What happens when Miss Perfect meets Mr. Penalty?

Valerie Perkins has her senior year at Thatcher College mapped out with precision—lead her sorority, expand the Beyond Borders Teaching Initiative, chair the Honor Code Review Board, and graduate with honors, just like her judge father and congresswoman mother expect. Dating isn’t on the agenda, especially not a soccer-playing slacker like Diego Delarosa who breaks the rules, cheats in an ethics class, and has no goals outside the ones he scores on the field. His inviting smile and dimples be damned.

But when Diego is sentenced to join her service project in a small Mexican town, sparks fly under the sun-soaked skies. Still, the last thing Valerie expects is for him to upend her perfectly curated plans.

Diego lives for soccer and nothing else. The field is where he shines, not the classroom—and definitely not under the scrutiny of someone like Valerie. But working together abroad, coaching kids and dodging feels, the lines between opposites begin to blur.

He’s a rulebreaker with heart. She’s a rule follower with ambition. Can teaming up on a community service project abroad bring these two opponents together?

Together, they might just rewrite each other’s playbooks.

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Welcome back to Thatcher College, where opposites attract and worlds collide. The award-winning Lesson in Love series features interconnected, new adult standalone romances set on a small, private college campus in New England where the good girl gets stuck with the bad boy, and she’s not happy about it. That is, until their chemistry together makes her question everything she thought she knew about him.