ABOUT THAT KISS
Series: Heartbreaker Bay #5
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Author: Jill Shalvis
Release Date: January 23rd 2018
When love drives you crazy . . .
When sexy Joe Malone never calls after their explosive kiss, Kylie shoves him out of her mind. Until she needs a favor, and it’s a doozy. Something precious to her has been stolen and there’s only one person with unique finder-and-fixer skills that can help—Joe. It means swallowing her pride and somehow trying to avoid the temptation to throttle him—or seduce him.
the best thing to do . . .
No, Joe didn’t call after the kiss. He’s the fun time guy, not the forever guy. And Kylie, after all she’s been through, deserves a good man who will stay. But everything about Kylie makes it damned hard to focus, and though his brain knows what he has to do, his heart isn’t getting the memo.
… is enjoy the ride.
As Kylie and Joe go on the scavenger hunt of their lives, they discover surprising things about each other. Now, the best way for them to get over “that kiss” might just be to replace it with a hundred more.
Joe studied her. “I asked you once before, but now I’m going to ask you again. Is there something going
on between you two?”
She tossed up her hands. “Why do you both keep asking me that about each other?”
His eyes narrowed. “I thought nothing was going on.”
“And before today, I could’ve passed a lie detector test on that,” she said.
“What happened today?”
She paused. Not because she had anything to be ashamed of, but because she wasn’t quite sure what had happened.
“Kylie.”
She sighed. “It’s nothing.”
“Try again,” Joe said and gave her the very male universal go on gesture.
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. He . . . finally made a move on me.”
Joe didn’t budge. Not a blink, not a muscle twitch, nothing, but she could’ve popped corn off the electric tension coming off him.
“Describe ‘made a move,’ ” he finally said.
She crossed her arms. “And again, how is this relevant to my case?”
He just gave her that careful stare again and she thought wow, those eyes of his should be registered as a lethal weapon, because she found herself opening her mouth and spilling her guts. “He kissed me.”
“He kissed you.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Do you know that you often repeat what I say?”
“What kind of a kiss?” he asked.
She was momentarily bewildered. “I don’t know. It was a kiss. A normal kiss. A nice kiss.” She cocked her head at him. “How many kinds of kisses are there?”
He just looked at her for a long moment before coming toward her. He backed her to the wall and pressed his big hands on either side of her head.
“There are many kinds of kisses,” he said.
Her breath had backed up in her throat, where her heart had lodged, pounding wildly. “S-s-such as?”
“Such as this one.” And then he leaned in and covered her mouth with his.
At the touch of Joe’s mouth, Kylie’s brain stopped being capable of rational thought. His tongue gave a knee-weakening stroke against hers and she let out a shockingly needy moan as she clutched at him, fisting her hands in the material of his shirt at his chest. Only when he’d thoroughly plundered and pillaged and left her boneless did he lift his head and look into her eyes.
“Wow,” she whispered, fully aware she was still holding on to him like he was a lifeline, but the bones in her legs had liquefied. “I mean . . .” She shook her head. “Wow.”
He nodded. “Yeah. So to be clear, that wasn’t ‘a normal kiss’ or even ‘a nice kiss.’ It was a ‘wow’ kiss. Any questions?”
“Just one,” she said softly. “Can I have another?”
Joe didn’t have to be asked twice. His mouth immediately descended again, his fingers sliding into her hair to change the angle of the kiss to suit him. It was a controlled, alpha thing to do, but she had only one thought—nothing about the usually carefully, purposely leashed Joe was in control at the moment.
And she liked it.
She had no idea how long they went at it because she was in absolute heaven. Who knew that the man could use his preferred silent mode to communicate in a way that she finally approved of?
Only when she was completely breathless and about to strip him down to his birthday suit did she manage to pull back.
“Any more questions?” he asked, also a little bit breathless, which was more than slightly gratifying. Dumbly, she shook her head. His eyes softened and he gently he stroked his thumb over her bottom lip. “And FYI? Gib’s an idiot.”
LANA’S REVIEW
And you kissed me that last time!”
“You were going on about a kiss being nice. But there was nothing nice about that kiss you planted on me in the alley. It was raw and sexy and dirty in the best possible way. You needed to be reminded of that.”
She covered her face. “Oh my God.”
“God had nothing to do with it,” he said smugly.
About That Kiss was everything I had hoped it would be; perfectly swoony with a side of suspense! Jill Shalvis never disappoints. I absolutely adored Joe and Kylie’s story.
Kylie is perfectly quirky and endearing, but a bit of a hermit when it comes to men. An unexpected kiss with the sexy womanizer Joe is not something she’ll soon forget, but she’s trying her hardest. Even though Joe isn’t about to make it easy on her. When a beloved belonging given to her by her late grandfather goes missing, she doesn’t know who else to turn to but Joe. Thus begins a bit of a scavenger hunt with a mystery that’s full of laughs, swoon, and enough chemistry to light up the entire city block.
“What are the options?” he asked.
“Kill you or kiss you.”
I simply loved the two of them together. They were such a fun dynamic of opposites attract. Joe is broody, secretive, and hasn’t given the same woman more than a passing thought before. That is, until Kylie. He has plenty on his plate with demons from the past and a layer of guilt that plagues his present, a father with severe PTSD, and a job that puts him in constant danger. Putting his heart on the line is not something he can do. But he can’t seem to resist the quirky Kylie.
Kylie was so much fun. Between her spine of steel, her disguises on their stakeouts, and her valiant efforts to ignore the chemistry between her and Joe, I couldn’t get enough of her.
The romance is a sizzling slow burn with plenty of laughs thrown in. With a cast of colorful and memorable secondary characters, About That Kiss was a book that put a smile on my face from page one and kept it there until the end. Jill Shalvis is the queen of light hearted romance, and this book was no exception.
GERI’S REVIEW
Her breath had backed up in her throat, where her heart had lodged, pounding wildly. “S-s-such as?”
“Such as this one.” And then he leaned in and covered her mouth with his.
About that Kiss is another delightful addition to Ms. Shalvis’ Heartbreaker Bay series.
I’ve been looking forward to Joe’s story ever since I found out that Jill is gonna give Archer’s security men stories of their own. And she did not disappoint.
Security expert Joe Malone and woodworker extraordinaire Kylie Masters shared a hot kiss one night, and it suddenly changed everything.
Joe is fine being a bachlor. He doesn’t lack companionship and besides, the extra time he has is better spent taking care of his father and keeping his sister safe. But the moment the kiss with Kylie happened, he couldn’t get her out of his mind.
For Kylie, Joe is way outside her league. And besides, he’s not her type at all. So what if she can’t stop thinking about him or can’t stop fantasizing about kissing him again? She has better things to do with her time, right?
But when Kylie’s precious wooden penguin (the last tangible connection she has from her grandfather), they suddenly find themselves spending time together, hunting for the missing item.
The chemistry between Joe and Kylie is the first thing that really stood to me in this book. It made the book highly addicting and readable.
Both Joe and Kylie have their issues that they both are trying to deal with which makes them all the more interesting characters to me. I’ve always adored Shalvis’ heroines. They’re complex characters and they don’t always do or say the right thing, which I personally loved.
Then there’s Joe. Ever since he was introduced a couple of books back, Joe has always stood out to me especially with how he is around his sister Molly and the rest of the team. I had high expectations and Jill Shalvis did not disappoint. She gave us a hero that we can swoon over with Joe.
There’s a bit of whodunnit element in this book, which add an interesting layer to it on top of the love story. I enjoyed it. Don’t expect something heavy like a la Nora Roberts or Sandra Brown. This is after all a contemporary romance but it has enough to keep you guessing until the end.
The Heartbreaker Bay series continues to delight in so many ways. I know I say this with every Jill Shalvis book but I CANNOT WAIT for the next book in this series! And Molly and Lucas had sa few “moments” in this book which made me even more for their book, which is UP NEXT!
New York Times bestselling author Jill Shalvis lives in a small town in the Sierras with her family and far too many assorted quirky characters. Any resemblance to the quirky characters in her books is, um, mostly coincidental.
Look for Jill’s latest, LOST AND FOUND SISTERS on shelves and e-readers now, and get all her bestselling, award-winning books wherever romances are sold.
Visit Jill’s website for a complete book list and daily blog detailing her city-girl-living-in-the-mountains adventures.
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