Asher
College. The perfect time to focus on myself instead of family and friends, who’ve always come first. Yeah, right! That lasts all of five seconds before I’m roped into their high jinks once again. No one can ever say Asher Brandt lets family down. Nope. I’m all in on this latest disaster, requiring me to shave my legs and call myself Ashley.
But this bad idea takes a turn for the worse when a smoking hot older guy wants to get to know me, or rather,Ashley. The more I learn about Luke, the more I wish we’d met without this lie I’m dressed in because he’s irresistible, and now I have to find the right time to remove it all—the lie and the dress.
Luke
What’s wrong with being a single man? According to the old money I was born into, everything. Mother’s determined to marry me off, and as she marches her latest bride-to-be my way, I’ve got a choice to make. Bend to her will as I have before and entertain this farce, or choose Ashley, a new option with aremarkable quality that immediately sets me at ease.
OnlyAshleyis so much more than she appears to be and uncovers a door I thought long buried. Even more distressing is how the lie I’ve worn for twenty years doesn’t fit as it once did. All because of—him.
Burning Deceptions, book three in the Burning Torments series, is a provocative and fun tale of two men, different in so many ways, who take a chance on each other. When they let go of the masks of duty, family, and be true to themselves, will they find heartbreak underneath or expose the love they both deserve?
Thiswasaverybad idea. Maybe the worst.
I twisted in front of the mirror, but it never changed the reflection staring back at me. Yep, that was me, dressed like a woman. And the worst part? I looked pretty damned good.
Granted, I’d made some questionable choices in my nineteen years. There was the time I took my cousin Eddie’s advice and filled the half-full liquor bottles in my stepdad’s cabinet with water so he wouldn’t know we’d drunk ourselves silly. He totally knew. Or the time I listened to my cousin Robert Earl and pierced my own ears to save a few bucks. Well, I’d tried to pierce them. The needle didn’t make it all the way through before I screamed and, uh, fainted.
But this, this was next-level stupid.
“Stop complainin’, Asher,” Savannah—the cousin who roped me into this nonsense—said. “You look gorgeous as a girl.”
I shot her a glare where she perched on her dresser, then checked my reflection again. She was right, unfortunately. I wasn’t unacquainted with wearing makeup. My best friend, Jamie, and I had rimmed our eyes in kohl many times in highschool. I’d even worn black lipstick once or twice. However, Savannah, in an effort to prove her point to our cousin, Morgan, had gone all out.
This all started with an argument between them. The subject hadn’t been me, but rather if cosmetology technically qualified her as an artist. Morgan had said if there wasn’t a product at the end of it, like a painting or sculpture or something tangible that could be sold, it wasn’t artwork. Savannah had argued that her artistic talents gave her the ability to transform something from boring to beautiful, and that was an art form.
Wouldn’t do no good asking how I got involved—and yeah, I had sorta taken offense at being labeledboringin this experiment—but here we were. My brown hair I’d thought too short to do anything with had been fluffed and smoothed and gelled into some fancy style. Deep purple shadow and new fake lashes framed my hazel eyes. A dark pink made my cheeks and lips glow, and an overall dusting of some weird glittery shit made me sparkle.
Yeah, I was fucking pretty.
Thenshe zipped me into a black dress that made my naturally tan skin stand out, and holy fuck, I couldn’t believe it was me.
Morgan was gonna lose that fifty dollars they’d bet each other.
“Yeah, but will he convince anyone else?”
“Huh?” I turned as Morgan pushed off the doorframe and came into the room.
“He’s just Asher in a dress. No one’s gonna believe it.”
“Bruh—” I tried, but Savannah cut me off.
“You’re just bein’ a shit ’cause you lost. Of course he’s convincin’.” She waved at me. “You cannot stand there and tell me, Morgan Freeman Brandt, that Asher, or should I say ‘Ashley,’ couldn’t go out right now and catch a man’s eye.”
“Whoa. Hold up,” I said, having seen this train wreck before and knowing where this would crash. When these two got to arguing, it was usually someone else who lost.
Me. I was that someone this time.
“Oh yeah?” Morgan barked in Savannah’s face. “Then take him to that thing with you and prove it, or you ain’t gettin’ my fifty bucks.”
Yep, right there. “I ain’t gonna—”
“Fine,” Savannah snapped, eager to defend her work by going toe-to-toe with Morgan, and cutting me off, yet again. “If you’re ready to up the ante to a hun’erd.”
Granted, I probably could snag a man in this getup, but that wasn’t the point. “No—”
“Fiiiine. I’ll take yer money,” Morgan drawled.
