Baby and the Beast
Taylor Holloway
Copyright © 2020 by Taylor Holloway
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.
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Contents
About This Book
1. Isabelle
2. Isabelle
3. Isabelle
4. Isabelle
5. Isabelle
6. Isabelle
7. Connor
8. Isabelle
9. Connor
10. Isabelle
11. Connor
12. Isabelle
13. Isabelle
14. Connor
15. Isabelle
16. Connor
17. Isabelle
18. Isabelle
19. Connor
20. Isabelle
21. Connor
22. Isabelle
23. Connor
24. Connor
25. Connor
26. Connor
27. Isabelle
28. Connor
29. Isabelle
30. Connor
31. Connor
32. Isabelle
33. Connor
34. Isabelle
35. Connor
36. Isabelle
37. Isabelle
38. Connor
39. Isabelle
40. Isabelle
41. Isabelle
42. Connor
43. Isabelle
44. Connor
45. Isabelle
46. Connor
47. Connor
48. Isabelle
49. Connor
50. Isabelle
51. Isabelle
52. Connor
53. Isabelle
54. Connor
55. Isabelle
Epilogue
Auctioned to the A-Lister
Admit You Want Me
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Also by Taylor Holloway
Connor Prince is a beast.
He’s a rich, controlling, handsome ex-movie star with one dream left in his cold, godforsaken heart.
He wants a baby, and he wants me to be his surrogate.
I thought he was just a weirdly good-looking, grumpy hobo until he took me to his freakin’ castle and made me an indecent proposal.
The contract doesn’t actually look too bad.
All I have to do is hang out for nine months getting pedicures and massages while gestating his child.
I’ll even have a chef.
And I need the money.
My profession, making gory practical effects for horror and sci-fi movies, isn’t exactly a growth industry. Since my family is on the verge of bankruptcy and I just got fired and blacklisted for kicking a spectacularly creepy B-list actor in the nuts for groping me, this could solve all my problems.
But the castle ends up being a gilded cage, with Connor controlling what I can eat, where I can go, and what I can do.
He’s driving me up the wall with his growling, snarly crap.
Between pregnancy hormones, Connor pushing me to the limits of my patience, and the fact that he’s absurdly hot under the mountain man beard, frustrations are rising quickly.
The angry kind. And the sexy kind.
I’m beginning to suspect that a good man might be lurking under Connor’s permanent scowl, but I know getting entangled with him is a terrible idea.
He’s got demons and secrets, and I’m… what exactly?
I’m the girl with crooked pigtails and paint splattered overalls who makes badass blood geysers and werewolf puppets.
I deal in fake monsters. Not real ones.
I’m not the right girl for Connor Prince.
Which is really unfortunate because I might be falling in love with him…
‘Baby and the Beast’ is a sweet and sexy romcom featuring a bad boy hero and a quirky girl next door on a crazy road to happily ever after. It stands alone with no cheating, cliffhangers, or nonsense.
Isabelle
The Stranger
The sexy homeless man in the elevator with me dropped something.
I knew he couldn’t really be homeless; the movie studio I worked in was more secure than Fort Knox. But he kind of looked like he might be homeless. Tall, huge beard, giant muscles, hands like catchers’ mitts, dark sunglasses, hoodie pulled up. Transient chic. Or maybe fugitive chic. He was actually very attractive, with the high cheekbones and sharp jawline of a movie star under all that hair. Regardless, he definitely fit the type. And in Hollywood, we’ve got all types.
Despite the somewhat threatening appearance, he was probably just another actor waiting for his big break. He might have an audition for Vikings or something later in the week. Or maybe he just liked ZZ Top a lot. Or perhaps he was a part-time wizard. Like I said, all types.
“You, um, you dropped something,” I told him, picking up the pink leaflet as he stepped off the elevator ahead of me. He paused and turned around to stare at me imposingly.
“What?” The guy’s voice was as intimidating as his looks: low and growly. Luckily, I’m not easily frightened. Especially not on a day like today when I was running on empty and fresh out of fucks to give. I stared back at him, undeterred.
“You dropped this pamphlet for,” I paused, looking at it, “um, Orange County Surrogates?” My voice went high and questioning, turning the sentence into a question.
Huh. Weird. Did the mysterious bearded hot guy want to rent a baby mama? He didn’t look like the kind of guy who’d need an agency to get himself one…
I took a better look at the pamphlet in my hands. The service offered up young, healthy, educated, American women to bear children for the wealthy. They then paid these women between three and four hundred thousand dollars a pop. Dang. Baby making was much more lucrative than my job. Then again, I currently made zero dollars at my job. The bar was low.
“Thank you,” the man said, taking the pamphlet back from me. He seemed vaguely embarrassed to be carrying such a thing around with him. Or maybe he just didn’t want to talk to me. His big hand brushed mine and a little electric tingle shot through me. I told it to shut up. I didn’t have time to flirt with strangers in the elevator today.
“Is that real?” I asked him anyway. I was simply too curious not to.
He looked extremely surprised that I was engaging him in conversation. “Is what real?”
“That service,” I pressed him. “Is it real?”
He nodded, staring at me intently. I was getting the feeling that my attraction to him was not reciprocated. Was it the overalls? It was probably the filthy overalls I was wearing. Or maybe the fact that I’d braided my pigtails crooked.
“I’m in the wrong line of work,” I said, as much to him as to myself as the elevator doors started to close and separate us. I laughed. “I could really use that kind of money.” He smirked at me and I caught a flash of bright blue eyes over the tops of his sunglasses while the doors snapped shut.
But I didn’t have any time to dwell on those blue eyes or the possibility of becoming a surrogate for some poor childless couple. I didn’t have time for anything else because then the elevator doors were opening again.
Time to work.
I was a set designer’s apprentice, specializing in practical effects and props. I worked mostly on action and horror films, like this one, ‘Night Stalker.’ One might think that would mean that my job was creative, interesting, and fun. One would be only half right.
The other half of my job was r
outine, boring, and stressful. As an unpaid apprentice to my dad, I mostly served as a glorified gopher and adjunct carpenter, fixing and fetching. It wasn’t all bad, and everybody in Hollywood pays their dues somehow, but on days like today when anything and everything was going wrong, it was draining.
So far today (it was only ten a.m.), we’d had two disasters. The first was that our lead actor had inconveniently discovered a latex allergy, which was what his werewolf mask was entirely lined in. We’d asked if he was allergic in advance, of course, but he’d forgotten. Now he was all swollen up like a tick and spending the rest of his day in the hospital.
The guy we’d called in to do the scene instead—since after all it was under a mask—was on his way. Once we got him outfitted, we’d be able to continue shooting, but we had to rearrange a bunch of things. Disaster averted.
The second disaster was that my dad had an unexpected appointment pop up that was now conflicting with the puppet scene that we’d subbed in because we couldn’t do the werewolf transformation scene. He couldn’t operate the puppets because he had to sit down with some studio big wigs. I’d just been downstairs in my dad’s workshop making sure he had what he needed, but this all meant I was on point for the puppeteering in the scene.
“Where are the—” a production assistant wheezed at me, coming to a stop two feet in front of me and too out of breath to finish her sentence. It didn’t matter. I knew what she was asking about.
“The puppets are already in the shot.” I told her. “The controls are up their little puppet butts. I’m ready to start as soon as I get the controls.”
She nodded, turned, and ran back the way she’d come.
I trotted along behind her, smoothing down my paint-splattered overalls and praying to the puppet gods that the remote-controlled werewolf puppets behaved today. If practical effects were going to survive in the world of CG, we had to make sure everything worked right the first time. Otherwise the director would just wave his hand, say they’d ‘fix it in post’ and we’d be out another job. The future was scary for old fashioned practical types like me and my dad.
When I finally got to the soundstage, the director and all of the actors were already in position.
“I’m the substitute puppet mistress,” I announced to their collective relief. That was definitely a sentence I never expected to utter, especially not to Ashton Radley, rising Hollywood beefcake and co-star of Night Stalker, but whatever.
I was going with the flow today, and that meant using the aforementioned life-sized werewolf puppets to repeatedly menace and then eat Ashton Radley on film. I had a job to do. I either needed to do it or rock slowly back and forth in the corner. I’d made my choice somewhere between when I injected an EpiPen into a dude’s ass this morning and when my dad told me I’d have to do the puppets five minutes ago. All I needed to do now was deliver.
“Great,” the director said, oblivious to my inner turmoil. “Let’s get started.”
Isabelle
The Third Disaster
“Cut! That’s a wrap on the chomping scene. Everybody break for lunch,” the director announced. The entire soundstage collectively exhaled in relief. Especially me.
I dropped the controls on the puppets, feeling a sense of incredible, profound relief and achievement. Somewhere, the puppet gods were smiling down on me.
Ahead of me, Ashton Radley was also smiling. He sat up and wriggled out from inside the gigantic articulated Styrofoam jaw. He was covered in fake blood, but he still somehow managed to look good in a preppy, country club kind of way. I guess that was his job though, so it made sense. I personally felt he looked a little bit too much like a human Ken doll, but a lot of women like that look. I’m sure his bank account could attest to that much.
“Nice job eating me,” he said, coming over to stand next to where I was lying, concealed from the cameras by fake vegetation.
“Thanks,” I replied, accepting his offered hand of assistance. I maneuvered around the plastic ferns gingerly so as not to damage them. “Nice job getting gnawed on while screaming bloody murder for thirty minutes.”
That takes real talent, I said sarcastically in my mind. This guy might be pretty to look at, but he couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag. This movie was going to suck, and my incredible puppets were totally wasted on Ashton Radley’s sad little performance. They should have had a woman get eaten. We know a thing or two about faking our screams.
He simpered at me obliviously. “Why haven’t I seen you around before?” he asked, following me to the craft services table where a ton food was laid out and waiting. “Are you new on this production?”
I shook my head. “I’m not new. I’m just usually running around so fast that I’m basically invisible. I’m Maurice’s daughter, Isabelle.”
“Maurice Schmidt? The practical effects guy?” He looked shocked.
“That’s the one.”
“You’re his daughter?” He seemed to be having trouble digesting this information.
“Yes, I am. Also, his apprentice. Isabelle Schmidt.” I stuck out my hand formally.
“Well, nice to meet you, Isabelle. I’m Ashton Radley,” he replied charmingly. As in, he was obviously and consciously turning on the charm. And he clearly expected it to work, too. His grip on mine was weak. Like his game.
“I know who you are,” I said, pointing to the bulletin board where all the actors were posted with headshots and names so the crew could identify them. “You’re on the big board.”
He beamed proudly. “So, how did crazy old Maurice get a daughter as pretty and cute as you are?” He smiled at me like he expected me to swoon then and there.
I recoiled. Gross. Not this again. I’d been around Hollywood long enough to meet a few guys like Ashton before. Guys that expected a girl like me, wearing overalls and covered in paint, to fall all over myself to worship them. Also, calling my dad ‘crazy’? Big turn-off.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Genetics?”
I don’t think he was really listening to me at all.
“Do you want to come eat lunch with me in my trailer?” he asked, barely even bothering to notice that I was not eating out of the palm of his hand.
I knew what going to his trailer would mean. He wanted to fuck me. Or more likely, he wanted me to do all the work to fuck him. And then, after that was done, he’d probably forget about me. Hell no.
“Oh, no thanks,” I told him. “I’ve got work to do.”
I knew what he probably saw when he looked at me. A curvy, nerdy, glasses-wearing, frizzy-haired, size-eight girl in a world of anorexic, polished, size-two models and Instagram influencers. Plenty of men liked girls with my body type, despite what every media source except for Sir Mixalot told them to like. Plenty of men even liked nerdy girls. Or girls that wore glasses. But I got the feeling that Ashton liked girls who’d be grateful to him for his momentary attention, and I was just not on board with that at all.
He smiled winningly. The sort of smile that probably made more impressionable, suggestible girls swoon by the dozen. “Come on, Isabelle.”
“No really,” I told him. “I have to put the puppets away or they’ll get damaged.”
He frowned. “Can I help you? I’d like to talk. I want to learn more about the puppets.”
I blinked. “Help to put the puppets away?” It’s not like I had eight arms. I could use the help. Maybe I’d been wrong about Ashton, too. He wanted to talk? I could talk. Especially if it was talking about my puppets. I’d worked over a hundred hours making sure they were perfect.
“Yeah. Can you tell me more about them?”
Could I ever. “Sure.”
He flashed his movie star smile again. “Great. Lead the way.”
We walked back to the now deserted soundstage. I started to explain that we needed to fit the puppets into the molded plastic casings, but I wasn’t able to finish demonstrating the latching mechanism because Ashton grabbed me, pressed my shoulders against the wall and kissed
me.
I felt nothing. No, not nothing. Mild annoyance.
I pushed him away, grossed out and fed up. “Stop,” I told him. “I don’t want this—”
He kissed me again. Enthusiastically. This time he was gripping my waist instead of my shoulders. His uninvited tongue flipped against my closed lips.
My response was automatic. I saw red and I didn’t even think about it. I just kicked him in the balls. Hard. I’d taken Krav Maga in high school. It came back to me like it was yesterday.
Finally, in a performance that would make the director proud, Ashton screamed bloody murder. He dropped to his knees, cursing me and calling me a tease. I slapped him across the face for good measure just to cure him of that misconception. I wasn’t a tease. I wasn’t here for his entertainment at all.
“Don’t touch me!” I yelled. “What part of no don’t you understand?”
People came running from the other room and my stomach dropped.
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