Gettin' Lucky (18 page)

I shrugged. “Nah. We weren’t such good friends, anyway.”

He kissed me. And it was just like I remembered in the car, except better. Better because I’d had some time to figure out what I wanted, and I knew that what I wanted was Elliot. And he wanted me, too.

I mean, how lucky could a girl get?

I pulled back suddenly.

“Something wrong?” Elliot asked, sounding nervous.

“Just that I
really
don’t think my father would approve of this,” I said. “I’d say we could take a ride or something, but you know-still grounded.”

“Right.” He nodded, looking thoughtful. “Well, in that case, we’ll have to come up with a Plan B.”

I was all for a Plan B.

Elliot disappeared back into his messenger bag. When he emerged, he was holding
a hefty DVD boxed set. He held it out to me:
The Essential Hitchcock.
I beamed and jumped up and down with glee. I kissed him again—house rules and grounding and parental authority aside. And let me tell you—it was worth it. I even got to touch the neck scruff, at long last. Also worth the risk—and the surprised look that Elliot gave me just before he burst out laughing.

“Hitchcock’s my favorite,” I told him, giggling a little bit myself.

He gave me an affectionate “duh” look. “Well, in that case”—he winked at me—“it looks like we’re in luck.”

About the Author

Micol Ostow most heartily does not endorse gambling. At least, not on a writer’s salary. She lives and works in New York City, where she is perpetually short on cash but long on cheese, chocolate, and coffee. She relies on a tiny, noisy French bulldog named Bridget Jones to keep her (semi)sane. Visit Micol at
www.micolostow.com
.

LOL at this sneak peek of The Boys Next Door

By Jennifer Echols

A new Romantic Comedy from Simon Pulse

Suddenly things looked way, way up. My eyes found Sean in the darkness, next to the stairs, with his back to me. He stood a few inches taller than his friends who’d just graduated too, who surrounded him. Sean was always surrounded.

As I crossed the room to him, folks kept stepping in my way, wanting to say hey and have conversations with me, of all things. The one time I
wasn’t
interested in being well liked.

By the time I finally reached him, my heart pounded. But it was now or never. I made myself grin at Sean’s friends as I slid my hand across his T-shirt, feeling his hard stomach underneath the cotton. I almost flinched at how good and how intimate it felt, but through the marvel of my willpower, I did not flinch. I lay my head playfully against his chest, as I’d seen girls do when they claimed to be just friends with a guy but everyone
whispered something more was going on.

I half-expected him to shout, “Get off me!” and shove me away. Not because Sean would ever do that to a girl—he had more charming ways of extricating himself from cretins—but because my life generally had been a long series of mortifications, and Sean shouting in alarm at my embrace would fit right in. The other half of me expected him to chuckle gently, but not make a move of his own quite yet. It might take him a while to get used to the new me.

He didn’t chuckle. He didn’t shove me away. He did
exactly
what he was supposed to. Even better. He slipped his arm around my waist and drew me closer against his warm body. I felt him nodding at something one of the other guys said about baseball, but he didn’t say a word to me or anyone. As if a greeting like this from me were the most natural thing in the world. He smelled even better than usual, too—just a hint of cologne. A woody scent with undertones of musk and gunpowder.

I snuggled against him, nose close to his warm, scented chest, and enjoyed a few more seconds of this tingling paradise. What heaven, if my whole summer could be like this—

His low voice vibrating through my body, he asked his friends, “Have you been watching the Braves? Tim Hudson or what?”

Oh God, I was hugging
Adam!

Hey, the scene fit right into my life after all!

I jerked away from him. Almost instantly I realized I should not jerk away, because the situation would be slightly less mortifying if I pretended I’d known it was Adam all along.

The damage was done. Worse, I didn’t have a chance to burst out the front door and run, not walk,
run
all the way home, dash upstairs to the computer in my room, and book a one-way ticket to Antarctica to join the commune there for teenagers too socially challenged to join the chess club. He caught my elbow. “Later,” he called over his shoulder to the guys, and he pulled me into a corner. He bent down to whisper in my ear, “You’re blushing.”

I opened my lips. I didn’t seem to be taking in enough oxygen through my nose. “I’m sunburned,” I breathed.

Adam was smiling, enjoying my discomfort too much for my taste. “You thought I was Sean.”

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WHAT WILL I DO WHEN I GROW UP?

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