s
American. I think. Her accent sounds different—not like what I’ve heard in the
past.
The crowd
erupts into a drunken cheer and I hear a man’s voice yell over the crowd, “It’s
better now, sweet thing!”
She smiles and
adjusts the mic. “I’m not from around here. It’s my first night in Australia.”
“Leave with me
and I’ll make you feel right at home!” a man shouts from the back of the
room.
She ignores
the fat, ugly bastard yelling at her. “I don’t know what kind of music
Australians like, but this has been one of my favorites for as long as I can
remember.” She strums a few more chords. “This is ‘Crash Into Me’ by the Dave
Matthews Band.”
She sings it
slower than the original, putting her own twist on it. Her voice is raspy and
sexy, her eyes closed. She oozes eroticism. She tilts her head and opens her
eyes when she begins to sing the chorus. I swear it feels like she’s looking
right in my direction, singing to me. “Oh, and you come craasshh … into me. And
I come into … you … And I come into you … in a boy’s dream … in a boy’s
dream.”
The stage
lights shine in her face and common sense tells me she can’t see me sitting in
the dark corner at the back of the club, but that doesn’t stop me from
hoping.
She finishes
the chorus and shuts her eyes again. Her long legs bounce against the rail of
the stool to keep rhythm and I fall victim to her siren’s song. She has
bewitched me. And I want her. She’s the
one.
Georgia resides in
rural Mississippi with her wonderful
husband, Jeff, and their two beautiful daughters. She spent
fourteen years as a labor and delivery nurse before she decided to pursue her
dream of becoming an author and hasn’t looked back
yet.
When she’s not writing, she’s thinking about writing. When she’s being domestic, she’s listening to her iPod and
visualizing scenes for her current work in progress. Every story coming from her
always has a song to inspire it.
Representation: All questions regarding subsidiary rights for any of my books, inquiries regarding foreign translation
and film rights should be directed to Jane Dystel of Dystel &
Goderich.
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