HARD LIFE, TOUGH CHOICES Street smart and able to disappear into a crowd after her high-end cons with her mother, seventeen-year-old West Banica has two rules when it comes to her marks: you can't care and you can't regret. Tanner Cardwell, her latest mark, is seventeen and a high school jock who's living the kind of normal life West's mother scorns. Tanner is the key to her latest scam, and West has to use her talents to convince him to fall for it. Then she and her mother will be set up for life. But as West is drawn into his world and his way of looking at life, she's forced to confront her heart and rethink her choices. When it's time to wrap up the con, West has to exercise her usual ruthlessness. But this time it's different. He's different. Now she faces an impossible choice: betray her family or betray the boy she's fallen in love with. One thing is clear, no matter what she chooses—it will cost her everything.