Verwandte Artikel zu Sex, Lies and Sensibility

Sex, Lies and Sensibility - Softcover

Payne, Nikki

 
9780593440964: Sex, Lies and Sensibility
Softcover
ISBN 10: 059344096X ISBN 13: 9780593440964
Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

“Nikki Payne skillfully spins the tale of a well-known Jane Austen classic and makes it entirely her own. Thoughtful, hilarious, and smolderingly steamy.”—Kristina Forest, author of The Partner Plot

Two sisters roll up their sleeves to run a dilapidated inn but must learn to work with the locals in this deliciously spicy novel inspired by Sense and Sensibility.

There’s never a good time to learn you are your father’s secret child—especially not at the reading of his will. With their father’s affairs laid bare and Nora’s sensible reputation in tatters due to a viral video scandal, she and her free-spirited sister have nothing left but a rustic inn in the middle of nowhere and each other. What’s more, they need to revamp the inn before Labor Day or they lose it all. Nora hasn’t even knocked the traveling dust off last season’s designer boots when she’s confronted with three problems: 

1. She really should have watched more HGTV.
2. She hasn’t seen another Black person for miles.
3. A tall, dark stranger has already staked a claim on their property.

Native Abenaki eco-tour guide Ennis “Bear” Freeman has seen hapless tourists come and go. When he spots two pampered city girls at his unofficial headquarters, he expects them to catch a flight out of the inhospitable coastal Maine backwoods within a week’s time. But Nora, turns out, is made of sterner stuff. And as she rolls up her sleeves to breathe new life into the inn, she unwittingly reignites a flood of emotions inside of Bear that he had very intentionally suppressed.

Their connection is electric, their desire palpable. But Bear’s silence about his mysterious past might turn out to be the one thing that sends Nora packing.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

By day, Nikki Payne is a curious tech anthropologist asking the right questions to deliver better digital services. By night, she dreams of ways to subvert canon literature. She’s a member of Smut U, a premium feminist writing collective, and a cat lady with no cats.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

TL;DR

October 1

What did it say about the sad state of her life that she was at her father's funeral, and all she could think about was her sex tape? Okay, it wasn't a "tape," but an infinite network of links that popped up right when potential employers were searching her profile. "Nasty Nora" still made the rounds seven years after her boyfriend posted it. But what really immortalized her was the freeze-frame shot of her grimace after her boyfriend asked if she'd finished.

People attached her face to all kinds of dubious truths:

Did you remember to defrost the chicken? Nora's face.

Do you like my new jacket? Nora's face.

Her mentions would calm down until someone rediscovered the meme's origin, and then the video would trend. Most recently, MBO did an explosive exposé on the adult industry and highlighted her video on the rise of amateur "disruptors." It was exhausting, which is why she had to get out of this dangerous crush of people.

This was a sizable crowd for such a private man. The enormous poster of him, positioned on an easel, looked more like a shrine to seasonings. A garland of thyme and baby's breath was draped elegantly around the photo. Her father had founded Dash of Love Seasonings right here in Maryland, so it fit that they would memorialize him with mountains of Old Bay, crab hammers, and hot sauce crammed like Tetris pieces on a slick wooden table. Nora searched her bag and huffed in victory when she found a salt-and-pepper packet from a month ago. She moved through the line and solemnly added it to the teetering tower. She swore she saw her dad's eyes twinkle. In this picture, he looked a lot like her little sister Yanne, with his sandy skin, smooth hair gelled back, and myopic greenish-brown eyes that kept her younger sister in prescriptions since she was five.

Her phone buzzed in her hand. Yanne, with an excuse.

Late. Like I knew she would be. Yanne had an infuriating habit of never being there when Nora needed her. There was always some poetry reading, love of her life, or social injustice that took precedence over everyone and everything else.

Slipping her phone down into her purse, Nora noted all the exits and bathrooms. Did she imagine the quick glances at her? The whispers behind funeral programs? She smoothed the black pleated crepe of her Balenciaga dress. It was the most expensive thing she owned. Her father had bought it for her when she'd won the women's hundred-meter hurdles at the Penn Relays. Right before he'd stopped talking to her.

You're drawing negative attention to yourself, he'd complained. At least a prostitute gets paid for showing her ass. The last time Nora saw her father, he was throwing hundreds at the floor demanding that she pick them up.

Nora had applied for a job that very day and sold her Land Rover for a Nissan. She'd almost sold this dress on eBay, but it was too beautiful. When she heard the news about his death, her anger lost its power. She'd tried so hard to be more than the girl in the video, but standing in the middle of these murmurs and stink eyes made her feel like she would never get away from that image of herself.

There was a time, pre-sex tape, when she would have welcomed the attention. No one would know it to look at her now-working at the CVS so she wouldn't have to talk to her father, obsessed with HGTV so she wouldn't have to fix anything real in her own life-but Nora had been lively, bulletproof, and bold. Back when she was semi-famous for her athleticism and record-breaking races, every step she took was the right one. She had even graced the cover of Track and Field magazine. It was easy to think nothing could touch her. The arrogance of a world-class athlete who thought her youth, strength, and money would protect her from the nasty parts of the world. But it didn't protect her from her father's rejection, his disgust. Even his funeral seemed like an indictment of her. She and her sister were not even on the flickering slideshow.

She didn't frequent many funerals, but this one seemed particularly strange. Everyone looked too damned good, for one. Everyone here, the high society of the DMV, treated the event like Easter Sunday-decked out in their best black, exchanging cards, and speculating on the price of her father's mahogany casket.

Were these her father's friends? How well-known was he? Nora had never actually thought to google him. Was he more than a dreamer with plans to move his family to some lobster farm up north? More than a punctual deposit in her bank account every Friday?

Who are these people?

She even saw the Beverly Bennett. Her mother's gossipy over-the-top girlfriend, who regularly screamed her daughters' net worth to the rooftops. Beverly Bennett patted her mother's back, and a ring the size of a traffic cone glinted on her finger. To think the relatively well-off Dash women used to buy handsewn dresses from those "poor Bennetts" out of pity. The world had turned upside down.

It was like someone flipped her dad upside down and shook him, and out tumbled all of these people she'd never even met. Somebody's nephew was playing an up-tempo high school marching band rendition of "When the Saints Go Marching In." Nora decided right then that there would be no upbeat numbers at her funeral. I want that shit sad. Not jazzy and vaguely sexy like this one. Even stranger, she and her mother, the chief mourners, were being aggressively ignored. No bereaved aunties and uncles coming up to her. No one gave them their thoughts and prayers or handed them lukewarm potato salad. Just Bev holding Mom's hand between flashing pictures of her granddaughter and speaking loudly over the band music. She knew her mother was not on good terms with her father's family, but this was downright cruel.

Nora felt a light tap on her shoulder and jumped a bit too high. She was terrified of that tap. That someone in a crowded room was going to squint their eyes and walk toward her. A man sucking his teeth, saying, You look so familiar. Have I seen you somewhere before? And, of course, the question was rhetorical.

Of course they had seen her. All of her. She used to blow kisses after every victory, soaking up the limelight draped in the University of Maryland flag. She couldn't take a wrong step.

Now, every tiny little action Nora engaged in always, always had outsize consequences. Which is why she liked to minimize her mistake footprint altogether. It was simple. No risky decisions equaled no traumatic mistakes. She was the poor kid in that If You Give a Mouse a Cookie book.

Here's what happens when you make a hot sex tape with your college boyfriend:

                1.            First, do not make a hot sex tape with your college boyfriend. He will be your boyfriend for three more months. Tops.

                And if you are incredibly ridiculous and say yes, don't be the supercool girlfriend when he suggests you put it online.

                Don't say, "Yeah, it's cool." It's a little sexy to be watched, right?

                It won't be sexy. It will only make you infamous in the DC-Maryland-Virginia area for an excruciatingly long time. You'll learn fast that you're not bulletproof.

                2.            Because of the morality clause, you'll lose your track scholarship. (You loved track more than you...

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Verlag
Penguin Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
059344096X
ISBN 13 
9780593440964
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
432
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