BeautyandtheButch

Paisley
Smith

The last thing up-and-coming TV producer Lindsey Mitchell
expects to find at an ultra-girly beauty pageant is true love. After all, she’s
unapologetically butch and that’s unlikely to appeal to the
primped-and-powdered Southern belles vying for the title of Miss Georgia
National.

Ella Northington is the perfectly poised contestant who’s
hiding a big secret—she’s a lesbian. But Lindsey’s just too tempting to resist
and what’s supposed to be a one-night stand quickly turns into something more.
The lovers are determined to touch and taste every inch of each other.

But the stakes are high and competition is fierce. And if
Ella is outed, she risks losing everything she holds dear, including her sexy
butch lover.

A Romantica®
lesbian
erotic
romance
from Ellora’s Cave

Lindsey Mitchell hefted the heavy camera onto her shoulder
as she and assistant producer Maurice Vega strode into the hotel where the Miss
Georgia National beauty pageant was being held.

“We’re late,” Lindsey said, bursting through the side door
to enter the event center.

Laboring for breath, Maurice waddled quickly behind her,
dragging a hand truck loaded with booms and microphones in his wake. Sweat
beaded on his forehead, but his hands were so full he couldn’t have mopped his
brow if he’d wanted to. His layered tees and plaid flannel overshirt barely
reached the top of well-worn jeans that looked as if they might give up the
fight and plummet to his ankles any minute.

Lindsey shook her head. “Why’d you wear all those shirts?”
She held the door as he twisted sideways to slide through. “You look like
Ignatius J. Reilly.”

Maurice’s size indicated he’d seriously missed an
opportunity to be a linebacker for a pro football team, but Lindsey knew his
temperament tended toward the opposite end of the spectrum. Maurice was a big
teddy bear who enjoyed heated games of
Dungeons & Dragons
and
reading superhero comic books rather than hard hits in a sports arena or God
forbid, spring training exercises.

He stopped briefly and heaved several great breaths. “I
think I have a couple of Big Chief tablets in the car,” he said, referencing
Ignatius, the hero of
A Confederacy of Dunces
, which they both regularly
quoted. “But you’re hardly my Myrna Minkoff.”

Lindsey chuckled and raked her fingers through her spiky
black hair. Once Maurice had wedged through the door, she let it go and they
walked down the hallway toward the information desk.

Black and silver festoons draped over a backdrop of
glitter-frosted pink decorated the walls and the tables. “Wow, they really went
all-out for this shindig, didn’t they?” She leaned closer to Maurice. “I wonder
where they keep the Barbie Corvette.”

Maurice’s eyes twinkled behind his black-rimmed glasses. “I
don’t know, but I wouldn’t mind going for a ride in it.”

Lindsey scoffed. “Don’t let their big smiles fool you.
There’s nothing between the ears of those women.”

“I don’t care what’s between their
ears
. And don’t
underestimate the power of the Vega.” He waved his hand over and around his
camera with the flare of a game show model. “We’ve got a built-in aphrodisiac.”

An entourage flocked around one contestant, making
last-minute adjustments to her frothy white gown. Lindsey’s gaze flicked back
to Maurice. “Yes, and the thought of getting on TV is the only way we could get
any of these gals to pay attention to either of us.”

Maurice chortled. “You can’t honestly tell me you wouldn’t
sample these Georgia peaches if given half a chance.”

Lindsey sneered. “Not my type.”

“The kind that’s got legs and a head is my type,” Maurice
said, craning to watch a brunette beauty in a royal-blue dress float by. He
turned back and waggled his black eyebrows at Lindsey. “Not even that one?”

Lindsey looked back at the ultra-feminine pageant queen.
“Girls like that don’t notice girls like me. They’re looking for MRS degrees,
minivans, picket fences and two point five kids.”

“They pay plenty of attention to me,” Maurice joked. “In my
shower.”

“Eww!” Lindsey said and punched his arm playfully. “I don’t
need to know about your solitary pursuits.”

“Seriously, though,” he said. “I’ve known you going on six
months and I don’t know what your type is yet.”

Lindsey shrugged. “Somebody with a little—strike that, a
lot—more substance than a girl who’d parade around on a stage in a bikini and
stilettos.”

A woman shot up from the information table, skirted it and
started toward them. “You must be from The Learning Network.”

Lindsey grasped the obvious former beauty queen’s hand and
shook it vigorously. “Lindsey Mitchell. This is Maurice Vega.”

The woman flashed a well-honed wide and brilliant smile.
“I’m Elizabeth Huntingdon, the Miss Georgia National pageant director. I
understand you’ll be filming this week.”

Lindsey nodded. “Yes.”

“I have the names of the three contestants the network asked
us to choose for you to follow,” Elizabeth said and reached for an envelope on
the table where stylish women continued to line up for registration.

Lindsey avoided looking at them. In this sea of leggy women,
she felt even shorter than her average height and dumpy in a pair of faded
jeans and green Converse tennis shoes. Although she’d never much aspired to
having long, luxurious locks and a blindingly bright smile, she recognized what
most people considered
beautiful
. She’d never admit it to Maurice
because he’d tease her to no end, but yeah —these women were fucking gorgeous.

Long legs that stretched for miles. Soft hair that smelled
like perfume. Blossoming cleavage and bodies with curves so rife with
femininity they made Lindsey’s mouth water.

She knew better than to shop where the price was too high.

Throughout high school, she’d always been a tomboy with
short hair and no-fuss clothes, the kind of girl dodge ball fanatics foamed at
the mouth to get on their team. Nobody had really questioned her sexuality
until her best friend Reagan had made the cheerleading squad and then gotten
teased for being too chummy with the school dyke.

That
teasing
had caused Reagan to find new friends,
to stop spending the night at Lindsey’s house—to stop sharing kisses under the
sheets.

No doubt Reagan chalked up their innocent encounters to
practicing for boys. For Lindsey, however, those kisses and clandestine touches
meant far more. It wasn’t until college that she had her first real
relationship with a girl, but it wasn’t for want of wishing. Reagan had broken
her heart and in the process Lindsey had lost her best friend.

Gorgeous girls aside, a job was a job and Lindsey was over
her high school angst. Even if surrounding herself by so much estrogen dragged
old memories to the surface, she still felt nothing but gratitude for her
position at TLN. Besides, producing this reality show would serve as a rung on
her ladder to bigger and better—and far more serious—production jobs.

Nigel Simmons, her boss at TLN, had dangled a carrot for her
though. If she was able to draw something thought-provoking or shocking from
one of these reality programs, he’d promised to set up an interview with the
executive producer of
Global Now
, a prestigious news show recently
launched to rival
60 Minutes
.

A blonde with her hair done up in Velcro rollers sailed past
wearing a pink warm-up suit with “Team Tiffany” emblazoned across her ass.

Discovering something of substance at this hare-brained
event would be akin to finding a diamond in a goat’s ass.

Lindsey put her camera down and opened the envelope. As if
to punctuate the names, Ms. Huntingdon gave the backstory on each girl.
“Chelsea Walters is a socialite from here in Atlanta. Her father has something
to do with the baseball team. Long story short, she’s a talented singer and the
strongest contender for the title. Ella Northington is a pageant veteran and
daughter of a congressman. She majored in early childhood education and is an
alumna of the University of Georgia. Her talent is baton.”

Lindsey resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Baton twirlers
and spoiled-rotten socialites. Sheesh.

“Marquita Adams is an all-around beauty who’s also from Atlanta.
She’s on an academic scholarship at Emory, is studying to be a surgeon and is
also a talented opera singer.”

“How does she find time to do one of those things, much less
all of them?” Lindsey muttered.

One of Elizabeth’s waxed-to-perfection eyebrows arched. “Oh,
many of our girls have their fingers in lots of pies.”

Lindsey bit the inside of her cheek to keep from snickering
when Maurice cleared his throat.

“Have these three registered yet?” Lindsey asked.

“Marquita has. But the other two haven’t come through yet,”
Elizabeth said. “I was told you’d need a room for interviews. I can show you
where it is so you can get set up and get started.”

“Perfect,” Lindsey said.

They gathered their equipment and followed Elizabeth back
the way they’d come, sprinting to keep pace with the astonishingly fast
high-heeled director.

Lindsey exchanged amazed looks with Maurice who breathed
extra-heavily as he loped along behind.

Their room turned out to be a smaller conference room with
chairs stacked along one wall and tables folded up and stashed against another.

With one hand on her hip and the other gesturing toward the
expanse of the room, Elizabeth struck a pose. “Will this do?”

“Yes, thank you.” Lindsey deposited her camera on the floor
so she could drag over a couple of chairs before Maurice suffered a coronary.

His bag hit the floor with a thud and he righted the hand
truck, finally free to dry the perspiration from his forehead with the tail of
one of his t-shirts. Lindsey purposefully looked away from the flash of hairy
white man belly. Sights like those made her glad she’d been born a lesbian.

“I’ll send the girls in as they arrive if that’s okay,”
Elizabeth said. “Are there…more of you?” The waver in her voice betrayed her
distress at their ragtag outfits.

People always expected producers and film crews to possess
more flash and well, a lot larger production crew.

Maurice looked as if he ran a comic book store and Lindsey
knew she didn’t fit the appearance of a cable network producer. Her spiky hair,
multi-pierced ears, pierced eyebrow and tat-smothered arms seemed more
appropriate in a biker bar than a ritzy convention hotel.

“Nope. Just Maurice and me. The real glamour goes on in the
editing room,” Lindsey joked, thinking of Joe Nakamura sitting in his self-described
editing lair, wearing his trademark thick horn-rimmed glasses and flannel
pajama pants.

Maurice chuckled. “Tojo.”

“Well,” Elizabeth said and clapped her hands together. “If
there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to ask.”

“Thanks,” Lindsey said as she began unpacking the cases
stacked on the hand truck.

As soon as Elizabeth disappeared, Lindsey looked at Maurice
and shook her head. “How’d we get this assignment?”

He shrugged. “It was either this or the one about
millionaire kids’ birthday parties. Frankly I’d much rather look at women in
bikinis than a bunch of bitchy soccer moms.”

Lindsey unfolded a tripod. “I’d rather be producing an
educational documentary.”

“Then take a pay cut to go work for public TV.”

“Don’t remind me,” she said and mounted the camera onto the
tripod.

Maurice set up the green-screen backdrop and positioned a
chair while Lindsey got the camera in place. No sooner had they finished than
the door opened and a blonde peeped in at them. “Oh, good. This looks like the
right place,” she said as she came in. “I’m Ella.”

Lindsey forced herself not stare at the girlie beauty
dressed to perfection in a light-pink suit and nude pumps. The skirt hit the
pageant contestant right above the knees, but there was still ample bare calf
showing. The fit of the suit accentuated Ella’s curves beautifully, delineating
the taut roundness of her bottom, her tiny waist, and the lush breasts that
held Lindsey’s gaze captive.

“You must be Lindsey,” Ella said and smiled. She extended
her hand.

Lindsey swallowed thickly, hating that the mere sight of
this woman caused butterflies to riot in her stomach. Lindsey inhaled. It was a
mistake. The most subtle, most feminine fragrance made her want to step closer,
to nuzzle her nose in the curve of the woman’s slender neck and breathe her in.

Lindsey wiped her suddenly damp palm on the backside of her
jeans before she pressed her hand into Ella’s. Ella didn’t possess the
cold-fish, germaphobic handshake Elizabeth had. No. Ella’s touch was friendly.
Genuine. Accepting.

So were her eyes. Lindsey could get lost in a pair of baby
blues like that.

She cleared her throat. Because her own sexuality was so
glaringly apparent, it was rare to come across someone who didn’t shy away in
some form or another. Not that most people tended to be bigots. They just
didn’t react as
normally
as Ella.

“Lindsey Mitchell,” she introduced and withdrew her hand.
“That’s Maurice.”

Maurice nodded politely.

“He’s shy,” Lindsey joked. “If you want to take a seat right
there, we’ll go ahead and get started.”

Ella nodded and gracefully sank into the chair. She turned
slightly to the side, crossed her legs at the ankles and sat ramrod-straight
with her hands folded neatly in her lap. Every move she made revealed her
training as a beauty pageant contestant. Most women would have fiddled with
their hair, looked in a mirror to check their reflection, or at the very least
been concerned with their appearance in some way.

Not Ella.

But then again, there wasn’t a blonde hair out of place. No
feather of misapplied lipstick, not even the tiniest mascara clump.

Lindsey didn’t know whether to find the woman’s confidence
admirable or irritating.

She switched on the camera and looked through the eyepiece.
Gorgeous. Her thighs warmed as she panned back just enough to capture as much
of Ella as possible.

“I’m going to ask you a few questions. My part will be
edited out and you’ll be left talking when the show airs. Try to answer as
fully as you can and in complete sentences,” Lindsey explained. Was it getting
hot in here? She rubbed the short hairs at the back of her neck then reached
around front to pluck the suddenly stifling fabric of her vintage
Keep On
Truckin’
tee off her chest.

Ella smoothed the hem of her skirt over the tops of her
thighs, drawing Lindsey’s attention to the tiny triangle that descended into
shadow between the contestant’s knees.