SheLikesHimBad Read Online Free PDF

that she could still tear him up. He hated that he
still wanted her. Maybe his dog could distract him from his stupidity. It was
worth a try, at least. Time to take Tink for a long, head-clearing walk.
    * * * * *
    She needed junk food and she needed it fast. There was only
one way to cure what ailed her, and it involved ice cream and copious amounts
of nacho cheese. Emma was in the frozen section of Taylor Markets, the only
grocery store in Paradise. It looked exactly the same as she remembered, with
low, open cases that had been in use since the seventies. They were still
closed on Sundays. They still sold dollar lunches in their café. Some things
never changed.
    Like the way she felt about Jackson.
    She wanted to kick herself. She’d been rude and cold,
desperate to escape before she made any more of a fool of herself. Being with
him had done strange things to her. She hated to admit that what she’d felt
with him in his kitchen had been more than she’d felt in the year she’d been
with Rob.
    Combined.
    It was truly a sad testament to the state of her personal
life. She reached into the frozen case and liberated a pint of vanilla-caramel
ice cream. What was wrong with her? She’d come back to Paradise to lie low,
recuperate from the train wreck of a relationship she’d recently ended. She
definitely hadn’t come back to relive her high school days. So how was it that
she ended up naked with Jackson on her first day back in town?
    “Emma Lee, is that you?”
    She looked up from her thorough perusal of the ice cream
selection to find her oldest friend Leah approaching her. She was pushing a
shopping cart with a cute baby girl seated in the front.
    Genuine happiness filtered through her. “Leah, it’s so good
to see you.”
    Over the years, they’d stayed in touch through email and
social media, occasionally reaching out to one another. But this was the first
time she’d seen Leah in person since high school. Time had been fair to her,
she reflected. Her figure was great, especially considering the age of the
toddler in her cart. She was still as pretty as ever, with dark, curly hair and
bright-blue eyes.
    “Good to see you too, stranger.” Leah gave her a quick hug.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were in town?”
    “It was kind of a last-minute decision,” she hedged, too
embarrassed to reveal she’d needed to get away from L.A. in a hurry. After all,
she hardly wanted to make a public service announcement that her boyfriend had
been cheating on her.
    “How long have you been here?”
    “I got in last night.” She glanced back to the happily
gurgling toddler. “Who is this?”
    “This is my daughter Ashley.”
    “She’s gorgeous, Leah. Congratulations.”
    “Thanks.” She bestowed a proud-mama smile on her daughter.
“I think she is too, but of course I’m partial.”
    For the first time, Emma experienced a twinge of envy. Maybe
it was because she was turning the dreaded thirty and was still single and
childless. Maybe it was because she’d started to notice laugh lines bracketing
her eyes that no longer disappeared when her face was relaxed. Actually, it was
probably a combination of many things. She couldn’t keep herself from
wondering. What would it be like to have a comfortable, settled life with a man
she loved?
    Jackson’s face flashed through her mind. Hold it right
there. She was going to be locked away in a padded cell somewhere if she
kept this up. Emma was losing it.
    She dragged her mind back to the conversation. “It’s great
to see you. We should do lunch while I’m here.”
    “I’d love that.” Leah’s smile was genuine, so different from
the injected and whitened barracuda grins she’d come to expect from ladies who
lunch in L.A.
    In some ways, coming back home wasn’t as difficult as she’d
thought it would be. Though it scared her to admit it, there were aspects of
life in Paradise she’d missed. Gasp. If her inner monologue had had a
sound track, it would’ve