By Referral Only Excerpt & Giveaway!

BY REFERRAL ONLY

By: Lyla Payne

Publication Date: July 1, 2013

After being unceremoniously dumped freshman year because of her family’s “new money” status, Ruby Cotton has taken care not to put her heart on the line. No matter how enticing Emilie and Quinn make it look, relationships are scary and hard—while a string of flings is easy and fun. That’s what Ruby wants. Easy and fun. The only problem is, when it comes to satisfaction in the sack, most of the boys at Whitman are nothing but pretty window dressing and false advertising.

Ruby takes it upon herself to make campus life more fulfilling, creating a referral database that allows female students to rate their sexual experiences, thereby informing girls of what they’re getting into before agreeing to a date.

When her acting partner, Liam Greene, finally shows some interest, Ruby figures she won’t need to utilize the helpful gossip. He’s handsome, fun, and most importantly, not a guy she’d ever fall for hard enough to let him break her heart.

Not only that, but dating Liam gives Ruby the perfect excuse to say no to Cole Stuart.

As a star swimmer and heir to honest-to-God Scottish royalty, Cole sits at the top of Whitman’s A-list—but he’s also the lowest rated referral on Ruby’s website. The ratings make rejecting his repeated requests for a date a no-brainer, but her real reason for avoiding Cole runs deeper than a string of unsatisfied exes.

He’s gorgeous, he oozes sweetness and charm, and the electricity between them could power half of Whitman, but Ruby knows it will only last until his family or friends convince him she’s not good enough.

Before she knows it she’s falling anyway, waiting for the other shoe to drop but clinging to a tentative hope that Cole might be as different as he seems. When the secret behind his low ratings comes to light, that hope is torn apart, and Ruby wonders if she was right to give him her heart…and whether she has the strength to let him keep it.

You guys!!! I started reading this book last night and I am so tired today because I couldn’t put it down… I kept playing the “just one more chapter” game with myself. Eventually I had to force myself to go to sleep, but I can’t wait to get home to finish this one up!! I promise you will fall for the Scottish, sweet talking Cole!

This is book 2 in the Whitman University books, and I’m so excited to be a part of this tour. I adore this author’s writing and if you haven’t started any of her books, you need to go now!!

So I get to share an excerpt of By Referral Only for you guys today:

Amy stood from the edge of my fainting couch looking, if I wasn’t mistaken, relieved. “It’s actually fine, Cole, if you wouldn’t mind. I think it will be easier for them to visualize the tragedy if they can believe Romeo and Juliet are in love.”

My heart pounded and words of protest gagged me as I choked them back. I was a professional, and a quasi-adult. It was a stupid scene from a play, nothing to freak out about. I did this shit all the time. Just because Cole had asked me out the first day we met and I spent way too much time wondering what he looked like naked didn’t mean I couldn’t handle this.

“Well…if it’s okay with Miss Ruby.”

“Is it okay, Miss Ruby?” Caroline turned her big, pleading blue eyes on me as a chorus of please and oh pleasefilled the room.

I shrugged, hoping I looked way cooler than I felt.

The kids settled quickly onto their butts as Cole climbed the steps to the stage. He rubbed a hand over his shaven hair, an apologetic expression in his mossy green eyes. He waved away the script Amy tried to give him, then sat on the edge of the fainting couch.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make such an entrance.” He kept his voice low.

“They certainly like you,” I murmured.

“They’re good kids.”

“You’re on the board?”

“Yes. It’s actually the same board that runs the Shakespeare Festival you starred in last summer. That’s why I saw the performance so many times.”

“Howmany times?” I asked, feeling strangely hot at the idea he’d watched me perform night after night from the cover of darkness.

“I was there most nights. You really were brilliant.”

“If you two are done getting to know each other well enough to kiss for a half a second, can we get on with it? We’ve only got twenty minutes left,” Miss Amy raised an eyebrow at me.

I nodded and lay back, closing my eyes and trying to sort out how I felt about Cole being a fan of my acting. It made me like him more, and not just because I loved people loving me. Even if he sat on these boards because of his family or something, he seemed to have a genuine love of theatre.

The fact he was about to recite Romeo and Juliet from memory made him too perfect.

It all added up to a pounding heart and dry mouth. Basically the reaction of a girl who wanted a boy to kiss her for the first time, not one pretending to be a girl who had already had married sex with said boy.

Juliet. You’re Juliet, and you don’t feel anything because you’re unconscious.

“Depart again: here, here will I remain, with worms that are thy chamber-maids. Oh, here will I set up my everlasting rest and shake the yoke of inauspicious stars from this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace. And lips, oh you, the doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss.”

The passion in his voice buzzed in my head like too much frat party punch. If Cole thought he couldn’t act, he was wrong.

That was my last thought before his soft lips touched mine, hesitant at first, but lingering longer than necessary for a perfunctory performance. Even though I was dead, my body betrayed me, reacting to the sparks that lit between our mouths and searching for more.

Electricity shot down my spine. I forced my limbs to stay prone and tried to convince my lips to let go, but it took several moments before Cole broke away. He pretended to drink poison, spouting Romeo’s final lines before slumping next to me on the couch.

His body was warm, chest heaving, like he’d just taken a standing ovation in front of a packed house. His form blocked my view of the students, and our eyes locked and held. Neither of us spoke. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was thinking the same thing I was. Which was, that for a rather chaste, dry kiss, that had been a doozy.

Cole might suck in the bedroom, but he had some kind of heady effect on me like nothing I’d ever experienced. The heat in his gaze said maybe it was mutual, and that was why I needed to stay the fuck away from him.

About The Author

I’ve long had a love of stories. A few years ago I decided to put them down on the page, and even though I have a degree in film and television, novels were the creative outlet where I found a home. When the idea for Broken at Love (my first New Adult title) arrived, I couldn’t wait to try something new – and I’m hooked. In my spare time, I watch a ton of tennis (no surprise, there), play a ton of tennis, and dedicate a good portion of brain power to dreaming up the next fictitious bad boy we’d all love to meet in real life.

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