A slow smile spread across her face and she pushed up to a sitting position on her bed. “Your book?”
“Our book,” I corrected. “We’ll write it together.”
“And he’ll be in it?”
“Yes. We’ll write ourselves some book boyfriends and they’ll be way better than the real thing.”
Her blue eyes twinkled with mischief.
“But,” I said as I pointed to her notebook. “You need to get through these mid-terms first and pass them all. In fact, you need to do better than pass so you can bring up your overall marks.”
I expected an argument, but instead she stared at the desk drawer as though she had x-ray vision through the wood and then said, “You’d better take that novel with you when you go.”
“That’s a start.”
“And hand me my phone,” she said, holding out her hand toward me.
What? “Not a chance!”
She shook her head. “No. Not a distraction. Emmie said she saw a sign for a tutor down in the first floor lounge when she was meeting with Danny and she texted me the number. I’m going to send a message now before I can talk myself out of it.”
She looked at me intently and I knew she was serious. I believed her, and maybe this project we were embarking on would be enough motivation to be her turning point. Her getting an actual tutor was a good sign in the right direction. I handed her the phone and watched as she scrolled through, found the number, and texted a message. She handed the phone back and thanked me before she picked up her notebook and without another word, started back in on her studying.
As I returned to my own, I couldn’t help my mind drifting to thoughts of our project and how I was secretly excited about it, too. I loved writing and the thought of collaborating with a friend on a romantic story sounded like fun. Way more fun than sitting in my room, writing alone in London.
Also, one way or another, I was going to get myself a happily ever after.
Thank you
for reading HITTING THE TARGET!
I hope you enjoyed it!
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The Rosewoods Series
TAKING THE REINS
MASQUERADE
PLAYING THE PART
READING BETWEEN THE LINES
I’LL NEVER FORGET (Short Story)
THIS POINT FORWARD
RISKING IT ALL (Short Story)
MAKING RIPPLES
ACTING OUT
HITTING THE TARGET
TURNING THE PAGE (coming soon—turn the page for a sneak peek!)
Find me online at http://katrinaabbott.com, follow me on Twitter @abbottkatrina and come check out my Pinterest board to see some of the inspirations behind the characters (girls and guys!) and the costumes for MASQUERADE.
xoxo
Katrina Abbott
Coming soon!
Turning the Page
Book 9
of
The Rosewoods
Read on for a sneak peek!
Stirred Soup and Mixed Signals
Coming from a Hollywood family, it’s amazing I wasn’t addicted to really bad things like drugs or booze. Hell, I wasn’t even addicted to the spotlight like a Kardashian. No, my addiction was a lot tamer. Some might call it ridiculous and one that doesn’t even count in the big scheme of things.
My name is Celia Thomas and I’m a romantaholic. That’s right, I’m addicted to romance novels.
I know you’re laughing. You either think that: A. My addiction is ridiculous and not a real thing or that B. Romance novels are themselves ridiculous and not worth reading and how could anyone be addicted to what some people call trash.
Call them what you want, I call them my saviors. Because when everything is going wrong in my life, I know I can always turn to a romance book and be sure everything will work out in the end. No matter what. That’s always a truth I can count on in novels. In life? Not so much.
Except that, like any addiction, it had caught up with me and was causing trouble in my everyday life. That’s how they define addiction, right?
Because all I wanted to ever do was read. I read to get my mind off my horrible grades and that I was flunking out of Rosewood. In fact, there was a good chance that if I didn’t really turn things around at mid-terms, the dean was going to boot me out for good.
And while you’re sitting there judging me, I can tell you that while I may not be very smart, I’m smart enough to know that reading novels isn’t going to help my marks. Especially when most of my textbooks hadn’t even been opened and mid-terms were looming. I knew that. Not only because it’s common sense, but because my friends were drilling the fact into my head at every opportunity, as though I hadn’t already figured it out.
Still, I read book after book, looking for the rush of the happily ever after. I wasn’t snobby about it, either; I’d read historicals, contemporaries, paranormals, whatever. As long as there was a hot guy, I wasn’t fussy if he was a cop, cowboy, shifter, secret royal or MMA fighter.
I also read to get my mind off the fact that I had no love life when even my nerdtastic best friend Kaylee had one. Don’t get me wrong: I love Kaylee with all my heart and am really happy for her. Just, it would be easier to be completely and totally happy if we’d both gotten boyfriends at the same time.
Not that I wasn’t trying. I’d thought there might be something between me and Shane Peacock who was my supervisor down in the Rosewood kitchen, but after a few dances at the Masquerade ball, we’d gone back to our former roles of crabby supervisor and girl forced to deal with crabby supervisor.
Also, that I was flunking meant I probably wouldn’t be around Rosewood long enough to have any sort of relationship. So really, why bother?
Well, because I really, really wanted a guy. And I was scared that I was a bathrobe and a handful of allergy pills away from being a crazy cat lady.
Most of my friends were blissfully happy with their boyfriends and while I was happy for them, it made me miserable. And that I was miserable made me miserabler because what kind of friend was I if seeing them happy made me sad? I tried to hide it as best I could, but it was hard.
All that just stressed me out more. What activity reduces stress? Reading. As does working out, but swimming lengths or running on the treadmill still allowed for plenty of thinking and worrying, so while I still worked out to stay strong and fit and be able to compete, reading became my go-to activity. And I went to it a lot.
Too bad there’s no twelve step program for a reading addiction. I needed to break the cycle all on my own. Thank God I had the support of my Rosewood girls. Especially Kaylee and Brooklyn who were both really trying to help. I just needed to get my—
“Celia!”
Startled out of my thoughts and almost out of my skin, I dropped the giant spoon into the vat of minestrone soup I was stirring. Even as big as it was, the long-handled spoon disappeared into the pale red liquid. I looked up to see Shane, the very same kitchen supervisor I’d just been thinking about, standing in front of me, glaring. It might have been intimidating if he wasn’t always glaring. In the many months I’d been working in the kitchen for my CSA, I’d gotten used to that glare. In fact, I secretly looked forward to that glare. I’d learned his bark was far worse than his bite and I’d happily take his attention, positive or negative.
“What?” I said. “You scared me half to death!”
“I called your name four times,” he said, eyes wide.
I blushed as I looked away from those hazel eyes. The ones framed by long dark lashes that
made my insides feel as stirred up as the soup. As much as I liked the glare, it was kind of like the sun in that I couldn’t look at it for very long.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about exams. I should be studying right now, in fact.”
He looked unapologetic as he reached into a drawer and got out a pair of tongs, which he handed to me so I could dig out the drowned spoon. “You can go study when the prep for tomorrow is done.”
I turned toward the pot and pulled out the big spoon wiping off the handle with a cloth before I tossed the tongs into one of the big sinks for washing. The clatter of steel on steel was mostly drowned out by the sounds of a busy kitchen that I barely noticed anymore.
“How’s that soup coming?” he asked.
“It could use some more simmer time,” I answered, giving the soup another stir just to have an excuse not to look at him.
He grabbed a regular soup spoon and stepped up to the stove, dipping the spoon in and bringing it to his lips.
Kissable lips. He was so close and smelled intoxicating: a mix of butter and hot guy. I glanced around but everyone else in the kitchen was busy prepping, cooking, cleaning. No one would notice if I leaned in and...
“Uchhh,” he exclaimed after the tiniest of tastes. “This is so bland.”
His glare turned into a disgusted scowl, he shoved the spoon toward my mouth, almost spilling the rest of the broth on my apron. “Taste this. Is this what minestrone is supposed to taste like?”
Although I’d tasted the soup only minutes before, there was no point arguing with him, so I opened my mouth and let him place the spoon on my tongue. Once I swallowed, I stared straight into his eyes, because there was no way I was letting him intimidate me over a pot of soup. “I’m going to say no, since you’re being such a crab. But I followed the recipe exactly; calm yourself down....” And then I may have called him something under my breath. Which he absolutely heard.
Like he always did when I stood up to him, his eyes softened and the tiniest of grins tugged at his lips. “Such a spitfire.”
God, he was hot.
“Shut up,” I said, reaching for the salt. “How much?”
He took the box from my hand, his fingers touching mine just long enough for my heart to skip a beat. “This much,” he said as he poured some salt directly into the pot and motioned for me to stir it in.
“And how much was that, Master Chef?”
He shrugged. “Enough.”
I put the big spoon down on the steel counter after a few more big circles through the liquid and looked at him, crossing my arms. “How am I supposed to learn if you won’t tell me how much?”
“Measurements matter in baking,” he said. “Baking is chemistry. But soups are made from the heart.” He thumped his chest twice with his right fist. “Learn to cook from your heart and you’ll know by instinct how much salt to put in.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Fine,” he said, his mouth breaking into a grin. “It was about a quarter of a cup, just like it said in the recipe. You sure you remembered to put it in?”
I glanced over to the other side of the kitchen where Anna, one of the full-time chefs, was cutting chunks of dough off a huge ball to make loaves of bread. She’d come over to borrow the salt just before I’d started assembling the soup. She’d brought it back, but obviously too late; I’d blanked on remembering I needed to add it in.
I sighed, silently cursing my stupidity. “No, I didn’t remember.”
“That’s not like you,” he said.
It wasn’t, but I had a lot going on. I sighed. “Like I said: mid-terms.”
His eyes lingered on mine a half a second too long before he grabbed a clean spoon from the drawer and dipped it into the soup before bringing it to my lips. “Taste it now,” he said, nodding at me.
As I forced myself to look into his eyes, I blew across the hot liquid and then opened my mouth to let him feed me the spoon. I allowed the soup to coat my tongue and really concentrated on the flavors like he’d taught us. There was definitely a difference with the salt, making the rest of the flavors—tomato, onion, beans, spices—seem to come alive in my mouth.
“So?” he asked as he leaned slightly toward me to put the spoon in the sink behind me. “Better?”
“Yes,” I agreed.
He smiled. “See? You just need to pay attention.”
Jerk. Then as I tried to think of something to say, his smile turned into a frown.
“What?”
“Have your eyes always been that blue?”
I gawked at him for several long seconds while I processed that he wasn’t talking about food anymore.
“What?”
“Your eyes. They’re so blue.”
I looked down and away, not wanting him to notice my eyes all of a sudden. Because I liked him and it was obvious he didn’t like me so he shouldn’t notice things like that.
“Don’t hide them, Celia” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, which was a first. It was so surprising that I looked up at him.
“That’s better. How have I never noticed before how beautiful you are?”
If I’d read that line in one of my books, I’d have scoffed at the cheesiness of it. But there in the hot, noisy kitchen, him standing slightly too close and staring at me, his pupils dilated as he took me in, I bought it.
Hook.
Line.
Sinker.
But the fact was, we were in a noisy kitchen and he didn’t mean anything by it. So I rolled my eyes. “Nice try. Go roll out your croissants or something. I need to get out of here so I can go study.”
His head jerked back as though I’d hit him but then the spell seemed to be broken. He nodded and then without another word, turned away, making a beeline for the walk-in freezer.
Funny, I felt like I could use some cooling off, too.
~ ♥ ~
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Also by Katrina Abbott
The Rosewoods
Taking The Reins
Masquerade
Playing The Part
Reading Between The Lines
This Point Forward
Making Ripples
Acting Out
Hitting the Target
Turning the Page
Crossing the Line
New Beginnings - The Rosewoods Series - Books 1 - 3
Fresh Start: The Rosewoods Series Prequel
The Rosewoods - Bonus Content
I'll Never Forget
Risking it All
The Rosewoods Rock Star Series
Along for the Ride
Going on Tour
Working for the Band
Watch for more at Katrina Abbott’s site.
Hitting the Target Page 17
