by Staci Hart
Pride and Papercuts
Inspired by Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
Staci Hart
Copyright © 2020 Staci Hart
All rights reserved.
stacihartnovels.com
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. This book 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 persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover by Quirky Bird
Editor: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing
Playlist: https://spoti.fi/3cZY7yr
Contents
Author’s Note
1. Loincloths and Leather
2. The Very Last Place
3. But Really, Though
4. Hereditary Insufferability
5. Tell Me How You Really Feel
6. Common Enemy
7. Inconvenient Truths
8. Party Like It's 1813
9. Hero Deficit
10. Ante Up
11. Imitation Superhero
12. Who Knows Better
13. Wishy Washy
14. Death by Chanel No. 5
15. Depends On the Stakes
16. Wait For It
17. Control
18. Hello, Goodbye
19. Gut Check
20. Point. Snip.
21. Professional Courtesy
22. The Blame Game
23. Blast From the Past
24. My Mistake
25. Evasive Maneuvers
26. Always a But …
27. Two Truths and a Lie
28. (Im)possibility
29. Wrong + Wrong = Wrong
30. Everything
31. The Sea and the Shore
Sneak Peek: Bet the Farm
Thank you
Also by Staci Hart
About the Author
Author’s Note
Many of us can claim our love for Jane Austen, but only a few of us are foolish enough to retell her stories.
I have taken some liberties with Pride and Prejudice, and I hope you’ll allow me to imagine the Bennet sisters as unruly men (less our Lizzie) and Longbourne as a flower shop in Manhattan. I hope beyond hope that you enjoy my nod to the Bennets and our dear Mr. Darcy, who we love so well.
1
Loincloths and Leather
LANEY
“How about Find-a-Fabio?” Cam asked, pulling a highlighted blond Fabio wig from the box.
A laugh bubbled out of me. “Fabio-and-Seek.”
“Where’s Fabio just doesn’t have a ring to it for a themed party. What about Hide-and-Go-Fabio?”
When I giggled again, she shrugged.
“I can’t believe we actually got the Fabio to come to Wasted Words. When he gets here and we make people find him in a sea of Fabio wigs, it’s going to be a riot. Let’s make sure we’ve got a good freaking seat for that.” She tugged on her wig and adjusted it blindly. “Is it straight?”
“Here,” I said, fixing it. “How’s mine?”
“You look absolutely ridiculous. So … perfect.”
I picked up one of the two giant boxes of wigs and headed toward the front of the bookstore with Cam in my wake.
When I’d started working at Wasted Words last year, the massive book bar instantly became one of my favorite places on the planet. My twin brother, Jett, was a manager here, and after talking it up for years, I jumped at the chance to run the social marketing here when presented the chance.
Cam and I had become best friends within five minutes.
She was a tiny thing with big glasses that somehow managed to look cool despite their size. Like most people, I found Cam impossible not to like—her propensity to make me laugh until my stomach stitched was a big factor. That she was technically my boss added to the appeal of the job exponentially. The access to all the books I could possibly read tipped it into Best Job Ever status.
“Think anyone will refuse to wear one?” I asked, adjusting my grip on the box of wigs.
“No wig, no entry.”
“Even for the ad execs?” I tried to sound enthusiastic, but the invasion of the ad executives who’d been brought in to manage the national expansion of Wasted Words put my job in a precarious position. Why use me when they had one of the biggest ad firms in New York on the payroll? If I didn’t end up phased out at some point, it’d be due to loyalty alone.
She snorted. “Especially the ad execs. If I don’t see Liam Darcy in a Fabio wig tonight, I might shrivel up and die. But I bet you ten bucks he refuses.”
“He can’t be that bad.”
“He has the bone structure of Adonis and the personality of Adonis’s marble representation in the Met. Darcy is the owner’s buddy. Plus, their ad agency is a BFD.”
“A BFD?”
“A Big Fucking Deal. Darcy I could do without, but his sister is a goddamn delight. Is it weird that I want to be her best friend?”
“For you? Not even a little. You asked her already to be your best friend, didn’t you?”
“Just because I asked you to marry me within the first four seconds of meeting you doesn’t mean I asked her too.”
I shot a look at her over my shoulder.
“Well, why’d you ask if you already knew?” she defended. “I can’t help it, Laney. This is just who I am as a person.”
“I’m trying not to be jealous, but you’re not making it easy.”
“Don’t worry,” she said on a laugh. “You’ll always be my number two.”
“I’d ask you to call me your deuce, but that’s not any less shitty.”
That earned me a full-blown cackle. “Sorry to imply that you, one of my favorite people, are excrement. I have a toddler. Everything seems to come back to poop talk these days.”
I dropped the box on the table at the door, where one of the cashiers, Ruby, started sifting through it.
“Anyway, I’m glad you’re going to meet them, since you’ll be working with them,” she said. “You’ll fit right in, I’m sure—so long as it’s not up to Liam Darcy. But he’ll warm up once he sees what you can do.”
“You make it sound like he’s going to oppose me.”
Cam’s dark brow rose with one side of her smile. “Don’t take it personal. I’m pretty sure Liam opposes everybody.”
“That’s comforting,” I deadpanned.
Cam addressed Ruby with the fire-engine red hair behind the table, “Free drink tickets to any guy who takes his shirt off. Fabio Freebies!”
“Even the chubby ones?” Ruby asked hesitantly.
“Especially the chubby ones. In fact, give those guys two for being good sports.”
“You got it, boss,” Ruby answered on a laugh, and we headed toward the bar, where several of our hottest bartenders were prepping for the crowd.
And what a mighty sight that was to behold.
Three gigantic, shirtless men in middle-parted, flowing blond wigs worked behind the bar, carrying ice buckets and loading liquor onto the shelves. Beau walked up with a crate of bottled beers wearing little more than a loincloth and a leather strap across his outrageous chest. Harrison dumped ice into the well in a pair of leather pants. That was it. Leather pants and combat boots, h
is pecs that outrageous shape that was not quite round, not quite square, but some strange in-between that made your fingers itch. Greg had donned a billowing pirate shirt, unbuttoned to the belt of his very tight, very black flat-fronted Victorian-looking trousers.
The three of them smiled at Cam in unison, but I didn’t hear what they were saying. There was just too much top-shelf man-titty on display for functional thinking.
I decided then that I was a big fan of Fabio night.
When I came back to New York a year and a half ago to help my family out, I had no plans other than to help save our flower shop, Longbourne. But now that the flower shop was on its feet again—and doing better than ever—Jett and I moved to the Upper West so he could get back to work managing Wasted Words, and I could start my new gig.
Honestly, I had no real desire to go back to a big firm, content to freelance, thankful for the freedom it gave me. And I wasn’t lying when I said they made it easy to work at Wasted Words. The book bar was the easiest thing I’d ever sold.
Somehow, I tore my eyes away from the trio and turned around, taking stock of Wasted Words. Once a warehouse, the high industrial ceiling was marked by a maze of exposed duct and pipework. Shelf after shelf of books stood proudly on one side of the bar, and on the other stood table after table of comics, graphic novels, manga—the works, everything from brand-new releases to collector finds.
When my gaze wandered back to the bar, the most unladylike snort ripped out of me at the sight of my brother.
Jett cut me a look, his blue eyes hard but always glinting with humor. “Don’t,” he warned.
I circled him when he approached, assessing his studded leather boots and fur loincloth. “Are you supposed to be Viking Fabio?”
“I’m not a Barbie doll, Lane.”
“Of course not. You’re a Ken, all the way.” I flicked the leather belt that crisscrossed his chest, eyeing his wig, which covered the inky-black hair all the Bennets possessed. “I don’t think I like you as a blond. It’s unnerving.”
“You’re dressed like Fabio, and I’m the one who’s unnerving?”
“Well, listen, Jett—if you can’t get a date in this”—I gestured to the entirety of him—“I don’t know that you ever will.”
He made a face. “I’d say thank you if you weren’t my sister.”
“Ha, ha.” I nailed him in the bicep hard enough that he winced. Or at least pretended to.
“Here they come!” Cam called over her shoulder as the line began to form at the door.
“Seriously. It’s singles night, and I’m making Cam find you a lady,” I insisted.
Jett rolled his eyes so hard, I couldn’t see the irises for a second. “I don’t need help finding a lady, especially not from Cam. A match made by Cam is the kiss of death. It always turns out exactly opposite from what she intends—the last girl I let Cam hook me up with ended up engaged to her ex-boyfriend halfway through the night.”
“Ouch.”
He laid a hard look on me. “I mean it. Don’t.”
I put my hands up. “Okay, okay, fine. I’ll do it myself.”
With a laugh, I dodged him when he tried to grab me, spinning away.
Jett was the last of my brothers to pair off. The other three were well on their way—one engaged and one married with the third married and expecting. Worse than that, Jett and I were the oldest. Dusty, old spinsters, if our mother was to be believed. If Mrs. Bennet desired anything, it was seeing her children married and breeding. She’d take breeding alone if given the choice between that and the alternative.
Thankfully, Jett and I had escaped her designs by moving a hundred blocks away.
Either way, Jett had been unlucky in love. In his case, I didn’t quite understand why—the guy was smart, funny, and cut like granite. He was well over six feet tall, with a sharp jaw, Roman nose, and brilliant blue Bennet eyes. He was handsome by societal standards—even by admission of a sister who got a little urpy at the sight of his nipples—he was straight out of the oven. But he’d always had trouble picking the right girl. He’d been railroaded and run around, too kind and honorable for anything less than trust as a given. As such, he’d been through a string of girls that I’d happily gouge the eyeballs out of.
He deserved real love, and he deserved happiness. That he hadn’t already found it was tragic.
Tonight would be the perfect night to change that. Everyone was ridiculous in a Fabio wig, and any girl who would make a fool out of herself for the sake of a good time had an automatic foot in the door, in my book.
And if I knew my brother at all, in his book too.
Within an hour, Wasted Words was stuffed to the gills.
Cam and I stood on the stage, where a DJ played Tina Turner’s “The Best” as a nod to the theme of the night—’80s romance.
Before us stretched a sea of luscious Fabios with drinks in their hands. Enough of the men had stripped shirts for their free drinks that there was also a healthy amount of skin, and they wore it well. The line at the door looked more like a mob than a queue, and was three-quarters women, looking to take a turn with the beefy bartenders and their dark smiles. The party was already a success, as our singles nights usually were. Cam’s knack for bringing the comic book nerds and the romance lovers together was uncanny, and she’d done it for three wildly successful years. Long and well enough that I was sure there were at least a couple of toddlers out there named after her.
She elbowed me in the ribs and pointed at the door. “There he is—Darcy,” she yelled over Tina Turner. “See for yourself.”
I followed the line of her finger across the crowded room to the door, and I felt the entirety of the universe lean in the same direction.
Toward him.
He was a vast darkness, a vacuum of power, and every molecule in the room raced toward him as if they were all his, simply by means of his presence. Tall and square-shouldered, a face lined by a jaw of stone, a thick crop of dark hair to match burnished, authoritative brows. He was an anomaly. An impassive animal confined by a suit of depthless black, eyeing the wig in Ruby’s hand with such quiet disdain, you’d think he was politely refusing a plate of fried bugs.
The girl at his side—a small thing with a wide smile and hair the color of sunshine—laughed with a playful air, tugging on her wig before hooking her arm in his. They were night and day, the light and the dark. The cheer and the sobriety. A juxtaposition, but somehow a whole. When he laughed at something she’d said, it was there in the corners of his smiling lips, that thread that connected him.
His sister, I realized. Or hoped.
Jett nudged me, and I jolted in surprise. “What are you gawking at?”
“Nothing. What are you gawking at?” I asked.
“At you gawking.”
Cam laughed and grabbed my hand. “Come on—let me introduce you.”
As she pulled me away, I snagged Jett’s hand and towed him along. Because if I was going to face whatever beast waited for me, Jett was coming with me.
We wound our way through the crowd and to the outer edges where they stood, watching everyone—her with a bright, smiling face and him with narrowed, suspicious eyes. Both looked wildly out of place in their expensive business wear among the blond wigs and naked beer guts. I tried to imagine Darcy in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and couldn’t fathom it. The whole of him stood in my mind like a paper doll in its skivvies with nothing to wear but a suit or nothing at all.
When we came to a stop before them, their gazes turned to us. Well, hers skipped. His sort of slid.
“Laney, Jett,” Cam started, “I’d like you to meet Miss and Mr. Darcy.”
“Oh, please—call me Georgie,” she said with a smile, sticking out her hand enthusiastically for a shake.
I instantly liked her and wondered if Cam would be mad if I asked her to be my best friend too.
Smiling back, I took that hand and gave it a good shake, mentally complimenting her solid and honest grip. “Laney Bennet.
Nice to finally meet you.”
“I was so disappointed not to get to meet you and your brother at the big staff dinner, but—” Georgie paused, her eyes shifting behind me and sticking there. Her face slackened, her eyes widening. “And who is this again?” She said it as if in a daze, and confused, I glanced over my shoulder to follow her gaze.
Which had locked on Jett.
I moved out of the way, a slow smile spreading across my face as I realized finding a lady for Jett might be easier than I’d thought. “This is my brother Jett.” Who wore an equal look of utter stupefaction on his face.
“Hello,” he said in a velvety voice I didn’t recognize. He offered a strong, square hand, and hers slipped into his palm, nearly disappearing when he closed his fingers.
“Jett,” she said, testing the word on her tongue. “Yes, of course. Cam just said that, didn’t she?”
His smile tilted. “She did. Nice wig.”
A nervous laugh tittered out of her, and she brought her small hand to her head as if she’d forgotten about it. “Quite a party you guys throw.”
“Any excuse to break out my loincloth.”
Another laugh, this one more relaxed, and with that, the two of them took a step closer to each other, then another, and with the last, we had been excluded from their conversation.
Suspicion wafted off Darcy as he watched our siblings, and the realization raised my hackles by an increment. But he didn’t intervene, just stood there with mistrustful eyes and his hands clasped behind his back.
