Daisy Haites (The Magnolia Parks Universe, Band 2) - Softcover

Hastings, Jessa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593474880 ISBN 13: 9780593474884

Verlag: Dutton, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

All twenty-year-old Daisy Haites has ever wanted is a normal life, but as the heiress to London’s most notorious criminal empire, it’s just not in the cards for her.

Raised by her older brother, Julian, after their parents were murdered, Daisy has never been able to escape the watchful gaze of her gang-lord brother. But Julian’s line of work means that Daisy’s life is . . . complicated.

And things don’t become any easier when she falls hard for the beautiful and emotionally unavailable Christian Hemmes, who happens to be one of the few men in London who doesn’t answer to Julian.

Christian’s life is no walk in the park either, since he’s in love with his best friend’s girlfriend, Magnolia Parks.

He’s happy enough to use Daisy to throw off the scent of his true affections—until she starts to infiltrate those, too.

As their romance blossoms into something neither was anticipating, Daisy and Christian must come to terms with the fact that in this life everything comes at a price. Relationships intersect and tangle, and Daisy, Christian, and Julian will learn that sometimes life’s most worthwhile pursuits can only be paid in blood.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jessa Hastings is an Australian native who now lives in Southern California with her husband, two children, two cats, and a dog. They have, as their best friend calls it, gone “full farm.” Jessa is a chronic overthinker and has, in this very moment, begrudgingly accepted American coffee and how depressing it is. She finds Twitter and small talk equally terrifying, and often still pines for a sourdough loaf in America that doesn't make her tummy hurt or cost $45 for half a loaf. Magnolia Parks was her debut novel and the launch of the series, and she clearly struggles to write a concise or topically relevant author’s biography. She is sorry for this.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

Daisy

No guns at the dinner table. That's my one rule. Call me old fashioned, I don't know. It's just what I've always said to the boys. I don't care about phones, I don't care if they're texting, I don't care if they're wearing a hat at the table-I just don't want guns while I'm serving them a brisket I slow-cooked for nine and a half fucking hours.

Julian makes us say grace (as though the Lord is listening to him and like He'd actually bless us) and then comes the silence of eating that makes the cook happy.

The volume starts to rise again after a couple of minutes-they're total animals when it comes to food, these Lost Boys of mine. I call them that because that's what they are. You can't really be around my brother for too long without meandering off the garden path, and all of these boys have well and truly strayed. None of these boys are boys, by the way-not in age, not in attitude. Each of them has their own unique set of pros and cons, red flags, warrants and no-fly statuses, and together they comprise the inner sanctum of my brother's outfit.

"Oi, Daisyface." My brother nods his chin at me. "How'd you do in your Immunopathology exam?"

"Immunopharmacology," I correct him and he rolls his eyes.

"Did you pass or not?"

"Course she passed," Kekoa tells him proudly. I don't have a dad anymore but when I did, Aleki Kekoa was his best friend.

"First class?" Julian asks.

I frown at him, offended. "Obviously."

My brother tosses me a little wink as he pours himself more wine. "What's next on the curriculum?"

I shrug. "I think we're about to move on to a block on Disease and Therapeutics." Second year med student at Imperial College.

Jules swats his hand. "You don't need to know about that sh-"

"Take it back!" Declan Ellis yells suddenly as he jumps back from the table, staring down darkly at TK, who's seated next to me.

I frown between them. I've no idea what's going on, I wasn't paying attention.

"Nope." Teeks grins.

Declan reaches around from behind him and pulls out his Star Model BM. He likes it, I don't. Too heavy in the hand, too much lag on the recoil.

"Decks." Julian rolls his eyes. "Put the gun away."

He's a bit drunk at the minute, Decks-I can see it on him because when he's drunk or hungover, one of his eyes goes a bit squinty.

I glance at TK and I can already tell he's not going to oblige Declan-whatever it is, he thinks it's too funny to take back. He's got this smarmy, shit-eating grin that riles Decks right up because he's being disrespectful and Declan is, technically, higher in the food chain. He's my brother's right hand.

"Take it fucking back." Declan repositions the gun, now pointed squarely at TK's face.

"No." Teeks shrugs, indifferent.

"Take what back?" I frown.

"Nothing." Declan glances at me quickly, but TK and Booker start laughing.

Best friends, huge idiots.

Declan cocks the gun.

"Declan, don't be stupid." I roll my eyes.

"I'm not being stupid, he's being stupid."

I exchange a long-suffering look with Miguel Del Olmo, my bodyguard since I was fourteen.

"I'm not being stupid." TK shrugs. "It's true."

"No it's fucking not."

"What's not true?" Julian frowns.

Declan's eyes pinch as he silently dares the youngest member of their crew to speak out of turn.

A cheeky smile spreads over TK's face. "That Decks has a permanent boner for Dais."

And then . . . 

Gunshot.

I blink a few times, glance down at myself. A very old, very valuable white T-shirt in mint condition not five seconds ago is now sullied with a drop of Californian blood.

TK lets out a small sound of muffled pain-just barely audible-as he'd never give Decks the satisfaction of agony.

"Un-fucking-believable." I slam my balled-up fists down on the table. "What is my one rule?" I bellow at the entire room.

The room goes very still. No one answers.

"WHAT IS MY ONE RULE?"

Some variant of "no guns at the dinner table" is mumbled by everyone present, including my brother and poor TK (who, by the way, isn't dying).

"This is a four-thousand-pound shirt."

Smokeshow squints over at me. "Might have overpaid for that one, Dais."

"Oh, did I?" I glare at him. "Did I overpay for this Beatles 'Butcher Cover' Original Promo shirt from 1966?" I cock an eyebrow at him. "On eBay last week, I watched you buy a Hot Cheeto shaped like a gun for five hundred and sixty pounds."

Smokeshow looks over at his best friend, Happy, who is conversely scowling at him. Smoke shrugs like he can't help it. "It looked like my gun."

Julian catches my eye and nods his chin at TK. "Help him."

I roll my eyes, pointing to Declan. "Get my kit."

He nods a bit sheepishly.

Miguel helps Teeks into the kitchen, sitting him down at the breakfast table.

It's a big house. My dad bought out an entire cul-de-sac in Knightsbridge, turned it into a sort of headquarters. The Compound, they call it.

Miguel tosses Declan an unimpressed look as he carries over my medical kit, lips pursed.

"Sorry about your shirt." He flashes me a sorry look, leans in towards me, closer than he probably should. "I'll get it dry cleaned."

I nod at him once, try to give him a bit of a smile that straddles the line of being a forgiving matriarch and not wanting to condone his stupid behaviour.

TK cocks his eyebrow at the proximity Declan (doesn't) place between us and Decks flips him off as he leaves the room.

I give TK a look. "Why would you say that?"

"Because it's true."

Miguel tilts his head, concedes tacitly with his eyes. Not a massive chatterbox, my Miguel. A constant presence and a zingy one-liner is what he's known for. He and I have spent years crafting the perfect balance of him being nearby without hovering . . . he's very aware that I'm never alone. And I'm aware that, by consequence of, he never is either. There's not always that much to say to him either, he sees it all anyway.

"Either way-" I wipe away the blood around the wound with some isopropyl prep pads. "Do you really think it wise to poke the bear?"

"He's not a bear." TK rolls his eyes. "He's a puppy with an inferiority complex and a small dick."

I toss him a look. "Not that small . . ."

TK starts laughing. "Go on then, be honest, who's better in the sack: me or him?"

Declan, 100 per cent. Completely, undeniably, very good, highly recommend. I was so cross when Julian stopped it. A few years ago right after my ex-boyfriend and I broke up, and it was big and traumatic and I was young. Julian found out I'd been sleeping with Declan, who was not so young and who definitely thought I was twenty, though I was not, and I think Julian told him he had to help him with a job or he'd go to the feds and I don't know what happened on that job but Declan was around forever after that.

Teeks . . . look. It was a brief thing that coincided with Julian trying to woo him and Booker out of the valley. We don't talk about it, but I think I was the deal-sweetener. My brother does his down-and-out best to exclude me from as much of his work as humanly possible, but he brought me to California with him on that trip and we spent the vast majority of it wining and dining TK and Booker.

They're the youngest guys who work for Jules by a mile. TK's twenty-six, Booker's twenty-seven. Friends from college. Tech boys who graduated top of their class from Stanford. The Silicon Baddies is what we call them. Jules found them on the dark web when they were tracking down the home addresses of people viewing pornography of "questionable legality" and sending it to the FBI. We liked their style....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Dutton
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593474880
• ISBN 13: 9780593474884
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 512
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Edel Music & Entertainment GmbH; https://www.edel.com; ; Neum�hlen 17; Hamburg; Hamburg; Deutschland