Sometimes all a girl needs is a little practice…
It’s been twelve months, three days, and eleven hours since accounting student Scarlett Logan made it past a second date. A pitcher of mojitos in hand, she employs her supreme graphing skills to narrow things down to one horrifying explanation. Kissing. Clearly someone needs to teach her how to kiss properly. Like, say, her best friend and roomie, Finn Mackenzie. He’s safe, he’s convenient, and yeah, maybe just a little gorgeous.
Finn knows exactly why Scarlett’s boyfriends are disappearing quickly. Him. Not a single guy she’s brought home is nearly good enough. And he’ll be damned if he lets some loser give her “kissing lessons.” No. He’ll do the honors, thank you very much. The moment their lips touch, though, everything turns upside down. But Scarlett deserves the one thing Finn can’t give her. And if he doesn’t put an end to the sexy little shenanigans, he’ll teach Scarlett the hardest lesson of all…heartbreak.
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Rachel Bailey…
The Summer of Jake
Discover more New Adult titles from Entangled Embrace…
No Kissing Allowed
Hide Me
This Book Will Change Your Life
Getting Lucky Number Seven
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Rachel Bailey. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
2614 South Timberline Road
Suite 109
Fort Collins, CO 80525
Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.
Embrace is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.
Edited by Heather Howland and Kari Olson
Cover design by Louisa Maggio
Cover art from iStock
ISBN 978-1-63375-360-0
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition September 2015
This book is for Kari Olson and Heather Howland, the editors with the mostest, for seeing the potential in Finn and Scarlett’s story back when it was a germ of an idea, and polishing it with me over the draft versions. Gather in, editors-of-mine, it’s group hug time!
Chapter One
Scarlett
He hadn’t kissed me. The jerk.
From the front door, I watched my date walk down the path, through the gate, and to his car, illuminated by the full moon and the streetlamps on our suburban Sydney street. I waited for him to turn back and wave—anything—but, nope. Another Saturday night that had led to Nowhere Town. He’d said he’d call, but a guy that sticks out his hand awkwardly at my front door is not planning a future with me.
I closed the door, kicked off my heels, and headed through the house calling, “I’m home.”
Finn, my roommate and best friend rolled into one, looked up from the dining table as I went past. “Bad night?”
He was surrounded by a mountain of textbooks and random notes he’d scrawled on scraps of paper. His almost-black hair was disheveled—knowing him, probably from running his hands through it—and he had blue ink smudged on his stubbled jaw, as if he’d forgotten the pen in his hand when he’d rubbed it.
“Not a great one,” I said and dropped into the chair across from him. I looked around at his Saturday night companions and frowned. “But at least I went out. I’m starting to think you’re more interested in ancient reed flutes than real life.”
He narrowed dark blue—but bloodshot—eyes at me. “This is my real life, Scarlett. PhDs don’t write themselves.”
Fair point. Even if his PhD topic was the poorly tuned musical instruments of a long-dead society in ancient Mesopotamia. Sighing, I rested my forehead on the closest pile of old books, careful not to press my favorite cobalt-blue glasses into my face. I should be more focused on my messed up self anyway—Finn never had trouble finding a date if he wanted one. Keeping them was another story, but overall, he was more than capable of running his own social affairs.
Though we were only friends, even I could appreciate that Finn was hot.
His chair creaked as he leaned back and yawned. “You seem cranky. Was it that guy with the unfortunate facial hair? Was he out of line?”
“The perfect gentleman.” Which was the problem. I lifted my head and sought the reassurance of his always-steady gaze. “Finn, if there was something wrong with me, you’d be honest about it, right?”
“What,” he asked, rubbing his chest through one of his signature pale blue T-shirts, “like if you had botulism and the doctor asked me to break it to you?”
Botulism? He needed to start reading things written in this century. “I mean, if there was something about me that guys found…unappealing.”
He dropped his pen onto his notebook. “Scarlett, you know you’re pretty. What are you really asking?”
It was probably time I admitted this out loud. I drew in a deep breath and said it quickly. “I seem to be having something of a dry spell.”
He winced and stood. “I haven’t had near enough caffeine for this conversation.” He headed for the kitchen and I followed.
“Four years of friendship, Finn McKenzie, and you still try to avoid talking about sex with me?”
He opened the cupboard and grabbed a mug, but his broad shoulders slumped a little. “Four years of friendship and I’ve given up trying and accepted it as inevitable.”
“Forget the coffee,” I said, opening the fridge. “I’ll make mojitos.”
Finn turned back around and grimaced. “It’s going to be a serious conversation about your sex life, isn’t it?”
I gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “You’ll be fine. Men love talking about sex.”
“Not with their sisters or their female friends,” he said, his face paling.
And I guess I ticked both boxes—a female friend who was more like a little sister. He pulled the state of the art blender out of the appliance cupboard, and I put a cup under the icemaker in the fridge door, filling it with enough for a jug of mojitos. One of the best parts of renting a room in Finn’s house was the appliances. He always had up-to-date electrical gadgets in the kitchen, the best sound system in the living room, and the laundry room was so high-tech, the clothes pretty much took care of themselves.