Today we have the release day blitz of Tawna Fenske’s Just A Little Bet! Check out this gorgeous new romance and be sure to get your copy today!
Title: Just A Little Bet
Author: Tawna Fenske
Genre: Contemporary Romance
About Just A Little Bet:
After a night of too many drinks, smokejumper Tony Warren and his best friend, photographer Kayla Gladney, come to the realization that they’re both bad at love. They even tried dating each other, but that crashed and burned, too. Now he’s got the hangover from hell and the certain conclusion he’s just a shit boyfriend. But Kayla thinks he’s a straight-up commitment-phobe.
So they make a bet—they’re going to hunt down his exes and decide once and for all why he’s so unlucky in love. Terrible boyfriend or commitment-phobe. Why does either answer feel like he’s still losing?
But between roadside burgers and late night detours, they discover some fires never burn out—like the one slowly smoldering between them. And suddenly losing feels a whole lot like winning again.
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Exclusive Excerpt:
He glanced over and winked. “Want to play a road-trip game?”
“Like twenty questions?”
“Or the alphabet game,” he said. “The one where you look at road signs to find letters of the alphabet in order?”
Kayla scanned the long stretch of highway dotted with sagebrush and junipers. Not a lot of signs in sight. “How about kiss, marry, kill?”
“What’s that?”
She wiggled her toes on the dash, enjoying the cool flutter of air conditioning. “We take turns naming three random celebrities,” she said. “Or they could be musicians or cartoon characters or whatever. You have to decide which one you’d kiss, which one you’d marry, and which one you’d kill.”
He glanced over and raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like another middle school game. Proceed.”
“Um, let me think.” She rubbed her palms down her denim-clad thighs and tried to come up with something. “Okay. Marge Simpson, Judy Jetson, and Princess Fiona from Shrek.”
“Those are my choices?”
She grinned. “Those are your choices.”
Frowning at the highway, Tony considered it. “I’m not keen on killing anyone, but Judy Jetson’s gotta be pushing ninety, since that show came out in the early sixties. So I guess I’ll go with her.”
“To kill?”
His brow furrowed. “Do we really have to do that part?”
“Yep, it’s the game.”
“Okay, then yes.” He tapped the brakes as a rabbit darted out in the road, then changed its mind and scurried back. Tony swerved to avoid hitting it, expertly keeping the Jeep on the road.
“Princess Fiona seems really happy with Shrek, so I’m not going to fuck that up for them,” he continued. “Just a peck on the cheek is okay, right?”
Kayla eyed him, surprised by how seriously he seemed to be taking this. “Does this mean you’re marrying Marge Simpson?”
He shrugged and tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel. “Homer’s kind of a dick, and she always seemed like a cool lady. Might as well get her out of that.”
“Wow.” Kayla stared at him. “So you’re seeing marriage as—what? A chance to rescue someone?”
Tony frowned. “That’s not what I said.”
“No, but you implied it.” She laughed and dropped her feet to the floor. “No wonder we didn’t work out.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t need anyone rescuing me,” she said. “If some sort of hero complex is the driving force behind—”
“I do not have a hero complex.” His words came out so forceful, even Tony seemed surprised. “I just don’t like seeing anyone in a lousy marriage. There’s too goddamn many of those in the world.”
He wasn’t meeting her eyes, which was probably just because he needed to watch the road. But Kayla couldn’t help feeling a dark fog hovering over this conversation.
“Fair enough,” she said mildly. “For what it’s worth, that’s very noble. Maybe not the best reason to marry someone, but not the worst, either.”
“It’s not like you gave me great choices,” he pointed out.
“Okay, you go. Give me three picks.”
His frown tipped up at the edges, and suddenly he was grinning again. “Fine. Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, and Kevin Bacon.”
“Ooh, good choices.” Kayla tucked a knee up under her. “At their current ages, or do I get to choose my favorite roles they’ve played?”
“Current ages,” Tony said definitively.
Kayla laughed. “Says the guy who killed a geriatric Judy Jetson. Okay, I’m going to go ahead and kill Kevin Bacon. I never forgave him for being the guy who cheated with Julianne Moore and broke Steve Carell’s heart.”
“Which movie was that?”
“Crazy, Stupid, Love,” she said. “A brilliant—and dare I say highly underrated—romantic comedy.”
He glanced over at her. “How come you’ve never made me watch it?”
“The fact that you just said made you watch it is exactly why,” she said. “I don’t want your machismo sullying a movie so near and dear to my heart.”
“I’m wounded,” Tony deadpanned. “For the record, I’m a sensitive guy who digs the occasional rom-com.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Kayla got back to considering her options in the game. “Okay, so it comes down to Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington. Both are brilliant actors. Tom’s got a great mix between comedy and drama, where Denzel is a little more serious. But Denzel has the sex appeal thing going for him, while Tom just doesn’t curl my toes.”
Tony gave a low whistle. “Nice in-depth analysis.”
“Thanks.” She grinned. “You set the bar high with your thoughtful response.”
“Yeah, but you’re better at it than I am.”
She shrugged and grabbed her Hydro Flask to take a swig of water. “I do tend to overanalyze relationships.” Could be why she hadn’t managed to find her soul mate. “Not that it’s gotten me to the finish line.”
He frowned. “What the hell is the finish line?”
“Marriage. Babies. All the things you claim not to want but secretly might.”
He gave her a pained look and eased over to slip by a truck hauling huge bales of hay. “This bet is going to be the death of me. You’re going to spend the next couple weeks fiddling around in my brain, aren’t you?”
“Not if you don’t want me to.” She studied the side of his face as he steered them safely in front of the hay truck. “I just think a road trip is a perfect time for self-reflection.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Okay. So kiss, marry, kill.” She forced her brain back to the game. “I think I’m going to marry Denzel. The way he owned up to all his mistakes at the end of Flight seals the deal.”
Tony shifted his eyes off the road and looked at her. “That seems noteworthy, don’t you think?”
“How do you figure?”
“He played a raging asshole for 97 percent of that movie. But you focus on the redemption scene at the end.” He flashed her a grin. “It’s actually kind of sweet.”
She felt her forehead creasing. “Are you calling me a Pollyanna?”
“Hey, I didn’t say it. You did.”
Kayla rolled her eyes. “Is it too late to play the alphabet game?”
He laughed and picked up his cup of McDonald’s iced tea. “I’m sensing a trend here. We can play whatever you want, sweetheart.”
She dropped her foot to the floor and grabbed her own cup of soda. “I spy with my little eye…”
About Tawna Fenske:
When Tawna Fenske finished her English lit degree at 22, she celebrated by filling a giant trash bag full of romance novels and dragging it everywhere until she’d read them all. Now she’s a RITA Award finalist, USA Today bestselling author who writes humorous fiction, risqué romance, and heartwarming love stories with a quirky twist. Publishers Weekly has praised Tawna’s offbeat romances with multiple starred reviews and noted, “There’s something wonderfully relaxing about being immersed in a story filled with over-the-top characters in undeniably relatable situations. Heartache and humor go hand in hand.”
Tawna lives in Bend, Oregon, with her husband, stepkids, and a menagerie of ill-behaved pets. She loves hiking, snowshoeing, standup paddleboarding, and inventing excuses to sip wine on her back porch. She can peel a banana with her toes and loses an average of twenty pairs of eyeglasses per year. To find out more about Tawna and her books, visit http://www.tawnafenske.com.
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