Not only is she paying college tuition and supporting her teen sister in New York, but she is paying off the massive debt accrued by her stepmother.Īs Pat watches Lena from afar, he becomes increasingly smitten. Lena is willing to overlook the unusual circumstances of her employment because she is in desperate financial straits. Pat prohibits Lena from meeting him face-to-face, and he restricts her from entering certain rooms of the house. Pat’s broken soul finds new life when he hires art student Lena Martel to be his live-in housekeeper. The former pro soccer athlete, ex-Vegas stripper, ex-romance novel cover model, and ruined actor has no hope of redemption (and is all out of jobs!). Plagued by crushing guilt over his reckless lifestyle and ignoble past, Pat hides from the world at his newly renovated, badly neglected Montana ranch house, believing himself unworthy of love or forgiveness.

Six months after causing a terrible car accident, Hollywood pretty boy Patrick Halloran (née Pat Donatello) is a disfigured and emotionally scarred recluse.

However, plot contrivances and a distracting number of secondary characters detract some from the love story. Flashed ( Happy Endings, #3) combines sweet romance with hot sex to portray a deeply emotional connection between a beautiful, broken ‘Beast’ and a compassionate, homesick ‘Beauty’. Zoey Castile draws on literary and film inspirations of Beauty and the Beast (and a dash o’ Cinderella) to retell the ‘tale as old as time’ as a steamy contemporary romance.

Stripped by Zoey Castile