Crazy For You: Falling For You

By Simona Taylor

If Ruby Red didn't know better, she'd think she'd been cursed. She attracts dorks and weirdos like Pigpen from Peanuts attracts dirt. From ferret smugglers to men who con restaurants out of birthday cake, she's endured a streak of disastrous swipe-rights.

 

Even worse, her most catastrophic misadventures happen under the disdainful eye of the owner of Palmetto Plaza's popular Irish pub. Bar Dude thinks Ruby is a drama queen who can't stop dipping her toes into the shallow end of the dating pool. That makes her no better than the parade of weirdos who amble through her life.

If there's one thing Ruby hates, it's being misjudged. Since she can't change his mind about her, it's best she just stays out of his way.

Then one Sunday morning, Bar Dude turns up frantic, needing a favor.

 

She could say no, but granting him a boon and lording it over him forever after seems like much more fun. Right?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simona Taylor
• Release date: Apr 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9789768333254

Simona Taylor

Roslyn Carrington, Simona Taylor's alter ego, has been a freelance writer, editor and proofreader for over 15 years. She is also a former public relations practitioner with 13 years of experience in the energy industry. Aside from her self-publishing successes, she has published 15 novels with major US publishers such as Harlequin, BET Arabesque and Kensington, and has ghost-written several memoirs and non-kction worPs. She writes and edits for a variety of publications and corporate clients. She lives and worPs in Trinidad and Tobago. @lease contact her at SimonaTaylorRomance

Book preview

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Crazy For You is an enemies to lovers instalove romance by Simona Taylor. Bad first date after bad first date, Ruby Red has earned the nickname Tinder Tessa, but that doesn't mean she has given up on true love. Lance Walsh, the sexy Irish bar owner who has witnessed her dates going down in flames, doesn't think much of her dating choices, and thinks even less of Ruby.

How can she convince him that she's not the ditzy serial dater he thinks she is? And why should she even want to?

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Copyright © 2022 by Roslyn Carrington.

Falling For You Series: Crazy For You by Simona Taylor

ISBNS

KINDLE: 978-976-8333-26-1

PAPERBACK: 978-976-8333-24-7

EPUB: 978-976-8333-25-4

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part (beyond the copying permitted by US Copyright Law, Section 107, fair use in teaching or research, Section 108, certain library copying, or in published media by reviewers in limited excerpts), without written permission from the author.

Contents

1. Kinky Bucket List

2. Dorks and Weirdos

3. Birthday Bandit

4. No Dudes, No Dates

5. The Cat and the Cake

6. Ladybug Socks

7. Bagpipes in the Mist

8. Welcome to the Celtic Kingdom

9. Backless Dress and Vertigo Pumps

10. Tinder Tessa is Dead

11. Heart Don’t Lie

Enjoy a taste of Tantalizing You

Enjoy a taste of Kissable You

Enjoy a taste of Irresistible You

Dear Reader,

About the Author

one

Kinky Bucket List

W ait, have you got your hand down your pants?

Ruby Red froze with her glass of zinfandel halfway to her lips, twisting her body on her bar stool to look at the man standing right behind her. He towered above her seated frame, glaring accusingly at her date, who was goggling back at him, face flushing guiltily.

It was Thursday night at The Crooked Lance, one of the more popular hangouts at Palmetto Plaza. The Lance was a transplanted Irish pub that tried its best to look like the genuine article from the Old Country, with a hand-painted shingle swaying outside and an assortment of farm tools hanging on the walls. They served European beers and Guinness on tap, along with Walkers crisps in multiple flavors, and good old fashioned pub food.

Ruby was more of a sushi bar girl herself, but when her most recent swipe right on Tinder had suggested meeting up here at the Lance, she was up for it. She’d been texting the guy for a week now, and figured that a bar in the middle of the largest and busiest outdoor mall in the town of Abyssinia was a safe place to set eyes on the guy in person for the first time.

Over the last couple of years, Ruby had spent so much time on dating apps that her girlfriends at the Plaza jokingly called her Tinder Tessa, and gathering around the coffee pot the morning after one of her dates to hear her recount her most recent disaster had become a ritual.

She took in stride the macabre interest her girls showed in her dating life. After all, she was a great storyteller, and who wouldn’t want to hear about the time her date’s wife—the wife he’d neglected to mention—stormed the restaurant where they’d been sharing tapas and life stories, and began whacking him on the head with a sombrero-shaped nacho plate?

Or the time her date had to split in the middle of their first beer because he was moonlighting as an Uber driver and had gotten a call to drive all the way up to Hester’s Weir, a village two hours away, and couldn’t say no because the ride would be so lucrative?

Tonight, she was beginning to rethink her acceptance of this particular invitation, because Wesley, the man she’d come to meet, was sitting on the other side of the table, one hand placed innocently next to his beer glass … and the other definitely under the table, close enough to his torso to be, well, stuck in his pants.

I’m going to ask you again, mate, said the man standing behind Ruby, his voice growing more menacing, do you or do you not have your hand down the front of your pants in my establishment?

Ruby craned her neck to take in the bar guy. His proximity was beginning to feel intimidating, given that his long, neat, powerful body was overshadowing hers like a stalactite threatening to detach itself from the cave ceiling.

She caught sight of a thick thatch of black hair, which repeated itself in his bushy brows. The brows were drawn together in an irritated frown, sheltering a pair of icy green eyes which Ruby sensed intuitively would probably sparkle when he smiled. Only, he wasn’t smiling now.

He wore a Kelly-green shirt over a pair of black Levis that didn’t look too awful clinging to his lean hips. The logo of The Crooked Lance—a literal image of a crooked lance that to her eyes seemed slightly suggestive—was embroidered over his left breast, and a bunch of keys jangled at his hip, clipped to his belt. All of this, along with the fact that he’d said ‘my establishment’ and her feeling that he didn’t mean it in the royal we, ‘this place belongs to everyone’ sense, but rather in the ‘I own this freaking joint’ sense, led her to believe that she was looking at the proprietor himself.

And the proprietor himself was pissed off.

Meanwhile, Wesley, who was brown-haired, slightly unshaven and bug-eyed, was beginning to stutter, slowly removing his hand from … well, wherever it was. It’s not what you think, he mumbled apologetically.

The guy in the green polo leaned forward, supporting himself on one fist upon the table between them, lip curling in disgust. Oh, really? Because it’s beginning to look to me like you two are up to some freaky sex shit in my bar! And I’m not having it!

His accent was so stereotypically Irish that Ruby figured he could make a lot of money on the side voicing ads that featured leprechauns. But that voice, deep and melodious as it was, was the last thing on her mind right now.

Because of Ruby’s many triggers, being falsely accused ranked high. Hey! What do you mean, sex shit? Do I look like the kind of woman who would be playing some dumb sex game in the middle of a bar? In a public place?

Mr. Kelly Green dragged his attention away from Wesley and turned it in her direction. He let his gaze slowly move all the way down her, from top to toe, as if gathering enough intel to truthfully answer her question.

Eerily, as that deep green searchlight took its time, Ruby saw herself as he must have seen her: umber skin that she lotioned nightly until it glowed; thick curly black hair freshly permed, cascading around her shoulders; and mad, mad curves. Her body was a handful, and she knew how to take care of it.

She ran four or five mornings a week down at Cottonwood Park on the other side of the Plaza with her girlfriend, Raya, the park manager, and swam at the Y every Saturday. Still, her body type remained generous, with thick thighs, wide hips, and a booty that drew stares when she walked down the street. She had no problem with the double-takes. She was forty and fabulous, and made sure everyone knew it.

Bar Guy was taking an insultingly long time answering her question, so she snapped her fingers in front of his face, reclaiming the conversation. Hey!

He returned from whatever mental side quest he’d been on, and his mood was in no way improved. Lady, he said with almost weary patience, I can’t speak for what you look like. All I know is that an hour ago I had to toss two lads out of the street for toking up in my boiler room, and last night, a young couple decided it might be a lark if the girl slipped under the table and offered her boyfriend a, shall we say, ‘special’ dessert. Right over there! He pointed accusingly at a table across the room that was now occupied by a coterie of inebriated middle-aged women, one of whom was singing loudly along to LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem pouring out of the speakers.

In my bar! he added, looking mortally offended. So whatever kinky bucket list bullshit you two are trying to get away with, you aren’t doing it here.

Ruby felt a prickle at the back of her neck. The sensation you get when you knew you were being watched. Kelly Green’s voice was now loud enough to attract the worst kind of attention: morbid curiosity. All around them, the denizens of the Lance, who occupied varying places on the drunken spectrum, were beginning to take notice.

She turned a pleading look on Wesley. Whatever you’re doing, please stop.

To her horror, the man shot to his feet, revealing to all that his hand had, indeed, returned to the crotch of his pants.