Kiss Me Not (Kiss Me 1)

“If the shoe fits…”

She shook her head emphatically, her blonde curls swinging side to side. “I’m not perfect.”

“From my point of view, there isn’t much wrong with you.”

“There’s a lot wrong with me. I’m just really good at hiding it.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t feed the raccoons out of the goodness of my heart. I feed them so they don’t thumb through my trash like the little grub monsters they are.”

My lips twitched. “You still feed them.”

“Okay, fine. I can’t cook.”

“You can’t cook?” I stared at her. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that.

She shook her head again. “At all. My mom can’t really cook, and my dad never had time to teach me. My stepmom tries, but I’m just really bad at it. Last week, I burned spaghetti.”

“How do you burn spaghetti?”

“Because you don’t put enough water in and forget to stir it, okay?” she grumbled. “It happens. Sometimes you fall asleep. Sometimes you get caught in the middle of a How I Met Your Mother Netflix binge.”

“The last one sounds the most likely.”

“I don’t have to respond to that.”

“Ah, but you did, and your response tells me everything I need to know.” I grinned. “So, what’s your kiss tally so far?”

Halley leaned back, adjusted her glasses, and looked at the chalkboard we both had to mark off our kisses. “Fifty-two.”

I pursed my lips. “Damn it.”

“I have more than you?”

“I hate to say it, but yes.”

She gave me a grin of her own and ripped off a piece of pretzel. “Pucker up, flower boy.”

CHAPTER NINE – HALLEY

Kissin’ Ain’t Easy

I closed my eyes as ninety-year-old Gerard Hooper leaned over and pressed his wrinkled lips against mine.

It was gross. Let me tell you that. It was like being kissed by your grandpa, except your grandpa had spent the entire day at the bar and was steaming drunk.

He tasted like beer and stale cigars.

I knew that smell would linger with me for hours.

With any luck, it would, and it would get me out of my bet with Preston.

What was I thinking, agreeing to that? To kissing him? I’d gone and lost my damn mind. It was the only explanation for it. It didn’t matter if I won or not, because the result was the same.

We would kiss.

The only way this would be bearable would be if I kissed his cheek. Unfortunately for me, I only had control over one of these scenarios.

I would either win and kiss his cheek, or he’d win, and he’d… well, who knew what he’d do?

I had no idea why he’d suggested it in the first place. It was a terrible idea. Nothing good could come of it.

God only knew what kissing Preston Wright would do to me.

It’d keep me up at night for weeks. It would consume my waking thoughts. One little kiss would become an unhealthy obsession.

This was not good.

And there were only ten minutes until we closed. Until we’d find out who won.

Until there was the potential of me kissing the one person who was off-limits to me.

It was a disaster.

It was a stupid, stupid bet. One that I would damn sure never repeat again—not that it got me out of it right now.

I kissed my final person of the night, an adorable six-year-old boy who’d just won his first stuffed animal on the hook-a-duck game. It was a wonky-looking donkey, with one eye almost twice as big as the other, and a tail that looked as if it was going to fall off any second. The exasperation was written all over his mom’s face, but it quickly disappeared when he lisped to me that he wanted to help someone with his last two dollars of the money he’d earned doing some chores for his sick grandma.

Because he was just the sweetest thing, I kissed his cheek, let him kiss me back on the cheek, and listened to a story about how he went to the moon with his favorite Superman action figure. Then, when it was all said and done, he high-fived me and skipped off.

His mom mouthed a thank you as she hurried after him, and I couldn’t help but grin like a lunatic as she chased him down in the doorway of the tent.

“Cute.”

I looked back at Preston. There was a playful glint in his eyes. “What?”

“That. Humoring the kid.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t I? The line is shut, and I probably made his day.”

“You’re right. I guess you’re just an inherently better person than I am.”

It took everything I had to bite back a groan. “Not this again.”

He held up his hands and took a step back. “All right, all right. Are you ready? I’m here to collect on my winning bet.”

Rolling my eyes, I added one final mark to my tally chart. It took me around a minute to add up the groups of five plus a couple of stragglers.