This Is Not A F*cking Romance

Hard Candy Rule 9: Candy's Love Life Is Off Limits!

Austin steampunk bar owner Candy Blume knows fairy-tale romances are best left for fiction. Her one failed attempt has just cost her everything except her dog and her bar, Hard Candy. But she's pulled herself up by the laces of her battered Doc Martens to reign over her oddball patrons while ignoring her irrepressibly free-spirited mom's mission to give the world carbon-neutral orgasms.

The last thing she needs is her high school nemesis, Trent Green, turning up with a long-overdue and utterly unwanted apology for what he put her through as a teenager. To forgive may be divine, but Candy's far from being an angel.

Trent Green has been set up. The high-profile chocolatier had no idea the bar he rented for his little brother's twenty-first belonged to his former rival, Candy Blume, until he walked in to find her glaring at him. He knows he deserves the verbal bullets she fires his way and wants to make things right. Luckily, a twist of fate gives him the opportunity. The catch is that he must brave Candy's fury and her bar's eccentric, wise-cracking regulars. There are seven theme nights at Hard Candy and he'll have to survive them all.

Now Candy's willing to concede that Trent has his uses, and Trent's getting a taste for walking on the weird side. But opposites don't attract without friction and for Candy, vulnerability is dangerous.

Whatever this is, it better not be a f*cking romance.