Reviewer: Holly One Night of Scandal by Elle Kennedy
Series: After Hours #2
Also in this series: One Night of Sin
Publisher: Entangled, Entangled Brazen
Publication Date: September 8, 2014
Format: eBook
Source: Purchased
Point-of-View: Alternating Third
Cliffhanger: View Spoiler »
Genres: Contemporary Romance
Pages: 230
Add It: Goodreads
Reading Challenges: Holly's 2021 Goodreads Challenge
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Series Rating:
A sexy category romance from Entangled's Brazen imprint...
The wrong man never felt so right...
Ex-fighter Reed Miller has been secretly lusting over his best friend’s girl for months, but he refuses to jeopardize a friendship over a woman—especially one who doesn’t like him all that much. Now that Darcy’s on the market again, it’s even more imperative to stick to his strict hands-off policy. But the sizzling attraction between them is too powerful to ignore, and once he’s had a taste of her…all bets are off.
Darcy Grant is tired of walking the straight and narrow path. She’s on the hunt for passion, and there’s no denying Reed is just the man to give it to her. Although she has no interest in dating a bad boy, and certainly not her ex’s best friend, it’s impossible not to melt beneath Reed’s skillful touch. Now it’s just a matter of setting a few ground rules—and hoping her rule-breaking, sweet-talking bad boy agrees to follow them. But if she lets Reed into her bed, does she stand a chance of keeping him out of her heart?
One Night of Scandal (After Hours #2) by Elle Kennedy features Reed, one of the owners of the club. It was obvious to everyone in One Night of Sin that Reed had a thing for his best friend AJ’s girl, Darcy. I was curious to see how that would play out here.
Reed was immediately attracted to Darcy when he met her, which was really unfortunate since she was dating his best friend and business partner, AJ, at the time. He knew the only way to protect himself was to keep distance between them. When he discovers her out with another guy one night he loses his shit..until he realizes she and AJ broke up. He knows he can’t date his best friend’s ex, but when AJ asks him to step in and lead a self-defense class at the school where Darcy teaches, he knows he’s in big trouble.
Darcy doesn’t understand why Reed is such a jerk to her, until the share a passionate kiss and the truth comes out. She and AJ realized pretty quickly that they were great friends without any chemistry, but it still seems wrong to date one of his best friends. Plus, she doesn’t think Reed is the type to commit to a relationship and she isn’t looking to get played. The passion she was missing with AJ? Yeah, she found it big time with Reed. Now if she can just keep from falling in love with him everything will be just fine…
I really felt the chemistry between Reed and Darcy. I liked that they didn’t try to hide it (for long) and they were pretty upfront about things with AJ. AJ definitely deserved sainthood for his reaction. I didn’t love the additional conflict of Darcy thinking Reed was only good for a fling and the misunderstanding at the end was a bit contrived. Reed was good to Darcy from the start, so she had no reason to keep pushing him away.
Overall this was a good story, though. I liked Darcy and Reed together, I just wish they’d communicated better.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
One Night of Sin
Communication is so often an issue in romance. Of course, if everyone talked, we might have a lot of short stories and novellas!
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