Clean Slate

Clean

Slate

Holley
Trent

The Natural
Beauty Series

Shake Well

Accounting for Cole

Polished Slick

Clean Slate

Clean Slate

Daisy Mooring is queen of the boondocks dorks. Just ask
her ex-husband. Married at eighteen and divorced by twenty-two, the Carolina
girl is all washed up at quarter-life. She’s the resident wallflower at Natural
by Nicolette, and spends her days at the cosmetics company going mostly
unnoticed, quietly observing and leaving the talking to her loud-mouthed
mother. But when she accidentally blurts out during the staff retreat that
she’d marry a sexy foreigner so he could stay in the country, all that
attention she’d been shunning for so long catches up to her at once.

Ben Thys actually doesn’t need any help staying in the US,
but now that the pretty redheaded soap maker is on his radar, he can’t stop
thinking of the possibilities. The Belgian national could have the life his
American big brother has: the home, the friends, the job. A sweet little wife
would just be icing on the cake.

But Daisy’s been burned before by a man who claimed to
love her. It doesn’t matter if Ben could be the beginning of her fresh start if
she can’t clean her slate of the past.

***This book contains scenes of explicit sensuality and
adult language.***

Special thanks to “lastnerve” Val, whose winning comment
during my
All Shook Up
blog tour back
in August 2012 allowed her to name a character in this series.

I introduce
Elizabeth
in chapter five. Maybe we’ll
see her again in the future.

-HT

“If you think it would help, we could get married.”

The entire congregation of Natural by Nicolette staff
members clustered in the middle rows of the chartered bus laughed and laughed.
At least, that’s what it
seemed
like
to soap maker Daisy Mooring. She couldn’t tell precisely which of her coworkers
were howling at her expense.

She couldn’t tell
shit
.

Her pulse pounded in her ears, and her vision had gone all
spotty from mortification. At that moment, her body was an immovable
shell—not much more than a house for a brain that seemed to have lost its
reins to her usually leaden tongue.

There was a reason she was known as the quiet one. If she
didn’t talk, she couldn’t make an ass of herself.

She slipped over to the window, pulled her knees up to her
chest, and pressed her face against her legs with a groan. Her heart rate
slowed, and the blood flow to her head diminished just enough for her to focus
on the sounds around her. The laughter had died down, but the niggling
hyperawareness remained. The fine hairs on the back of her neck and arms stood
on end. She knew for certain she was being stared at.

They were right to stare.

The sound of cloth abrading bus upholstery beside her
prompted her to open her right eye.

Her coworker—well, boss, in a way—Trinity, had
slipped into the adjacent seat. The little blonde rested a hand on top of
Daisy’s right knee.

Daisy straightened up.

Trinity cringed. “Daisy, we’re sorry. We didn’t mean to
laugh.”

Daisy exhaled a shuddering breath and braced herself for
further insult.

“You rarely say more than two or three words at a time, so
we never really know what you’re thinking. For you to be thinking
that
… Well, that wasn’t something any of
us could have predicted would come out of your mouth.”

“Yeah.” Daisy rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms.
She put her head against the questionably clean headrest just in time to see
the bus zip past a green mileage sign on the right-hand side of the road.
Twenty minutes to Williamsburg. Twenty minutes until she could scamper away
like the cowering invertebrate she was and disappear into the theme park’s
brewery. She wanted to drown her sorrows with dozens of little sample cups of
beer and maybe, if she were lucky, fall into one of the brewing tanks to meet
her boozy death. Death by beer inhalation seemed a far more pleasant way to go
than dying of self-inflicted humiliation.

She didn’t even like beer.

Trinity gripped Daisy’s shoulder and gave it what was
probably meant to be a reassuring press. Trinity leaned in a little closer and
dropped her voice to a whisper. “He didn’t laugh. I think he was too stunned
that you said something. You never say anything. He probably didn’t know you
could talk.”

Daisy cringed. Dumb and mute. Exactly the reputation she
wanted.

Trinity gave her one more squeeze and retreated to her
row. She sat in front of Daisy and beside her boyfriend Jerry, whom happened to
be the elder brother of the Belgian man Daisy had inadvertently propositioned.

Ben had been in the US for about sixty-five days.
This
trip, anyway. She’d been counting. This
was his third trip, and the longest so far. He’d taken a leave of absence from
his job as a swim coach and was supposed to remain in The States until after
Trinity and Jerry’s wedding. Ben had become sort of an unofficial staff member
at the Natural by Nicolette headquarters, so it seemed appropriate the team
drag him along on their yearly retreat.

The entire staff and their sweeties were on the bus, with
the exception of Daisy’s mother—Francine. Momma had some business to tend
to, or at least that’s what she’d claimed. Daisy knew the truth. Amongst other
things, Momma had an irrational fear of heights, things that went fast, and
things that went both high
and
fast.
A theme park wasn’t her idea of a good time.

Daisy had tried to bow out, too, thinking such a trip
would be a wonderful way to show off the magnificent bounty that was her social
ineptitude, but the lady in charge, Nicolette, called “Bullshit” at her
headache excuse and manhandled her onto the bus.

Nikki was strong to be such a scrawny thing.

“Thanks, Nikki,” Daisy muttered to her knees as she
flattened her face against them once more.

* * *

“Are you coming with us, Ben, or are we boring you?”

Ben pulled his gaze away from the blushing redhead who
studied the theme park map display twenty feet from his seat.

She had her brow furrowed in deep concentration and moved
her lips as she read the map, tracing some pathways with her index finger in
search of…well, he didn’t know. Curious woman. She hadn’t said much more than
“Hello” and “See you later” to him in ten weeks, so of course her proposition
had taken him by surprise. She’d sounded so serious. Perhaps she didn’t know
how visas worked. She’d probably never left the country.

She tapped some dot on the map and set off toward the
rightmost path at a brisk pace, those long pale legs a blur in tan shorts. She
was a woman on a
mission
.

He couldn’t help but to grin. She wouldn’t be all that bad
to be married to, if he had been thinking about entering the state of matrimony
at all. He hadn’t been, and still wasn’t, really, but now she was on his radar.

In the ten or so weeks he’d been haunting the N-by-N production
barn, he hadn’t really made a study of her. She was a woman who worked hard, kept
her head down, and nose to the grindstone. She’d seemed oblivious to him, and
he wasn’t the kind of man whose ego was easily bruised by women who didn’t
smile and stare, and he suspected she wasn’t just playing hard-to-get. So, when
she’d called up the bus aisle with her offer, and he’d turned back to see that
instantaneous blush blooming over her cheeks, he’d frozen in a temporary
stupor. Not just because there was no good response for what she’d said, but
because he’d noticed for the first time that the face, shadowed by that hat she
always wore, was pretty.

No, not pretty.

Teenaged girls in pink lipgloss who wore ribbons in their
hair were pretty. Daisy, hiding herself under that god-awful scuffed-up
baseball cap with all that curly red hair framing her face, was
beautiful
. And there’d been some
touchingly timid quality about her faltering voice that had made his heart
break a bit.

Jerry snapped his fingers near Ben’s ear, and Ben cleared
his throat.

He turned his attention back to the occupants of the
wrought-iron bench, and eased a smile onto his face. “I’ll hang out with you
guys, of course, unless you don’t want to babysit all day.”

His elder brother shook his head and scrunched his face
into that
You are so lame
expression
he’d mastered in only a year of being in Ben’s acquaintance. Ben couldn’t
really be offended by it, because half the time Jerry was right.

“We’re not going into the tunnel of love, bro. We’re going
to ride roller coasters and consume a lot of empty calories. Tag along and Trin
and I will show you the best PG-rated debauchery America has to offer.” Jerry wrapped
one arm around his fiancée’s shoulders, and the other around Ben’s. “Maybe the
three of us can pose for one of those photo T-shirts—you know, the ones
with the fake graffiti and purple and pink hearts? Clara would love that shit.”

Ben laughed. It was true. Their mother
adored
kitsch. The kitschier the better.
Knowing her, she’d stuff a throw pillow into the shirt and sew up the edges to
create a new
objet d’art
for her
sofa.

Ben put up his hands, conceding. “All right. Roller
coasters, shitty food, and awful T-shirts. Let’s do it. Let’s take a look at
that map first,
ja
?”

“Why, wanna know where the kiddie rides are?”

They started an uncoordinated three-person hobble toward
the three-sided display.

“Funny. I thought I was supposed to be the joker of the
two of us.” Ben squatted and squinted at the green dot on the map Daisy had
been studying.

The brewery.

He grunted his surprise. He would have guessed she were
more of a cola girl. Maybe he had the redhead pegged wrong. Usually he was
pretty good about sussing out the wild ones…and avoiding them. For once,
curiosity trumped his sense of self-preservation.

“I have an idea.” He stood and pointed down the avenue
toward the intersection where the gardens gave way to shops and restaurants. “Let’s
get some lunch, then get sloshed.”

Trinity blew out a ragged exhale and rolled her eyes.
“That might take a while with the little cups they use. We might have to
upgrade to mugs. You two seem to have iron livers.”

Jerry gave her an indecorous goosing that set the serious
chemist off into a torrent of giggles. She swatted him away, and Jerry winked
at Ben.

Ben was used to the interplay by now. His first visit,
nearly a year ago, his brother’s relationship had been new, and the couple had
been much more private with their affections. By the next visit, several months
later, Trinity would kiss Jerry with people around, though her blush gave away
her discomfort at having the audience. Now, she seemed to enjoy the attention
for the most part, though there was the occasional grumble regarding Jerry’s
public groping. “Kids could see,” she’d hiss.

And Jerry would make some response like, “If the worst
thing a kid sees is a man being so enamored by his woman that he wants to touch
her, then the world has gone to shit.”

“The iron liver only applies to beer, pixie,” Jerry said.
Hard liquor I don’t filter so well. Remember that one Christmas? Anyhow, let’s
do the damn thing. You think that café has
wiener
schnitzel
? I think that’s just the right amount of grease to play nice with
the gallon of beer I’m going to drink.”

“You eat that and you’re going to barf. I’m not sitting in
front of you or beside you on any rides,” Trinity griped.

“Spoilsport.”

“One of us has to be a grown-up. Might as well be me.”

As the trio sat in the courtyard of theme park’s Bavarian
café eating overpriced turkey sandwiches, Ben tuned out the gentle banter of
his brother and future sister-in-law and watched the crowds filling the cobblestone
avenues around them.

Children raced through clumps of slower-moving adults,
shouting their excitement. Parents squinted at and deliberated over the order
of rides they escorted their charges to. Young couples strolled arm-in-arm in
no particular hurry.

These people—visitors at the park, just like
him—belonged in a way he didn’t. A way that pained him. They belonged in
this world, just like Jerry did.

The brothers had been unfortunate pawns in a love affair
gone wrong. One had been raised with their father in the US, the other with
their mother in Belgium. Jerry hadn’t known Ben existed until they were both
over thirty. Ben had always known about his brother, but held no hope they’d
cross paths. Jerry had his own life, and a full one, and so Ben thought there
wouldn’t be room in it for these Belgian strangers.

But, then Ben learned what kind of man his brother was.

Ben was just a hanger-on in his brother’s American world, but
a part of him wondered if there was a place for him in it, too. Not that he had
an aversion to his home country at all. It’d never been about that. He liked
Belgium. Belgium liked him. He loved his job coaching Olympic swimmers. He’d
never managed to earn a medal himself, but one of those kids—they might do
what he hadn’t been able to. Still, he’d leave that job in a second if to meant
he had a chance to stay in the US for this next season of his life.

That’s why Daisy’s outburst had stunned him. And, yeah,
sitting there on that bus seat he’d actually considered the proposition for a
moment. No more flying back and forth just to skirt around the visa
regulations? He could actually settle down somewhere besides Jerry’s garage
apartment. Maybe have a love affair with an American woman of his own.

“Isn’t that right, Ben?”

Ben startled at his brother’s voice, and turned to meet
Jerry’s dark blue gaze. “Um,
ik hoorde je
niet
.”

“Hold on.” Jerry closed his eyes and mouthed Ben’s words
repeatedly.

Ben groaned and tamped his sandwich parts into a tidy
triangle. Bad habit of his, speaking the language in his mind and not the one
the people around him understood. He gave his brother a moment to work it out
before interjecting. Jerry had been learning Dutch so his conversations with
their mother would be less stilted.

“
Hoorde
? Is that
hear
?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Jerry put down his sandwich and wiped his hands on
his napkin. “Trin and I were talking about Clara’s insistence on staying in a
hotel when she visits.”

“That, huh?” Ben shrugged. “She hates feeling like she’s
causing inconvenience.”

“It’s not an inconvenience, though,” Trinity picked up. “We’ve
got a big house, and besides, we’d like to see more of her when she’s here.
She’s a mystery to us.”

“Perhaps she still feels you won’t want to see her, Jerry.
She’s afraid you’ll push her away.”

Jerry forced a breath through his lips. “For fuck’s sake. Can
you talk to her? I know she wouldn’t say anything to me about it or even
initiate a conversation, but if it comes from you maybe she’ll believe it. We
want her to stay at the house and we want her to promise to attend the
rehearsal dinner. I know that shit’s going to be awkward, but I’ll do my best
to keep her and Kate separated.”

Ben cringed at the mention of their stepmother—also
Jerry’s adopted mother—whom his laidback brother was perpetually at odds
with. Ben understood why. Hell, he was at odds with the witch himself, and he’d
only known her a year.