The Butch and the Beautiful Read online

  Riptide Publishing

  PO Box 1537

  Burnsville, NC 28714

  www.riptidepublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All person(s) depicted on the cover are model(s) used for illustrative purposes only.

  The Butch and the Beautiful

  Copyright © 2016 by Kris Ripper

  Cover art: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm

  Editor: May Peterson

  Layout: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at Riptidepublishing.com, or at [email protected].

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-435-0

  First edition

  August, 2016

  Also available in paperback:

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-436-7

  ABOUT THE EBOOK YOU HAVE PURCHASED:

  We thank you kindly for purchasing this title. Your nonrefundable purchase legally allows you to replicate this file for your own personal reading only, on your own personal computer or device. Unlike paperback books, sharing ebooks is the same as stealing them. Please do not violate the author’s copyright and harm their livelihood by sharing or distributing this book, in part or whole, for a fee or free, without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner. We love that you love to share the things you love, but sharing ebooks—whether with joyous or malicious intent—steals royalties from authors’ pockets and makes it difficult, if not impossible, for them to be able to afford to keep writing the stories you love. Piracy has sent more than one beloved series the way of the dodo. We appreciate your honesty and support.

  Jaq Cummings is a high school teacher who really wants a committed relationship—as long as it doesn’t keep her out late on school nights or interrupt Sunday mass with her dad. She is absolutely not about to fall for the hot-mess divorcée she hooks up with, even if said hot mess pushes all her buttons. Jaq’s white-knight days are over.

  But one hookup with Hannah becomes two, then coffee, then more incredibly hot sex. And unlike most of Jaq’s exes, Hannah’s not looking for someone to come on strong. In fact, Hannah comes on plenty strong enough for both of them. But she’s just out of a disastrous marriage, she’s in the process of moving across the state, and Jaq can’t take a chance on yet another relationship where she defaults to being a caregiver instead of a partner.

  Just when Jaq decides her relationship with Hannah is far too precarious, a crisis with a student reminds her of her priorities and makes it clear that sometimes, you have to take big risks to get what you really want.

  About The Butch and the Beautiful

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Dear Reader

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Kris Ripper

  About the Author

  More like this

  I wasn’t hiding behind the topiary. People in suits this expensive don’t hide.

  I was trying to dodge Liz’s brother for the third time. He hadn’t caught me yet, but he eventually would, and I wanted to put that moment off as long as possible on this, the happiest day of Liz’s life. Or whatever.

  It probably would be the happiest day of her life. Liz had a sentimental streak the size of the Pacific. And she and Marla were deeply in love. Since Marla was only a little bit crazy, I was genuinely pleased for them, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be buddy-buddy with my co–best man all afternoon. He was going to ask me to fix everything he’d screwed up, while eyeing my breasts—just wait for it.

  If your ex ever shows up on your doorstep one brisk autumn evening, plies you with wine, and says, “We’re getting married, you’re the best man, and we’re doing everything ourselves,” run like hell. Obviously. Do not, whatever else you do, slosh more wine into your glasses and say something totally absurd like, “That is going to be amazing. How can I help?”

  My co–best man was actually supposed to be helping, at the moment. Oh god. What if he had screwed something up? I had visions of Bobby surrounded by torn tissue paper and massacred crafts. Fucking lesbian weddings. I had no idea why people were so into DIY. I’d hated arts and crafts in school, and adulthood made everything worse.

  “Jaq?” he called, edging into view. “I know you’re hiding!”

  Liz and I had dated off and on for five years. I should probably feel at least a little bit guilty about leaving wee Bobby in the lurch.

  I was on the verge of coming out of my, uh, lingering place, when a woman I’d never seen before walked up to him. In a stunning, intense, ocean-depths-blue dress that draped off her curves and flowed around her.

  “You’re Bobby, right? Liz said I should find you. I’m Hannah.”

  That was the other ex? I’d heard a lot about Marla’s ex, who was serving as maid of honor, but apparently everyone forgot to mention she was gorgeous. I ducked more completely out of sight and caught my breath. Then, utilizing skills learned over the course of watching many James Bond movies, I edged around the sculpted bush to see better. Did Hannah have a sculpted bush? I told my brain to take a break. By all accounts, Hannah was batshit, histrionic, and in the middle of a nasty divorce. She probably did have a sculpted bush, though. She was from LA. I think it was go sculpted or wax off down there, no exceptions.

  Bobby, clearly unsettled in the face of a hot woman, stumbled over his words. “Um, I’m not actually in charge—the person you should talk to is Jaq—”

  “Any idea where I can find her? Unless—if you don’t need help, I can just head back to my room.”

  I couldn’t let that happen, now, could I? All hands on deck.

  I strolled out into the open, you know, like you do when you have in no way been hiding from your former almost-brother-in-law.

  “Oh, hi, Bobby.” My voice, so very casual. I turned to the perfect stranger, whose name I didn’t know since I hadn’t been eavesdropping, and held out my hand. “Hi. I’m Jaq.”

  “Hannah.” Handshake: firm. Palms: dry. Nails: short, squared-off, French manicure.

  Batshit, histrionic, nasty divorce. Do not assess.

  “Good to finally meet you,” I said.

  “Jaq!” Bobby shifted restlessly from foot to foot. “I’ve been looking for you—”

  “Sorry, Bobby. Took a walk. What’s up?” I gave Hannah a pointed last look before turning to Bobby.

  “It’s the paper-bag things! There aren’t enough of them to reach all the way to the altar thing.”

  “There’re two hundred of them. I mean, it’s not that far.”

  Even at twenty-five he still looked like a six
teen-year-old wearing a suit too big for him. “We tried!”

  Who was “we”? Cousins? Nieces and nephews?

  “I’ll be over in a few minutes,” I told him, hoping he’d take the hint and skedaddle.

  “Fine, but it’s almost four—”

  Screw hints. I lightly shoved him. “Go on, baby brother. I’ll take care of it.”

  He sighed. “Why didn’t they hire someone to do all this?”

  “Hey, you’re preaching to the choir.” Another shove.

  “Yeah, okay. Fine.” He turned away, then looked back. “That suit looks really good on you, Jaq.”

  The eye-flick downward was only a second long. I shoved him a third time. Harder.

  “Get to work.”

  He grunted and took off.

  “I thought he was Liz’s brother,” Hannah said.

  “Well, they are both Asian.” I paused to see if she could take the ribbing.

  “I literally just thought that. Then I was like, shit, he could have been adopted or something. Or you could have. So should I shut my big mouth, or—”

  I have a few ideas for things you could be doing with your mouth. “He’s totally Liz’s brother. I’m just her ex.”

  “And I’m Marla’s ex.” Hannah offered a charming half smirk. “You know this means we have to have sex, right?”

  Damn. And yes. But damn.

  “Did I shock you? Sorry. I really should stop talking altogether. You’ll tell everyone I’m mute, right? Unless that’s totally ableist, which it probably is.”

  “I didn’t say I objected to sex.” Okay, obviously I should, but come on. Like, look at her. “Before we get there, though, we have to survive the wedding, and at the rate we’re going, I’m gonna have them recite their vows sitting in the car so they can drive away real fast. And that’s if I can find their car keys, and Bobby’s the last person who saw those.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Shambles might be an improvement.” I gestured to her dress. “Do you want to help, or—”

  “Or I’ll sit in my room rewriting my entire life. Lead me to the work.” The smirk reappeared. “I’m glad he’s not your brother. Or that look he shot at you would have been wildly inappropriate.”

  “What can I say? We met when he was a teenager. I think I ruined him for femme girls.”

  Her laugh was higher pitched than her voice and didn’t seem to fit anything else about her. She had the exhausted eyes of a wary fortysomething and the laugh of a teenager. She was probably in her midthirties, like me, and Liz, and Marla. It was kind of a miracle we hadn’t met before, but she and Marla had hooked up in college—or so I’d heard from Liz, who’d repeated histrionic three times during our conversation, as if I’d never been known to go in for a drama queen before.

  We took the direct route back to the “venue,” which, let’s be very clear, was a hillside. A hillside. With a flat area where the couple stood to get married, and another flat area where chairs were set out for everyone else. Folding chairs. Is it really a “venue” when you can set it up and take it down in less than an hour?

  I tried not to pay too much attention to the flashes of leg I was getting from Hannah as she walked beside me. Cheers to comfortable dresses that allowed for urgent wedding-catastrophe-related walks up hillsides.

  “I gotta get to the gym,” she muttered. “And stop smoking. God.”

  Damn it. Smokers. I hated kissing smokers.

  “I quit, you know. For six years. Six years.” She looked over, so I nodded, because it seemed like she needed some kind of validation about having quit—for six years. “I’m quitting again,” Hannah continued, as if I’d challenged her. “The second this divorce is final, I’m quitting again.”

  “How long were you married?”

  “Seven years.” She smiled wryly. “She’s the one who talked me into quitting in the first place, and believe me, I’m aware how idiotic it is that some part of my brain thinks I’m actually getting back at her by smoking again. It’s just . . . so fucking hard to stop.”

  “I’ve had some girlfriends like that. Bad for me and hard to quit.”

  “Exactly.”

  We finally reached the folding chairs, and it became clear that either we didn’t have all the paper bags for the luminarias, or we’d been shorted. And I didn’t think for a second we’d been shorted.

  “Oh damn.”

  Bobby looked up from where he was trying to adjust the spacing of the bags he had. “See?”

  Hannah shook her head. “What on god’s green earth are those?”

  “Luminarias,” I said. “Each one has rice and a glow stick in the bottom. Some of them have quotes printed on the outside.”

  “Quotes?”

  “A mix of Maya Angelou, the Indigo Girls, and k.d. lang.”

  Hannah covered her mouth, but a small giggle escaped. “You are kidding me.”

  I pointed to my face. “Not my joke face.”

  “They are such fucking lesbians. Really, they should write a handbook.”

  “Lesbian wedding of the decade. They’re also giving away plants.”

  “They are not.”

  I nodded solemnly. “If they had more money, maybe they’d be giving away Subarus. I could get behind that. Because who needs a plant in a jar that’s probably going to be dead in three days anyway?” I grinned at Bobby’s pained look. “Sorry, bud, but you know your sister’s the poster child for the enlightened dyke.”

  “Jaq . . .”

  “Fine. I’ll behave. Listen, are you sure you unloaded everything from my truck? You’re missing a box of luminarias.”

  “I’m pretty sure. I think. I mean, there was a lot of stuff—”

  He meant Your truck is pretty much trashed, so it’s possible I missed something, but I wanted Hannah to get the idea that he meant wedding stuff, so I interrupted. “I’ll go check it out. How bad is the reception area right now?”

  “Well. I kind of have the cousins on it.”

  “Kind of?”

  “They weren’t all that focused when I last checked on them.”

  “Bobby, you have to—” But he wouldn’t. Liz got all the do as I say in that family. I turned to Hannah. “So, you feel like whipping a bunch of teenagers into shape?”

  She laughed. “That’ll keep me from drowning my sorrows in nicotine.”

  “Unless it makes you smoke more. Anyway, follow Bobby. The hotel provided tablecloths, but we need to get the table with the plants set up, as well as a table for gifts, the receiving table with the book they want people to sign, and probably a bunch of other stuff I’m forgetting.”

  “And the wedding starts in two hours,” Bobby added.

  Hannah glanced around, eyebrows raised. “But where’s the coffee? You skipped a step.”

  I surveyed her dress. Definitely no pockets. And she wasn’t carrying a bag. I pulled out my money clip and handed Bobby a ten. “Get the pretty lady who’s about to save your ass whatever she wants, and me a large coffee. If there’s money left over, get yourself something too.”

  “Okay, Jaq.”

  Hannah inclined her head toward mine and murmured, “So obedient.”

  I shuddered. “That’s sick. And thanks for helping. Welcome to the family.”

  She laughed again. “I hope you make good on that welcome a little more personally later, Jaq.”

  I would have come up with something really clever to say in response if she hadn’t already been walking away. Because you can’t call out your clever comeback at the top of your lungs—that’d be weird. Plus, I had a job to do. An important one. Glow-stick luminarias were at stake. The entire wedding hinged on my finding the missing glow-stick luminarias. What if they’d been printed with life-changing quotes by bell hooks, or maybe Maggie Nelson? What if their absence changed the course of history because the exact person who was supposed to see that exact quote at that exact moment . . . didn’t?

  Or I could stand on the hillside all day rationalizing my lack
of clever comeback.

  I trudged down the hill, trying to remember the sequence of loading bins into the truck. I might have shifted things out of the way enough for one of them to get trapped under the seats. Possibly.

  That dress, though. And Hannah’s hair, pulled back in a braid, looked like it’d be wild and untamed if it wasn’t quite so controlled. I have kind of a thing for wild and untamed.

  Batshit, histrionic, nasty divorce, smoker, I chanted. Do not feed the animals, Jaq. Keep all arms, legs, and other body parts inside the vehicle at all times.

  The wedding came together. Doesn’t that always happen? Every wedding I’ve ever been a part of has had some moment of preceremony crisis when it seemed like it simply wasn’t going to go as planned, and every damn one of them turned out fine. Like there’s some kind of slightly sadistic wedding god who gets off on fucking with people but can’t bring himself to actually ruin weddings.

  I can tell when I’ve had too much wedding: I start coming up with deities and their tragic backstories. Wedding fever is a little contagious, and you don’t have to be interested in having one to catch it.

  The found luminarias, once distributed, lined the path to the altar. I set the cousins on breaking every single glow stick. Two hundred. Two hundred. Thank goodness Liz and Bobby had a lot of cousins. Hannah had organized the plant table and given me a look when I came down to see it. I wasn’t exactly positive, but I think the look translated to something like: Oh my god, lesbians./Who the fuck does this?/Actually, they’re pretty cute, shut up. But don’t quote me on that. It was just a look.

  We were damn hot together. The photographer couldn’t get enough of us, especially after the picture where Hannah squeezed my ass and I jumped. My shirt was a complementary shade of blue to her dress, and we had no problem stepping right up to each other.

  “If I’d been thinking more clearly,” she said through her smile as the photog snapped away, “I would have gotten two room keys so I could seductively slide one in your back pocket right now.”

  “I’d’ve probably thought you were trying to steal my wallet and dropped you with my jujitsu moves.”

  She laughed. That was gonna be a good picture too.