Beautiful & Dirty: The Family, #1

By Katrina Jackson

Shae

Here's my advice for how to survive a vacation to Italy with the college boyfriend you've just now realized is terrible:
1. Ditch him in Rome.
2. Take the train to Naples for pizza.
3. Let the attractive older man you've just met buy you a drink.
4. Flirt a little (or a lot) while ignoring his wedding ring.
5. Let him bend you over a table.
6. Break up with your boyfriend.
--
Sal

There are a lot of ways to respond to the news that your wife is trying to kill you. I have sex with the young American who stumbles into my restaurant. And then I get revenge.

Content warnings
assassination attempt (gunshot)
maiming
torture

• Language: English
• Publisher: Katrina Jackson
• Release date: May 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781953908735

Katrina Jackson

Katrina is a college professor by day who writes romances by weekend when her cats allow. She writes high heat, diverse and mostly queer erotic romances and erotica. She also likes sleep, salt-and-pepper beards, and sunshine. I'm super active on twitter. Follow me: @katrinajax

Book preview

1 SHAE

I want all the carbs. That’s all I can think when I step off the train in Naples, Italy. Alone, even though my boyfriend was supposed to be next to me.

We’d been planning this trip for a year, saving every penny, making all of our meals at home, passing on drinks out with friends and coffee at our favorite café down the street from our apartment so that we could enjoy ourselves on this trip. All the fucking good that did us. Me. All the fucking good that’s done me on this cursed trip. My mother always said that if you want to know who someone really is at their core, take a trip with them. Lesson learned.

My boyfriend Steve and I had saved every penny we could for an entire year for the trip that was supposed to cement our relationship, and then as soon as we landed in Rome, everything went to shit. It all started when we landed, only to find that Steve’s suitcase hadn’t arrived. According to the baggage claim agent, there had been some kind of mistake, and his bag was still in D.C.; it was never even loaded onto our plane. It sucks, but it’s the kind of thing that happens every day, hundreds of times of day, probably — that’s what I kept telling myself and Steve — it happens, but it’s not the end of the world.

I feel like the thing anyone would need to know about me is that I’m a people-pleaser. I sometimes wish I wasn’t, but I am. I hate conflict and confrontation, and I always try to see things from other people’s points of view so I can avoid conflict, or back immediately away if I stumble into it. Smoothing things over is one of my gifts, and I will go completely out of my way to make someone else more comfortable in any situation, without a second thought. I’m not the kind of people-pleaser who needs everyone to like me, it’s just that I want everyone around me to be happy, and the lesson I’ve learned about myself over the past week is that I want other people to be happy apparently more than I want to be happy myself.

Even I’m depressed by this admission. But I am who I am, that’s not the problem. The problem is that, if someone had asked me two weeks ago, I’d have said Steve was similar. And I’d have been wrong as hell.

While I worked with the baggage claim agent to get the airline the address of our hotel and a voucher so Steve could buy a few necessities — you know, underwear, a toothbrush, whatever — Steve yelled and pouted and whined on WhatsApp to his mother like a child. I’d rationalized at the time that his behavior might not have been polite, but it was understandable. I wouldn’t have thrown a tantrum in the airport — in a foreign country, no less — because my mother would never have allowed that kind of behavior, but lots of people would do that and have done that. I’m sure people throwing very public tantrums in airports must be another thing that happens hundreds of times a day. Besides, I couldn’t imagine how hard it was to land in a foreign country after a ten-hour flight, dry-mouthed, dirty, and tired, only to find out that all your clean clothes and toiletries are thousands of miles away. So, I tried to be understanding.

This is how my brain works all the time. Every time I felt annoyed at Steve not helping me help him, I just thought about how uncomfortable he must have been, and poof, sympathy chip activated and turned all the way up. It’s surprisingly easy for me to do this; it’s second nature, like breathing. And even more so because I love Steve and I wanted him to be happy and comfortable, but I never stopped to think about how uncomfortable I was. That’s, apparently, not second nature.

But still, I fought so hard — politely, of course — to get him some concessions from the airline. It took two hours, but when we finally left the airport with clothes and food vouchers, I was so proud of myself, certain that the rest of our trip would be smooth sailing from that point on. Naively, I thought once we checked into our hotel, showered, and took a nap in a clean bed, Steve’s mood would improve, and we could restart the trip of our dreams.

WRONG.

Steve bitched the entire cab ride, and when we arrived at the hotel, he whined about how small our room was, even though I’d sent him plenty of articles about the quaint size of traditional Italian bed and breakfast rooms, especially in the center of Rome, just so we could both be prepared. In fact, before we even started saving for the trip, Steve and I had a lengthy conversation about our budget and what we wanted to prioritize. I thought we’d agreed that food and wine were the most important things, so if we had to get a smaller hotel room or middle seats in coach, that would be perfectly fine, because Rome was the trip of a lifetime. Had he forgotten?

But then he started complaining about how old everything looked.

It’s Rome!

I felt like I was in an alternate universe, standing in the middle of our adorably small room, listening to this man who looked like Steve but wasn’t acting like him. I was exhausted, confused, and bordering on angry; and I never get angry.

I looked around the room, trying to find some purpose, some explanation for why Steve was behaving this way, and I couldn’t. The walls were covered in an outdated but charming textured wallpaper that looked straight out of the last century — early last century. There was an adorable quilt draped over the foot of the bed that looked like someone’s grandmother had knitted it especially for this room, the carpet was some strange color they probably stopped manufacturing in the seventies, and the single window was covered in a gauzy curtain that looked out onto a square. The room looked dated, yet tasteful in a way I imagined only a bed and breakfast in a city as old as Rome could. It looked exactly like the pictures on the website, and I loved it in person as much as I had online. What the fuck was Steve talking about?

When I looked at him, a wave of confusion cut through the exhaustion as I mentally replayed all those conversations we’d had about this trip, all the articles I’d read and forwarded to him, all the Yelp