Couture Love Read online

  Couture Love

  MJ Fields

  Contents

  A Timeless love novel

  Disclaimer

  Dedication

  Untitled

  Synopsis

  Playlist

  Chapter 1

  2. Autumn

  3. Autumn

  4. Eric

  5. Autumn

  6. Eric

  7. Autumn

  8. Eric

  9. Autumn

  10. Eric

  11. Autumn

  12. Eric

  13. Autumn

  14. Eric

  15. Autumn

  16. Eric

  17. Eric

  18. Eric

  19. Autumn

  20. Eric

  21. Autumn

  22. Eric

  23. Autumn

  24. Eric

  25. Autumn

  26. Eric

  27. Eric

  28. Eric

  29. Autumn

  30. Eric

  31. Autumn

  32. Eric

  33. Autumn

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by MJ Fields

  Acknowledgments

  A Timeless love novel

  By

  MJ Fields

  Couture Love

  Timeless Love, Book 4

  Copyright (c) MJ Fields, 2019

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of MJ Fields, except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  1st Edition Published – Blue Valley Publishing, LLC.

  1st Edits – C&D editing

  Proofing by – Asli Arif Fratarcangeli

  Line Edits and Proofing by – Donna Cooksley Sanderson

  Disclaimer

  This book contains mature content not suitable for those under the age of 18. It involves strong language and sexual situations. All parties portrayed in sexual situations are consenting adults over the age of 18.

  Dedication

  To all those who love pretty things,

  I give you the stars.

  Go ahead, take them.

  XOXO

  MJ

  ( And to Taylor Swift )

  Untitled

  Play List

  Synopsis

  What happens at De La Porte’s annual Labor Day weekend party in the Hamptons—

  never stays in the Hamptons.

  After my marriage to my high school sweetheart ended, I made a list of all the things I “desired” the next time around. After all, marrying for love had failed me. One year single, and I had all the love I needed in an amazing career and great new friends — the ex got the old ones in the divorce. I was only lacking in one department …

  Playlist

  Our Song – Taylor Swift

  Hey Stephen – Taylor Swift

  Mean – Taylor Swift

  22 – Taylor Swift

  The Story Of Us – Taylor Swift

  I Knew You Were Trouble – Taylor Swift

  We Are Never Ever Getting Better – Taylor Swift

  Delicate – Taylor Swift

  Send My Love- Adele

  Love Song – Adele

  Ready For It- Taylor Swift

  Like I’m Gonna Lose You – Meghan Trainor

  Autumn Leaves – Ed Sheeran

  One

  Eric

  Stepping out of my black Land Rover Sport and onto the sand covered pavement outside of The Sound, I look up at the clear evening sky exploding with a million stars. Then I stretch the stiff muscles of my six-foot two frame that has been folded behind a steering wheel for nine hours.

  I made good time from my new place in North Carolina. Hell, I’m a day earlier than I expected. This means I have a night to myself before I have to plaster on a smile, shake hands with people I don’t know, or worse, people I do know and can’t stand.

  Home sweet fucking home.

  I laugh haughtily to myself when I see an abandoned, red convertible BMW, not a four-wheel drive vehicle, parked just past the dunes on the beach. A beach that is peppered with signs that clearly state, ‘Do Not Drive On The Beach.’

  A law.

  The Hamptons in the summer. Playground to the rich and famous, and some of the biggest douchebags in the world.

  I pat the back pocket of my shorts, checking for my wallet, as I hit the lock button on the key fob before I venture inside to grab a drink.

  This may be a place where the rich and famous come to relax, but just because they’re rich and/or famous doesn’t make them subhuman or righteous. I’ve lost my fair share of personal belongings from my vehicle or those left on my beach towel over the years from people who just can’t keep their hands to themselves or off others’ belongings.

  Even those closest to you sometimes think what’s yours is theirs.

  Not the fucking case, yet here I am.

  Walking in through the double doors, I see familiar and unfamiliar faces, drinking and dancing to the songs of the three-piece beach band playing covers on the outdoor deck.

  Labor Day weekend, and everyone’s whooping it up before heading back to the city or back to the reality of a three-piece suit or sensible heels and a job they hate yet affords them a lifestyle that most people blindly think would make them what they’ve been led to believe is successful.

  Not me. I don’t want this shit. I want normal … whatever the fuck that is.

  I stall momentarily to take in the crowd, to find the people I left less than a month ago who seem to never have departed. All of them living their lives on trust funds or off the backs of others’ hard work. All of them oblivious to anything outside of their day-to-day lives. Lives wasted siting behind a bar or behind the lenses of a cellphone camera where they’re quick to snap a pic of them with their tanned bodies and toothpaste commercial worthy, whitened teeth, drinking a beer some aren’t old enough to even have in front of a slew of others doing the same thing with a hashtag #workhardplayharder.

  Please, motherfuckers, you haven’t worked a day in your life, is always my thought as I lie in bed, mindlessly scrolling when sleep evades me.

  But who am I to talk?

  I’m one of them.

  I’m an entitled, rich asshole who could choose to do nothing at all significant with my life and still have this lifestyle, the American dream. This life of bright smiles and bromances. A life of different pieces of sweet perfumed and perfectly groomed pussy every damn day if I wanted.

  I’m all about friends, money, and who doesn’t enjoy fucking?

  I enjoy them all immensely.

  But I need more.

  More than being an entitled bastard on a goddamned silver leash, held by a man who also happens to be on a gold leash, seized by an asshole who easily forgets he’s playing bitch to the man yielding a platinum leash, toying with him … because he can.

  In my moment of detesting those around me, those who I have no reason to feel bitter about, because they are like me, something happens. I hear an almost whimsical laugh. Not one with the force of a man stroking the ego of one with a bigger dick or wallet. Or from a woman who is trying to sound cute so she can get under a man other than the one who can’t satisfy her anymore.

  The laugh … it’s honest, real, unforced … completely natural. The kind of laugh that makes you wish you heard the reason beh
ind it or, better yet, caused it yourself.

  I allow myself to look left and search for the something strange in a room full of completely predictable, and my eyes fall on the back of a woman in a thin, flowery, multicolored dress, who’s thick, brown, highlighted hair is tossed back as she laughs at Toad Simmons, an arrogant fuck who owns one of the art galleries in town. He looks at her in confusion; his face even turns red. It’s comical.

  I need a closer seat to this shitshow.

  I slowly make my way through the crowd, intentionally avoiding familiar faces, which is impossible unless it’s summertime.

  Thank God it is.

  As I get closer, I watch as she raises her delicate hand and note there is no wedding ring before she waves it flippantly, shooing him away, then turns her back to him.

  Burn.

  His face is now crimson, accepting defeat, as he turns and walks away, leaving the barstool next to her vacant.

  Perfect.

  She doesn’t even look over as I sit down beside her.

  As the bartender, thankfully one I don’t know and, more importantly, have not fucked, walks past her and toward me, she reaches her hand out and snaps her finger to grab her attention. “I know I may not look like someone who is gonna slap down a black card and leave a tip the size of old Frog’s ego”—she thumbs over her shoulder toward who she thinks is Toad, but is me—“and I’m sure I also don’t look like a camel, so could you kindly get me a glass of champagne or your manager before I die of thirst?”

  Jesus Christ, her voice is sexy, though her confidence is even sexier.

  The brunette bartender looks at me, annoyance evident, and then turns back to the sexy woman with the amazing curves, magnetic laugh, and confidence that’s almost unseen in these parts. “What can I get for you,” she pauses and plasters on a smile as plastic as her C cups, “Ma’am?”

  “How about we start with a glass of champagne?” She shoots her a mirrored smile, and I can’t help laughing.

  Her back stiffens as she looks to her opposite side, where another woman sits. She’s a bit older but beautiful as well.

  There’s something about older women, ones who don’t reek of old money and attitude. Women that I’m not used to being around, and now find wildly … alluring.

  She turns farther around, putting her back to me completely, as she sets her hand on the curve of her hip and shakes her head. “Ang, did I not just tell the frog to jump off my lily pad and find someone else who’d buy into the line he was tossing around?”

  The woman, Ang, smiles softly at her before she looks over her shoulder at me.

  I hold my finger to my lips, motioning for her to shh… and wink.

  Ang smiles and looks back at her as I stand and place my hands on the sexy woman’s shoulders.

  Her body stiffens under my touch, and Ang just smiles and raises an eyebrow at her.

  “You ever hear the story about the princess kissing the frog and him turning into a prince?” I ask.

  Her back stiffens even more. I like it.

  Ang nods at her as she stands and says, “You dish out advice all day long, Autumn; I suggest you start practicing what you preach.”

  Autumn, my favorite season, I think as she retorts, “How strongly?”

  Ang laughs. “On a scale of wine coolers to Jack Daniele’s?”

  Autumn nods.

  “Moonshine.” She winks before turning and walking away.

  Autumn starts to turn, but I stop her. Then, leaning in close, I whisper in her ear, “Close your eyes, princess. Then turn around and lets you and I see if there’s any truth to those types of tales.”

  When she starts to reply, I stop her by pulling her back against me.

  “Close your eyes.”

  She giggles. “You better be worth it.”

  “No regrets,” I whisper.

  She turns slowly, her eyes still closed, and she’s smiling as she says, “Lay it on me.”

  A loud thud startles her, and she opens her eyes.

  “That’ll be twelve dollars.”

  Her eyes are a light brown, with hues of honey and flecks of pumpkin and mustard. They are insanely gorgeous, and now wide as saucers as she looks at me with obvious appreciation as well as apprehension.

  She starts to step back, but I instinctively grip her hips to stop her.

  She looks down at them then back up at me. “I need to pay the girl.”

  “Can’t let that happen.”

  “Oh, no?” Her eyes soften, and her full, light pink lips curve up slightly in the corners.

  “I’d like to test that tale.”

  She cocks her head to the side as she looks at me almost suspiciously.

  Without breaking eye contact, I tell the bartender, “A bottle of Dom.”

  “We don’t sell by the bottle, and we don’t have Dom.”

  “Two glasses of Cristal then,” I retort.

  Autumn raises a brow and gives me a slight nod, clearly impressed I know my champagne. I give her a wink in return, and she smiles.

  “We don’t have—”

  “Krug.”

  “We’re out.”

  I roll my eyes at the same time that Autumn rolls hers. Then I regretfully look away and at the bartender and tell her, “Then another glass of what she’s having,” as Autumn says, “Then another glass of what I’m having.”

  Laughing, we both turn back to one another as the bartender huffs and walks away.

  “How about you and I get the hell out of here, go buy a bottle of the good bubbly, and test that theory somewhere a little less pretentious?”

  “Less pretentious, huh?”

  “The people, the place, the Hamptons—all of it.”

  She shakes her head as she smiles. “You think that angle’s going to work on me, with a man who looks like you?”

  “I’m not working any angles, Autumn. I’m—”

  “How do you know my name?” she interrupts, shocked. Then, not giving me time to state the obvious, she shakes her head as she places her hands over mine that are still on her hips and starts to push them away. “If you know me—”

  “Ang knows you.”

  She tilts her head in question.

  “You used her name. She used yours. I pay attention to details. Don’t overthink this.”

  I watch the realization hit that I’m not being shady as she eyes me suspiciously. “Come again?”

  “That’s a given,” I deadpan, and she immediately blushes when she realizes the promise I just made, and then she smiles even brighter.

  It’s fucking on, I think.

  The bartender sets my glass of champagne on the bar, and I reluctantly release my grasp on Autumn’s curvy hips as I reach in my back pocket and pull out my wallet, dropping a hundred on the bar.

  “I’ll be right back with your change,” the bartender says, not moving, like she’s waiting for something, but she doesn’t have my attention. Autumn does.

  When she finally walks away, Autumn huffs, “What, was she waiting to see if you were going to tell her to keep the change?”

  I take both glasses and hand one to her. “My tip’s big. She’s not worth it.”

  She laughs that magnetic laugh, the one that brought me to her side to begin with. The one I wanted to cause … and just did.

  She bats her eyelashes—real eyelashes—and says, “Thank you, Prince …?”

  “Eric.” I smile, and her eyes widen as she leans in to get a better look.

  Is it odd? Sure, in a normal situation, but in an effort to keep it real, I have a killer smile.

  I let her take a moment to appreciate it, while I take that same moment to appreciate every-fucking-thing about those eyes, those lips, that hair.

  Need has never consumed me, for I have never been without, but right now, in this moment, I know what it feels like for the first time in my life.

  I raise my glass. “A toast, to those who do, and those who don’t. But not to those who say they will, but we’re sure t
hey won’t.”

  “Kiss me, Prince Eric.”

  Blindsided by the request, as well as amused by the name, I narrow my eyes as I take her glass and set them both on the bar. Then I lean in. “And again and again and again.”

  With my lips centimeters from hers, I watch as hers part slightly as she exhales a sweet, champagne-laced breath and repeats in a suffocated whisper, “Kiss. Me.”

  I lean in and kiss the tip of her nose, whispering against it, “The minute my tongue’s in your mouth, I’m going to wish I started at your belly button and worked my way down.”

  She leans up and looks at me in confusion again, showing me those beautiful autumn-colored eyes.

  “I have no issue sitting you on that barstool and hiding under that sexy as fuck dress while licking you deep inside, but you may.”

  She snaps shut her agape mouth and shakes her head.

  “Perfect.” I reach behind her and pull the stool out. “Have a seat.”

  “What?”

  I don’t look at her. I look over her shoulder at the wooden seat. “You’re a lucky bastard, you know that?”

  She whips her head back and looks behind her. “Who’re you talking to?”