by: Marissa Clarke
Series: Anderson Brothers
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Release Date: November 16, 2015
Publisher: Entangled Publishing ~ Lovestruck
Sometimes the biggest risk is playing it safe…
Gen Richards is tired of living down to her family’s expectation of the helpless blind girl. Resurrecting her high-school bucket list that begins with “kiss a total stranger” seems just the thing until she finds herself in a panty-melting lip lock with her big brother’s best friend.
Chance Anderson thrives on adrenaline, but Genny’s the one risk he’s not willing to take. His recklessness a decade ago landed her in the hospital and ejected him from her life. He’s bad for her and everyone knows it—especially her big brother.
Chance reluctantly helps Gen complete her bucket list in order to keep her out of trouble. Running through a freezing fountain, playing Spin the Bottle while fending off a mad horde of stinging insects, and skinny dipping with homicidal attack swans don’t hold a candle to the real danger: falling for the one person he can never have.
Her agenda since this whole thing began had done a one-eighty. She no longer wanted to hurt him and show him what he’d missed when he left all those years ago; she wanted to make up for lost time. She wanted to kiss and touch and hold him like she had in her dreams—and in her imagination when she was alone. She wanted him to see her for the woman she had become. She wanted him to help her scratch number ten off her list, finally, after a decade of waiting.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go through with it, but I want to see the list. Keeping me in the dark is counterproductive.”
“Kinda like being me, huh?”
“You know what’s on the list, so, no.”
He wanted to see the list. Fine. She’d show it to him. She pulled it out of the back of her phone case and handed it to him, waiting for his reaction with a smirk.
To her shock, he didn’t ask what to make of it. Instead, she heard him running his fingers across the surface. Shit. He could read braille. When had that happened?
“So... Speedboat, slow dance in the rain...”
“Give it back!” she swept her arms in the direction of his voice and made contact with his chest. Grabbing his T-shirt in her fist, she reached for his right arm.
“Play spin the bottle?”
“I was fifteen! Please give it back.”
She had to get it away from him before he read number ten.
“Sleep under the stars...”
That was number nine. She lunged and made a mad grab for the scrap of paper, but only managed to rip a corner off of it.
“Lose it.”
Crap, crap, crap. She slumped to the floor and buried her face in her hands to hide what was surely the mother of all blushes based on the hot flush crawling over her skin.
“Lose what?”
He could not be that dense.
“Oh...that.” He sat down beside her, turned her hand over, and placed the list in her palm.
“I was fifteen,” she said again as if it made a difference. “I’m sorry, Gen. I didn’t mean to upset you. You handed it to me.”
“I didn’t know you could read braille.”
He tipped her chin toward him with his fingertips and wiped away an escaped tear. “You don’t know a lot of things about me.”
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Marissa Clarke lives in Texas, where everything is bigger, especially the mosquitoes.
When not writing, she wrangles her rowdy pack of three teens, husband, and a Cairn Terrier named Annabel, who rules the house (and Marissa's heart) with an iron paw.
Marissa also writes young adult novels for Penguin USA under the name Mary Lindsey. She is represented by Kevan Lyon of the Marsal Lyon Literary Agency.
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Great excerpt. I look forward to reading more.
ReplyDeleteI loved this book Janine. Marissa Clarke is VERY quickly becoming one of my favorite authors.
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