Beauty's Price

By David Rory O'Neill

Beauty’s Price continues Regan’s story from Surviving Beauty. Regan celebrates her twenty-first birthday at Mimosa near Nice with her family and her lover David Dawes and his exotic family and friends. They struggle with their past, with self-doubt, and obsessions. Mary too struggles, envy and self-loathing grips her as she sees Regan, once so close, move away from her.
The physiological drama intensifies following a dramatic accident that throws all into turmoil. Love’s power to heal is tested and Regan, Mary and David face the greatest challenge of their young lives. Can they pay beauty’s price?

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Rory O'Neill
• Release date: Dec 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301512645

David Rory O'Neill

What sort of writer am I?Take DH Lawrence's sensuality and sensitivity, mix in a big dollop of John Steinbeck's earthy humour and truth, spice with a dash of Joyce's inventiveness and bawdiness. Sprinkle in a spot of Becket's radical originality. Cook in a slow simmering cauldron over an Irish peat fire given extra heat by the Scots/Irish hard burning coal and dish up in a new bowl of non-conformist Belfast manufacture. That's me. These are big names to live up to but I try.I live in beautiful and splendid isolation over looking the Shannon Valley in County Clare, Ireland. I'm a bit of a cultural orphan - but thanks to the beloved B, I'm very happy in our eclectic art and book filled rural nest.

Book preview

Beauty’s Price.

David Rory O’Neill.

Number two of The West Cork Trilogy.

Copyright David Moody 2015 4th ed.

Published by davidrory publishing at Smashwords.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born and raised in Belfast until troubles and tribal violence drove him away, David grew to be a non-conformist and independent soul clinging to his counter-culture ideals. He found peace and his true calling as a storyteller in the literary Irish tradition. He now lives in a lovely restored old art and book-filled house in the lee of the Silvermine Mountains, Tipperary, Ireland. He shares his life there with beloved Brigitte and a cat with issues, called Bobby. David Rory O’Neill has written twenty novels and more are bubbling and brewing. http://www.davidrory.com

Cover art by the author.

Thanks go for editorial help and encouragement to Miriam Drori.

Dedicated to Ria who taught me about a father’s mistakes and forgave me.

For Brigitte who showed me what love can be.

For the Indie authors who have overcome self-doubt and embraced readers.

And to the readers who share the vision and have embraced the authors.

David Rory O’Neill. Ireland. 2015.

Published books:

The Novella:

Leotie, Flower of the Prairie.

Animal

Rachel’s Walk

Rachel’s War

The Daniel Series:

1 Conflict

2 Challenge

3 Passion

4 Grip

5 Judgment

6 Pyramid

7 Trial

The West Cork Trilogy:

1 Surviving Beauty

2 Beauty’s Price

3 Blue Sky Orphan

4 The West Cork Trilogy Omnibus.

The Prairie Companions

The Butterfly Effect Trilogy:

Bonny The Butterfly Effect.

Lauren The Butterfly Effect.

Chepi The Butterfly Effect.

***

I welcome contact with my readers. Information on published and future work can be found on my website: http://davidrory.comOr visit me on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1myLoRf

UK English is used in this work so you will find grey not grey, and colour not color, these are not mistakes. If you enjoyed this novel please leave a review on your suppliers website – reviews are the lifeblood of the modern author.

Contents:

Introduction.

Review.

Chapter 1. Mimosa.

Chapter 2. Launch.

Chapter 3. Questions.

Chapter 4. Celebration.

Chapter 5. Voyage.

Chapter 6. Escape.

Chapter 7. Mending.

Chapter 8. Wounds.

Chapter 9. Submerged.

Chapter 10. Sailing.

Chapter 11. Deliverance.

Chapter 12. Schönheitpreis.

Introduction:

Beauty’s Price continues Regan’s story from Surviving Beauty. Regan celebrates her twenty-first birthday at Mimosa near Nice with her family and her lover David Dawes and his exotic family and friends. They struggle with their past, with self-doubt, and obsessions. Mary too struggles, envy and self-loathing grips her as she sees Regan, once so close, move away from her.

The physiological drama intensifies following a dramatic accident that throws all into turmoil. Love’s power to heal is tested and Regan, Mary and David face the greatest challenge of their young lives. Can they pay beauty’s price?

This is number two in a trilogy but the reader can be assured the novel stands equally well alone and need not be read as part of that trilogy.

The work is aimed at an open-minded mature readership and therefore includes frank and honest descriptions of adult sexuality. David Rory O’Neill. Ireland. 2012.

Review by Marcia Quinn-Noren

In Beauty’s Price, the second book of David Rory O’Neill’s West Cork Trilogy we are reunited with the characters introduced in Surviving Beauty. O’Neill’s themes combine incidents of high drama, action-packed enough to be in the thriller category, with soothing, authentic interaction between his extraordinarily strong characters. The lives they lead might be considered exotic, and far from conventional. Embracing their worldview requires the reader’s willingness to move away from the ordinary.

I am inspired by the bravery displayed by these characters as they move through their individual and collective emotional and physical crises, facing down whatever confronts them. What is most beautiful about their inter-relationships is that no one is alone here; they guard and protect one another, in scenes that combine acts of ferocity with moments of great tenderness. David and Regan are physically beautiful lovers whose happy ending seems certain, and yet we know that life offers anything but certainty. The evil acts and influences inflicted upon them by Eric Lang and Jo Dillon in Surviving Beauty left them both scarred on the inside. Those interior wounds now take their toll, years later.

As we have seen in the world of celebrity, when a woman is blessed with perfect beauty, the asset seen by the world as powerful, she will not necessarily be fortunate. She will not be treated with greater respect, but instead she will experience objectification. Looking into a mirror, she may only see her flaws.

She only knows that she is noticed, no matter where she goes, even into the supermarket. She feels the responses coming at her, and they are not all positive. Being ‘ogled’ can feel more threatening than complimentary. She may be more likely to attract the ‘wrong kind’ of man, the kind of man who wants to possess something of value. She eventually may discover that her beloved was smitten by his own idealization of her, and is terrified of facing the reality of her flaws and complexities.

Jim Burrows provides the final, heroic act of retribution that frees Regan and Mary from being forever imprisoned by the past. But David’s release is less clear. Will he survive beauty’s price? More will be revealed in Blue Sky Orphan as his shadow haunts the third book in the West Cork Trilogy. We must believe in his survival, as these characters continue to prove that the power of love stands victorious over adversity and evil.

Beauty’s Price.

Chapter 1. Mimosa.

Most of the people gathered around the infinity pool looked at Regan often, their eyes drawn to her almost against their will. The feelings aroused in them were surprisingly universal, irrespective of the sex or age of the observer. They felt lifted, they smiled a little, and their pupils dilated. Like standing before a great work of art, or a majestic Alpine vista. Or perhaps like listening to one of those pieces of music that makes the hairs on the back of one’s neck tingle. Many wondered at their response and questioned it. Others simply rejoiced and felt they were privileged and had been given a rare gift. The young men struggled to contain rising arousal and tried not to grin foolishly. The young women tried not to let envy rise in them because they knew that was an undeserved feeling. None wanted to feel hostility or spoil the glow with little petty things. They felt themselves to be in the presence of something enchanting and magnificent, one of nature’s true wonders. They might try to indentify what it was about this girl that was so arresting. They had seen others with huge golden tresses of wavy hair. They had seen others with perfect womanly curves, long strong legs, and proud perfect breasts. They had seen others that moved with a dancer’s grace. Many had seen a golden burnished tan and even delightful freckles across the nose and cheeks. The pale grey bright eyes were admittedly rare. None had seen all this in one woman. None had witnessed the unnameable magic that made them sigh involuntarily and grin when they caught each other’s eyes recognizing the common feeling. The object of their adoration made her magic more potent by seemingly being unaware of her power. She gave off an aura of innocence.

Christine, who lay near Regan, had the kind of classic beauty that is well recognized and sought after by the photographers of the world. She had perfect symmetry and proportions and yet she didn’t have the magic. She was a little uncomfortable in her skin and sometimes that showed. She had a slightly hostile reaction when looked at. Those she posed for exploited this. They called it: haughtiness. She was known as the ice maiden. Cool, aloof, rarely smiling, and unapproachable. Regan had a barrier around her too, but in her case the watcher was always aware that barrier was within them. Regan looked a little sad sometimes, lonely even. People ached to touch her, to hug and comfort her – to try to take away that hint of longing or the hurt that flickered in her pale grey eyes. They felt the barrier because they were in awe of the magic. Feeling without knowing that her beauty had been a burden to her. They sensed her fragility. She was like a stunning poppy bloom they dared not touch, lest she wilt or drop her petals. The word goddess came to them so she became the Goddess Regan in their minds. Regan had the ability to observe herself as if from outside. As she lay on a lounger in the middle of the infinity pool at Mimosa, she was having such an experience, her attention divided so she could continue to talk to Mary, David or Mark floating alongside. She was aware of being watched by most of those at the pool. This was usual and didn’t bother her. Regan was reacting to this observation by performing. She arranged her body, her hair, her legs and hands in pleasing ways. This was completely unconscious behaviour and went unseen by all but Mary and Bonny.

Being naked before strangers was still an unusual enough thing to make Regan feel self-aware. She noticed the way the thick down of golden hair on her forearms caught the sun when wet and was very noticeable against her darkening tan. Maybe I should remove this. It’s very obvious. There is hair on my legs and a line down my belly too. It would be such an arse to do that. I wonder do other people notice it or is it just me being hypercritical. It looks kind of nice and Mary and David like it. They run their fingers over the down and say it looks great. Bonny, Lauren and their girls all remove their pubic hair. That looks so fine, maybe I should do that too.

This thought was disrupted by a sudden flashback. Eric Lang, her father, had started to nag her about removing hair. She was thirteen and had started to get very hairy. Get your Mum to remove it for you. Between your legs too.

But Daddy, you can’t see that under my panties.

Sometimes you can.

This flash blended into another. It appeared and vanished again like a lightning strike. There was overwhelming sound: the vibrating roar of a shotgun and the sharp harsh crack-crack-crack of pistol shots very close, the soundtrack to a slow motion vision of sudden holes appearing in her abductor Patrick’s chest and forehead. Then the mist, pink mist like a halo. A corona of death.

This flash had no effect on Regan’s voice or persona. She had learned to hide such things and they bubbled, surfaced, and played out like musac in the background of her consciousness. Regan’s awareness of how she looked and how those around her were reacting to her was always there. She was never truly unselfconscious. She was always on, always on show, and performing. Regan was only now beginning to understand that this split in her was an issue. It had always felt normal, but speaking to Mary, Biddy and Jim about it had convinced her it was a reaction to how she had been treated by her birth parents. She hadn’t found a way to reunite herself and was not overly concerned.

This classic depersonalization disorder was becoming stronger in Regan as she became more aware of its presence. She had begun to read about it in the library when she should have been studying anatomy or physiology for her medical studies. The more she learned the more symptoms she began to see. This didn’t upset her. She knew that lack of fear or anxiety was itself a symptom. Regan reflected on how calm she felt right now. She knew she should be feeling more. Perhaps more anxiety about David proposing, about being accepted by the Dawes family, about the richly exotic life they led, and the wealth, and opulence surrounding her now. Mary is nervous and a bit hostile. She’s feeling strange here. So are Mum and Pa. They are all very aware of all this stuff, so why am I so calm? Mum looks like she’s going to go bang any minute. Pa is watching everyone like a hawk. Always so watchful and careful. He’s so protective of Kath and me. That’s good I guess. It’s the way a father should be. Not like...feck that! That’s a no-go area.

David is beautiful. I love looking at him when he is relaxed like this. He does get anxious and so wants to please me. I wish he’d stop and just be. Too much worship sometimes. I wish I could stop this stuff and do what I want from David – just be. Chrissie is delicious. Having her here helps me. I’m not so noticeable when she’s around. Pa is watching me like he’s worried. Jim Burrows was feeling a little more relaxed as his second day as a guest at the Dawes’ French house got underway. On the first, he’d struggled to come to terms with the nudity and ultra-relaxed attitude of his hosts. Seeing his stepdaughter Regan and her boyfriend David naked, as he stood in the pool, was proving very difficult. His own attempt to fit in by being nude was adding to his discomfort. Jim’s friend Daniel had understood and suggested they both wore shorts, which made Jim feel a little better. At fifty-seven, Jim considered himself too old to easily adopt the naturist lifestyle favoured by the Dawes and their friends.

A working life dedicated to the police had given Jim a tendency to be an observer of people. Now, as he sat beneath a big sunshade down by the infinity pool, Jim watched the throng of people gathered there for their morning swim and sunbathe. Some he knew well, others he’d only met the previous evening over dinner. On the pool was a raft of inflatable sunbeds, with the younger guests arranged there. Regan and Mary lay close with David and Mark beside them.

David had his father’s height and face but his mother’s dark hair and extraordinary eyes. Mark had his father’s floppy-haired boyish face and his mother’s dark Italian complexion.

Jim was used to noticing Regan being watched. Her startling beauty tended to draw all eyes. Now about to celebrate her twenty-first, she had finished her growth and her fluctuating weight had settled. She no longer carried the body fat that had made her so voluptuous in her late teens. Her dance and exercise had made her body taught and well muscled, her belly showing the distinct abdominal group often called a six-pack. At five ten she was tall but her perfectly symmetrical proportions meant she didn’t look gangly in the way many tall girls do. She had a golden even tan, now getting darker as she spent hours sunbathing. The sun was also bleaching her golden blond hair so it showed lighter streaks, and she’d developed a field of freckles across her nose that added to the surfer girl look. A look more often seen in California than West Cork. Regan wore sunglasses to protect her pale grey eyes that were so light sensitive. Her plump full lips made her look as if she were pouting when relaxed. Her beauty usually outshone any other female, but in this company she didn’t stand out so much. Near her were three other beauties who rivalled her. The first looked a little like her and had the same big golden tan blond look. She was Lauren’s eldest daughter, Dee. She was taller and more robustly built than Regan. Her face was rounder than Regan’s almond shape and her hair was a few shades darker. She had not followed her mother’s extreme athletic lifestyle and so didn’t look so lean and defined. Dee was twenty-nine and single. Dedicated to her work as a naval surgeon, she had little time for frivolous affairs, and had not met anyone she thought worth the bother. She was very fussy and had a keep-away aura that saved her the bother of rejecting those who would pursue her.

Beside her was her younger sister, Christine. Nearly six foot tall with long ash blond hair, a pale tan and a willowy but not skinny body with legs that seemed improbably long. She made a fortune as a model with these looks, but despised the life and had never come to terms with making such a fortune from the accident of her genes. Dee and Chrissie had sisterly similarities but Jim could see that Dee had her mother Lauren’s looks, while with Chrissie her father’s genes had been dominant. She had his still watchfulness and intense, almost broody eyes.

The blonds were rivalled by the sultry dark exotic perfection of young Ria Hall, her mother’s Italian heritage showing in her coffee skin and black silk hair. Her eyes were the vivid blue of her father’s and shone like sapphires in that dark canvas. Ria was nineteen and at ease with these girls she considered cousins. The other three dark haired girls were less classically beautiful but no less attractive. Kathy had the same Irish looks as her mother, Bonny. Dark hair, pale skin, and hypnotically multi-collared eyes. She was short and very curvy. These looks had helped Kathy in her career as an actress but she struggled a little with being typecast as the fiery wild-child sex kitten. Kathy was just six weeks younger than her half sister, Dee.

Her namesake was Jim’s daughter, called Kath. She could have rivalled the others, being a tall, dark-haired, fair-skinned, blue-eyed twenty-seven year old. But Kath was not comfortable in her body and tended to stoop a little and looked uncomfortable displaying herself. She lay close beside Chrissie and the two were often in deep discussion. Only the discrete holding of hands indicated the true nature of their relationship.

The other girl was a good deal younger than the others at fifteen. She was Bonnie, the daughter of Jake and Kris. She too was very lovely, having inherited her mother’s finely-honed foal-like beauty. She had been a little shy and was feeling left out until she was taken under the wing of Dee. The two now sat either side of a floating lounger and, judging by the laughter, Bonnie was feeling more at ease now.

Mark was a sturdy handsome lad of twenty and he was hovering around, Mary. Mary was not what one would call a beauty, but she had a magical quality that could only be described as radiant vitality and sexiness. Her dark-haired, brown eyed, girlish prettiness could be turned to a smouldering sultry heat that melted anyone she set her sights upon.

The odd man out was young Dan, Jake and Kris’s eldest son. He had the same rangy cowboy rugged good looks as his father and was gazing at all the mouth-watering female beauty with the ill concealed longing that so many seventeen-year-old boys seem cursed by. He was sitting in the shallow end of the pool nursing and hiding an erection.

Jim noticed how the parents of all these beautiful young things tried not to watch them. Only he and one other seemed to be observing them. The other was the tall sandy-haired man sitting on a lounger beside Jim. He looked younger than his fifty-nine years, thanks to a taught slim body and open friendly face. Daniel Dawes, like Jim, was a born observer who missed nothing without ever appearing to watch. Daniel had spent his working life apparently as a naval officer in the Fleet Air Arm. In reality he had been a founder member of a top-secret covert intelligence outfit called Detachment 16. This is where he met the formidable ex-Olympic sprinter, Lauren. She now lay near him and Jim had been struggling not to study her. She was the definition of Amazonian. Five ten, bulging with highly developed muscle surmounted by a huge mop of unruly golden hair. Her fine features and vivid blue eyes meant her face was feminine and not at all butch. Jim found it hard not to be fascinated by such a highly developed body on a woman who was approaching fifty-five but looked thirty-five.

Lauren was talking to the other woman there who looked much younger than she actually was: Lauren’s lover Bonny Dawes. She was another woman difficult to ignore. A tiny dark-haired dynamo with a tight, athletic but curvy body surmounted by legendary breasts of impossible firmness and size. Were it not for these astonishing features it would have been her magical big round eyes that fascinated. Like Lauren, Bonny looked at least ten years younger than her forty-nine. Bonny seemed to be the natural centre of this group. The gentle laughing matriarch. All the others seemed to defer to and be guided by her. The children all called her Mammy Bonny. Even Regan did that.

Close to Bonny was Kris. She intrigued Jim. There was something deeply mysterious about the gentle, fine, soft speaking beauty. She spoke with an English accent tainted by the American mid-west of her husband and children. She seemed very close to Bonny and was rarely far from her. There was also some connection with Daniel that Jim sensed as some history between them. He knew Kris had been Daniel’s physiotherapist at Stoke-Mandeville hospital when he was recovering from his broken back. There was more that intrigued Jim and brought out the detective in him. Kris had a quality that Jim sensed as somehow asexual or androgynous.

Dave Hall and his wife Jan sat opposite Bonny and were chatting to Jake about his recent promotion in the US Navy to a training post at the naval college in Virginia. Jan was an Italian Scot and looked incredibly like a young Sophia Loren to Jim. She was still referred to as Nanny Jan, by the Dawes children, having been their nanny for ten years. Bonny had been responsible for waking Dave Hall’s interest and pushing him at Jan. Jim knew that Dave had been involved with many of Daniel and Lauren’s covert operations, as commander of the elite naval Special Boat Service. He looked fit and strong but gentle and boyish and not at all like the highly trained killer he was.

The other male present was Kathy’s fiancé, Robbie McCloud. He looked rather out of place among all the supreme physical specimens surrounding him. A tall gangly pale-skinned, absent-minded, professorish nerd, he described himself in those disparaging terms and was barked at by Kathy for doing it.

Jim became aware of eyes on him and turned to see his wife Biddy grinning knowingly at him. She was not outshone by the other females of her own age but was less striking, her beauty being more subtle and contained. As a dancer, her body was splendidly athletic and she looked younger than her forty years. She had what Jim considered the best smile in the world and it illuminated him within as she beamed at him. She had been watching him doing what he always did – observing, considering, getting to know the family his daughters were becoming linked to.

Are yee going to keep those shorts on the whole time we’re here? asked Biddy.

I might consider taking them off when the kids are away from here. I feel ill at ease in front of Kath and Regan. Sorry to be stuffy love.

That’s OK darling. I do understand. They don’t seem to mind flashing the goods do they?

Jim looked over at the raft of naked youthful bodies and replied, Yea but they’re all in their prime and rather splendid. I feel disinclined to reveal my saggy heap to that extent.

Yes, that gave me pause too. I mean Lauren, Bonny, Jan and Kris are unbelievably good looking for any age and it made me feel a bit inadequate, said Biddy looking down at her own body.

Jim laid a hand on Biddy’s tummy