How To Fall For Your Worst Enemy (Complete Series): How To Fall For Your Worst Enemy

By Layla Valentine

How do you fall for your worst enemy?
One bitter fantasy, one frustrated glance, and one stolen kiss at a time

Sure, I hate his guts,
But I can't deny that I miss him.
He was the charming college boyfriend,
Who stole my idea and broke my heart.
But that was ten years ago…
I was a different person then,
And hell if I'll let myself get played again.
So what if hearing his voice makes me sick?
We'll let our bodies do the talking.

This is the complete series of How To Fall For Your Worst Enemy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Layla Valentine
• Release date: May 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201366230

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

TONI

Istared at the stage, too shocked to even think about joining in on the applause that was going on around me. Not that I would have. It was a lot more likely that I was actually going to start screaming soon—but at the moment, I was too shocked for that, too.

So instead, I just stood there in the middle of the crowd and stared at the stage, and what was going on up there, with my mouth actually hanging open. Because you know, that’s always a good look, and it’s always so helpful.

Standing there with your mouth hanging open is always so effective at solving a problem. Always so effective when it comes to tearing your boyfriend’s head off after he’s not only stolen your idea but also submitted it as his own, and is currently accepting the recognition—and prize—for having done so.

And no, to answer your question, I didn’t know in advance that it was going to happen.

I didn’t know because the contest didn’t work like that. We didn’t all turn in our projects and get to see what other people had done, so we could offer critiques or extend on what they’d suggested. We didn’t get some sort of catalogue ahead of time, detailing what everyone had proposed and how it was going to work. It probably would have been a good idea if we had, honestly. It would have led to some really great brainstorming and extensions of the things we were all thinking about.

But it didn’t work like that. Hell, we weren’t even supposed to have talked to each other about our projects beforehand. We turned them in like secret agents, all cloak-and-dagger sort of stuff, and then… we waited. Waited the weeks it took for those overseeing the contest to read through everyone’s submissions and do whatever version of scoring they’d decided on, and then give us the outcome.

Waited to see who would win the contest. And the acclaim. And the prize money.

I’d had no idea that he’d stolen my idea—because I hadn’t seen what he’d entered with until right now, when the screen behind him was flashing through the slides he’d used. My slides. My concepts.

I let myself stare for thirty seconds more, watching as he walked up to the people leading the conference and shook their hands, smiling so hard it looked like his face might actually crack. He took the certificate—along with the trophy that went with it—and thanked them, smiling even more broadly. And then he turned and looked into the audience, his eyes scanning through the people who had gathered here as if he was looking for something. Looking for someone.

I knew exactly who he was looking for. He was looking for me.

And I turned around and fled before he could find me. Before he could turn those charming blue eyes, that dimpled frat-boy smile, those ridiculous California-surfer good looks on me. Before he could give me that grin that would force me to smile back at him, even when my heart had just been actually torn out of my body and thrown to the floor.

Most importantly, I turned and got the hell out of there before I could start screaming about how he’d stolen my idea and taken it right to the bank. Just like he’d done so many times before. Just like I’d been worried he would do.

Just like I should have known he would do.

I shoved my way through the crowd of onlookers, all of them too enraptured with the scene on the stage to pay too much attention to some girl trying to move through the crowd in the opposite direction. All of them too enamored by Braden Golding—who most of them didn’t even know!—to pay attention to Toni Reynolds, nerd girl extraordinaire, who most of them might have classes with, but none of them knew by name.

Seriously, absolutely no one looked at me as I tried desperately to get through the crowd, using my elbows as weapons, and even my feet on occasion.

Because I needed to get out of that room. Needed to get to any other place but there. Needed to get away from all that adoration directed right at Braden.

Braden, my boyfriend, the much more developed, much more suave, much more socially acceptable half of our partnership. The older guy who had oh-so-generously offered to help me with my project for this business enterprise contest. The guy who’d listened to my pitch, helped me tweak it, helped me develop it and even design it… and who had then stolen it outright and presented it as his own, for the prize, the money, and all the acclaim.

I’d been saving it. I’d been planning to enter it next year, when I thought it was ready. When I was a year older, a year wiser, and all that jazz.

What a fool I’d been.

These people would have finally known who I was when I won this contest. But instead, they were congratulating themselves on having guessed right from the start that Braden, the golden boy from California, the one who always got top marks without even trying, was going to win this entire thing. They were laughing that anyone else had even bothered to enter, when it was so obvious that Braden was actually the brains of his class.

I shoved past one last person, wondering what they’d all think if they knew that their golden boy had actually had to steal someone else’s idea—his own girlfriend’s!—because he couldn’t come up with anything on his own. And that brought a tiny smile to my lips.

Hell, when I thought it a second time, it brought an outright grin.

I’d had the idea that was going to win the contest, and he’d been so jealous of that, and so stuck, that he’d actually had to steal it. He’d actually had to take my idea because he, the genius of his class, hadn’t been able to come up with anything on his own.

It didn’t take the sting out of it. It definitely didn’t do anything for the betrayal. But it was good for my ego.

And I knew that at some point, on some day in the future, when I had as much power and prestige as he did, I would force him to remember that he’d had to steal my idea, and the thing I’d been dreaming of doing for most of my life, because he hadn’t had any brilliant thoughts of his own.

Just then, though, the world tipped suddenly on its side and an alarm started going off from somewhere, blaring through the atmosphere like we were actually in the middle of an air raid or something. The people around me panicked and everyone started screaming and running around, and some of them actually turned into chickens.

Wait, chickens?

I did a double take, and then a triple take, trying to figure out what the hell was going on, and then I covered my ears, trying to get rid of the blaring alarm that kept going off. Was there a fire? Earthquake? Some sort of bombing? What was that?

And then I realized what it was, and my hand shot out from under the covers to slap my phone and get the noise to stop. Once it did, I set my attention toward calming the beating of my heart and working through the adrenaline rush that had come from thinking that I was about to be trampled by the people around me.

And thinking about that made me think more deeply about the dream I’d been having, in that weird sequence of events that happens when you first remember that you had a dream and then suddenly remember what it was about. And who was in it.

Because that made me remember that it was about Braden Golding. The boy I’d dated for an entire year in college.

The boy who’d stolen my idea for the biggest business enterprise contest our college ran—and won with it.

My eyes narrowed automatically, my mouth drawing up into a tight, displeased expression. No, there was no one there to actually see it. But I could feel it happening—and it wasn’t a surprise, since that was what happened every time I thought his name.

Braden Golding. The boyfriend who’d been hotter and more popular than me, and who I’d been so head-over-heels in love with that I almost hadn’t been able to see straight. The boy who had undermined and then betrayed me. And the man that I was going to get my revenge against. Someday. I’d promised myself that I would do it on that day when he won that award, and I’d never forgotten.

And today, I thought, just might be the day when it happened.

CHAPTER 2

TONI

Half an hour later, instead of feeling better and getting on with my day, I was flat-out glaring at the TV and the man on it as I sipped my coffee, my blood boiling in my veins. That bastard. That absolute bastard.

And there he was again. Smiling on the screen like he owned the world and everyone in it, and like they all loved him for it. Because they probably did. Hell, he’d probably never met one single person who had told him the truth about how they felt about him.

Almost ten fucking years had gone by and I still hated him with the heat of at least one million suns. Strike that. Two million suns. And I didn’t think that was ever going to change. Because as it turned out, you just don’t grow out of being angry that the boy you’d thought you were in love with had stolen your lifelong passion project, and then turned it into his own just so he could accomplish the prestige of winning a college competition for business ideas.

And then had the gall to be surprised that you were breaking up with him over it.

Yeah, I’d only been nineteen at the time and it had definitely been a long time ago. I hadn’t known what I was doing in life… or in tech or business. Not yet. But I’d been on my way, and I’d had a good instinct for it, even then. I’d known that the project was going to be a success. I’d known the ins and outs, the pros and cons, the items we’d have to work on and the items that were already good to go. I’d known that with the right marketing, the right public relations, it would have been a home run.

It was too bad, really, that I hadn’t had those same instincts when it came to the guy I’d been choosing to date at the time.

The guy who was now on the screen, actually cutting the goddamn ribbon on a new building in Silicon Valley.

Cutting the goddamn ribbon, could you believe it? The whole thing was so ridiculous—so overblown, so exaggerated—that I could hardly believe what I was watching. I couldn’t believe it was happening at all, honestly, but I was having even more trouble believing that all the news stations had decided to feature it on their morning programs.

Like Braden Golding had saved the world by donating enough money to build a new hospital or something. Like he’d actually answered all the questions humanity ever had or guaranteed that everyone in the entire city would get the medical attention they needed from here on out.

I snorted at that—and promptly sent coffee flavored with vanilla creamer and cinnamon shooting right through my nose.

I dove, choking, toward my sink, not sure whether I was going to throw up or actually just die. The coffee had been hot enough to scald my nose on its way through, and the aftereffect…

Let’s just say my world was going to be vanilla- and cinnamon-scented for the rest of the day. Possibly the rest of the week.

I turned back toward the TV, wiping at my nose with a paper towel as my eyes sent tears coursing down my cheeks in response to the burning coffee. Of course something like that would happen to me when I was watching Braden Golding. Thank God he hadn’t been here to see it. Thank God he wouldn’t be around to see me walking through the world with a burnt nose. Thank God he was out of my life entirely.

Yes, we lived in the same area, but fortunately there was almost no chance that we’d ever happen to run into each other. He was a million miles away from my little niche in San Jose. Okay, so not actually a million, but enough so that we wouldn’t just happen to run into each other in town. He probably lived up in San Francisco, where all the rich tech kids lived in their overpriced mini-mansions and ridiculous downtown lofts, with expensive artwork crowding the walls and pretentious parties every freaking weekend.

He probably thought San Jose was too working-class for him. Just the dregs of the people who couldn’t afford to live in The City.

Personally, I loved San Jose. But that was partially because I’d deserted tech a long time ago. I didn’t need all the prestige of Frisco. I preferred the quieter, more relaxed vibe that I got from the next big town down the coast. I preferred my quiet life to all the hustle and bustle of big-city living.

I walked up to the TV and hit the power button, sick of looking at Braden’s overly charming grin as he brought the oversized scissors up to the ribbon in question. Then I looked around my roomy, well-apportioned kitchen. My enormous kitchen.

The kind of kitchen you could never find in a place like San Francisco. Because Frisco was too crowded for this sort of thing.

Sure, this was also the biggest room in my house, but that wasn’t what mattered. I’d gone a different route, and it had put me in San Jose—into the Rose Garden district, in fact—in a somewhat smallish Victorian from the 1930s. A house that I absolutely loved, not only for the kitchen but also for the enormous backyard, where I’d planted about two dozen rose bushes of my own when I’d first moved in. It was the sort of backyard that no one in Frisco could even dream of.

The sort of house, the sort of property, that could only exist in an outlying city. And the sort of property that I only had time for thanks to the career path I’d chosen. Because while Braden had taken his business degree and launched right into a career in tech—using, no doubt, some of the other ideas I’d come up with—and gone from there to build a multi-billion-dollar company and become one of the richest men in the world, I’d taken a more low-key route and