Category Archives: Recommended
RELEASE DAY BLITZ ~ Cowboy Player by Mia Hopkins
This cowboy and cowgirl sell the steak and the sizzle….
Visit the ranch in COWBOY PLAYER,
the third book in the Cowboy Cocktail series by Mia Hopkins…
Blurb:
For eight years, Melody Santos played the game of love and lost—big time. Now she’s back in her tiny hometown looking after her younger sister, making ends meet with an assortment of odd jobs. When her childhood best friend hires her to help him sell his family’s grass-fed beef, the last thing she anticipates is falling in lust with the legendary, brown-eyed player.
To put his family’s cattle ranch back in the black, Clark MacKinnon has his sights set on big contracts—gourmet chefs and restaurateurs. If that means long hours traveling from farmer’s market to farmer’s market, Clark doesn’t mind. Particularly since his new assistant is his childhood crush, all grown up and sexy as hell.
One night in bed leaves them breathless and hungry for more. But when his love-’em-and-leave-’em reputation collides with her trust issues, Clark and Melody must face the truth about what they’ve become: not friends, not lovers, but players in a game that’s impossible to win.
Warning: Contains filthy banter, raunchy sex, excessive Johnny Cash references, and hundreds of pounds of raw beef.
On Sale in Digital: June 28, 2016
Samhain | B&N | iBooks | Kobo | Google Play | BAM | All Romance | Amazon
Add COWBOY PLAYER to your TBR pile on Goodreads!
CELEBRATE THE RELEASE WITH A GIVEAWAY!
Grand Prize: $10 Amazon Gift Card + Digital Editions of the Entire Cowboy Cocktail Series
2 Runner-Ups: $5 Amazon Gift Card + Any Backlist Mia Hopkins Title
Giveaway Link:
BLP REVIEW ~ Tracy
| I haven’t read the previous books in the Cowboy Cocktail series but that’s something I’ll be doing ASAP!!! Cowboy Player was a fun, sexy, flirty friends-to-lovers read which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Melody Santos is a hardworking sassy but sweet twenty-something who has moved home to take care of her younger sister, Harmony. To do this she is working a few jobs, one of which is with her best friend from childhood, Clark (aka Superman!). Clark MacKinnon is hardworking, fun and smokin’ HOT!! He’s dedicated to keeping his family’s farm business stay afloat and he seems like a really good guy but he definitely comes across as a player – he flirts with most females and is never short of admirers who are all too willing to fall for his charms – only Melody seems to be the exception and immune to his flirting…. or is she? The relationship between this pair was comfortable and easy, even after Melody being away from home for 8 years. When things change, we find that together they are scorching hot. They work really well and would make a great couple (in and out of the bedroom) but due to trust issues and past problems with her ex, we aren’t sure that Melody can overcome her fears and doubts and take a chance on something more with Clark. I really wanted things to work for these two – they were fun and I liked both characters a lot. Harmony, Mel’s little sister was a bit of a pain but not too much that it took away from my enjoyment of the book. Clark’s brothers also feature in the story and they seem to be as charming and attractive as him… (just another reason to go back and check out the earlier books 😉 ) This was a quick afternoon read. Mia Hopkins gave us likeable, relatable characters, an interesting story with a touch of ‘will they, won’t they’, a bit of sweet and a whole lot of hot & sexy!!! |
Excerpt:
On the record player, the next track started. Guitar licks, drums, a little fiddle—Melody knew the song at once.
“Oh man,” said Clark. “‘Troubadour’. This a good one. Dance with me, Mel.”
He pulled her off the sofa before she could say anything. Wrapped up in the arms of a big cowboy was not a terrible place to be, so Melody danced with him, barefoot in her parents’ living room, the slow two-step a song both their bodies knew the words to. Her laughter died away, giving way to a quiet sense of vulnerability. The verses slid by like a dream, erasing the burden of loneliness she’d been carrying for so long. It had been months since she’d been this close to a man. It had been years since she’d felt this close to one.
Clark could read her mind. “So what was his name again?” he asked softly. “Scott?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
“A slow-motion disaster, that’s what happened.” She rested her cheek against the hard, hot wall of Clark’s chest. “He was a musician. Fun. Exciting. He said I meant the world to him. But I suppose the world wasn’t enough.”
“What do you mean?”
It was still hard to say aloud. “He cheated on me. It had been going on for months. When I found out and confronted him about it, he broke down said he was sorry. We tried to put it past us. We even went to therapy. But it was all a lie. He left me when my mom passed away.” At first, the pain had been excruciating, dulled only by grief and the weight of her new responsibilities. “Eight years, down the drain.”
“That’s a long time. Did you ever talk about getting married?”
“He said he didn’t like labels.” She sighed. “Which was also a lie, because he married the other woman in Vegas in February.”
“Jesus Christ. I’m sorry.” Clark gave her a squeeze. “You know, if you were mine, I’d hold on to you for good.”
“Sure. Until the next piece of ass came along.”
“Never seen a piece of ass like yours.”
“That’s the friend talking. Your dick might say otherwise.”
“My dick, huh?” Clark laughed quietly. “You’re welcome to check with my dick yourself. He doesn’t talk loud, so you’ll have to get down on your knees to hear him.”
“Jackass.”
“Seriously, Mel. You don’t know what you’ve got going on. Smart as all get-out. Hell, you run circles around me, and I’m a genius. And you’re funny too. Ain’t many women who can make me laugh. You’re one of them.”
She rolled her eyes. “Aw shucks, Ma. Next the cowboy told me I was real purty.”
“Fuck pretty. You’re beautiful.”
It was too much. Danger. “Clark—”
“So beautiful. I always thought so.” He gave her a sad smile. “Honest to God.”
The heat rising between them cooked her brain. She was at a loss for words. “Thanks.”
“No thanks needed. Just stating the obvious.” They danced until the song ended on a ribbon of steel guitar. Clark leaned down and pressed his lips to her temple.
Melody gasped.
Instead of pulling away, he traced a slow, agonizing trail of kisses along her hairline until he was kissing her neck just behind her ear.
Pleasure overloaded her nervous system, but her brain wouldn’t let her enjoy it. “Wh-what are you doing?”
“Something I’ve wanted to do for a long, long time.”
See what people are saying about the Cowboy Cocktail series:
“Wow, wow, and wow…The love that blossoms between [the hero and heroine] is unrushed, genuine, true. *sigh* I loved this book from start to finish and highly recommend it, and not just for fans of western romance.”
—Goodreads review, 5/5 stars
“The writing is excellent, the emotions leap off the page, and the sex is downright earthy…This is a feel-good romance with a strong, career-minded heroine, a swoon-worthy working class hero, a great setting and lots of lovingly detailed sex.”
—Jill Sorenson, RITA-nominated author of romantic suspense
“Mia Hopkins one of the most exciting new voices in red-hot contemporary romance. Add her to your must-read list. Now!” – Samanthe Beck, USA Today Bestselling Author
“Mia Hopkins’ sexy cowboy hero and sassy bookish heroine burn up the pages from the moment they lock eyes.”
– Cat Johnson, New York Times & USA Today Bestselling Author
“Beautifully descriptive…hot, sexy and full of yearning!” – Delilah Devlin, New York Times & USA Today Bestselling Author
“I love this author’s writing style; her prose is beautiful, and I can definitely see myself checking out her future work. I’m wondering if Caleb’s brothers will feature in future books?” – My YA & NA Book Obsession
“I love a story that surprises me by putting a different spin on the standard trope of boy meets girl…Mia Hopkins is an imaginative author who doesn’t take the easy road to a formulaic book.” — Becky Condit, USA TODAY Happy Ever After blog
“This erotic romance is seriously dirty. Dean and Monica play hard….I have also read the first book in this series, Cowboy Valentine and recommend it as well.” — Jennifer Porter, Romance Novel News
Check out the other books in The Cowboy Cocktail series!
Forget chocolate and flowers. This homegrown honey is all the sweetness he craves.
Small-town life is nothing but a waiting room for eighteen-year-old honor student Corazón Gomez. Work and school leave little time for love, but with a full-ride Ivy League scholarship and a one-way ticket out of the boondocks, who needs it?
The answer appears on Valentine’s Day when her old cowboy crush ambles into the ice cream parlor where she works, inviting her to go on a late-night ride in his truck. For the first time she wavers between staying on the straight and narrow, and going off-road with the handsome heartbreaker.
After four years working on ranches all over the country, Caleb MacKinnon is back on the family farm helping out his mom and brothers while his father fights cancer. The one bright spot: smart, funny, and wickedly sexy Cora.
From the start, they both know this blazing-hot love affair can’t last. But when autumn comes and Cora has to leave for the East Coast, Caleb must find a solution to keep himself—and his heart—from falling apart.
Warning: Contains hard, cherry-poppin’ sex in a pickup truck and a cowboy charmer who talks dirty in two languages.
Book 1 Available at: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | Google Books | Kobo | BAM
**********
Ball-busting business woman meets no-holds-barred cowboy. He’s gonna need a longer rope…
Marketing hotshot Monica Kaur has put her big-city life on hold to help bail out her brother’s failing business. Now she’s got three months to plan and promote a rodeo, the first her tiny hometown has ever seen.
To ensure the rodeo’s success, Monica enlists a local hero, a rancher’s son who’s made a name for himself on the bull-riding circuit. Problem? She can’t stop daydreaming about the cocky bastard—and all the things she longs to do to him out behind the chutes.
Professional bullfighter Dean MacKinnon is home helping his family while his father fights cancer. Haunted by bad memories, jaded by love, Dean finds escape in a no-strings-attached go-round with brainy, sexy Monica, whose close-knit Sikh-American family would sooner run him out of town than see her with a notorious rodeo Romeo.
In private, Monica and Dean play as hard as they work. But as the rodeo draws near, that clean break they promised each other is getting more and more hung up in the rigging.
Book 2 Available at: Amazon | B&N | iBooks | Kobo | Goodreads
Author Bio:
Mia Hopkins writes lush romances starring fun, sexy characters who love to get down and dirty. She’s a sucker for working class heroes, brainy heroines and wisecracking best friends.
When she’s not lost in a story, Mia spends her time cooking, gardening, traveling, volunteering and looking for her keys. In a past life, she was a classroom teacher and still has a pretty good “teacher voice” and “teacher stare.”
She lives in the heart of Los Angeles with her roguish husband and two waggish dogs.
You can also visit her online at the following places:
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Amazon | Goodreads | Pintrest | Instagram
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RELEASE BLITZ ~ To Love a Wolf (SWAT #4) by Paige Tyler
To Love a Wolf
Series: SWAT, #4
Author: Paige Tyler
Pubdate: June 6th, 2016
ISBN: 9781492638742
HE’S FOUND THE ONE…
SWAT officer Landry Cooper is certain Everly Danu is The One. The problem is, she has no idea what Cooper really is. And as much as he wants to trust her, he’s not sure he can share his deepest secret…
When Everly’s family discovers Cooper’s a werewolf, her brothers will do anything to keep them apart—they’ll kill him if they have to. Everly is falling hard for the ridiculously handsome SWAT officer, and she’s not about to let her brothers tell her who she can love… Until Cooper’s secret is exposed and she discovers the man she thought she knew is a monster in disguise.
BUT CAN HE KEEP HER?
Buy Links:
Paige Tyler releases TO LOVE A WOLF, the fourth in her high-octane SWAT series, this June. To celebrate, we’re giving you the first SIX chapters to read FOR FREE!
Download the first six chapters here.
To get you started, we’ve included the first few pages below.
***
Outside Samarra City, Iraq, 2009
Staff Sergeant Landry Cooper moved carefully through the rubble covering the floor of the partially demolished building, inching his way closer to the target. The maze of shattered brick and broken pieces of wood weren’t the biggest reason he was moving slowly, though. That had more to do with the hundred-degree temperature and the seventy-five-pound Kevlar bomb suit he was wearing. He despised the army’s suit with a passion that few people outside the Explosive Ordnance Disposal community could understand.
It wasn’t simply that it was hot and heavy. No, what he hated most about the suit was the nearly complete sensory deprivation that came with wearing it. Inside the claustrophobic helmet surrounded by a neck gusset designed to keep your head from getting ripped off your body during an explosion, you couldn’t hear much of anything, your line of sight was distorted by the thick, curved face piece, and your peripheral vision was nonexistent. Having to make a manual approach—better known in EOD circles as the long walk—on a suspected improvised explosive device, or IED, was bad enough. Doing it when you had an armor-plated pillow wrapped around your head?
That sucked.
But he didn’t have a choice. Local construction workers had come in this morning and found a suspected IED half buried in the dirt between two buildings. Cooper and his team had been able to use a robot to drop a small demolition charge near the device, but his disposal charge, combined with a bang from the IED, had caused part of the surrounding buildings to collapse, pissing off the locals and making it impossible to get the robot back in to clear the area.
If there was one cardinal rule in EOD, it was that you never released an incident location back to the good guys without being one hundred percent sure all hazards had been cleared. That meant doing a manual approach in the bomb suit to make sure there weren’t any explosive materials or secondary devices around.
Cooper wasn’t too worried about walking up to the package he’d just blown in place. While the relationship between the city’s Sunni population and ruling Shiite government forces would never be described as anything other than tense, lately things had been better. IED responses were way down, and they hadn’t seen a secondary explosive device, typically planted to target police and other first responders, in months.
Still, he played everything by the book, keeping the protected front of his suit facing the spot where the IED had been, and using the building’s structure for protection as much as possible. At the same time, he kept his head on a swivel, looking for anything that seemed out of place.
“I’m about twenty feet from where we blew the IED,” he murmured over his suit’s radio to his team members waiting in the safe area three hundred yards away, and then remembered he was wasting his breath. The damn radio had stopped working about a month ago, and a replacement wasn’t due for weeks. He was on his own.
Sweat trickled down his nose as he stepped over a low wall and moved toward the crater where the IED had been. He automatically lifted a hand to wipe the sweat from his face and thumped against the plastic face piece.
“Shit, I hate this suit,” he muttered, forced to make due with wiggling his nose.
He reached the edge of the shallow crater and looked down. Two feet deep and six across, it looked like a big soup bowl. There were some rusty nails the bomb maker had added for fun, but the IED itself was long gone. Even better, his demo shot hadn’t exposed another one buried underneath.
Cooper pulled a sharpened fiberglass rod out of his pocket, then jumped into the crater. If there was anything here, the blast from the disposal shot would have uncovered it, but it didn’t hurt to check. Unfortunately, the heavy spine protector in the suit that helped keep an EOD tech’s back from being crushed if blown backward against something hard meant he had to squat down like a sumo wrestler to stick the probe into the dirt. He ignored the sweat and aggravation and made it work.
He’d moved almost all the way around the shot hole and was about to climb out to walk around the rest of the area when his probe hit something hard. He tensed, but then relaxed. He was still here, so it couldn’t be that bad. Dropping to one knee, he used his hand to slowly uncover what he’d found. When a horizontal, cylindrical pipe took shape, he assumed it was a water or sewer line.
They weren’t exactly common in structures as old as this one, but it could have been placed here to supply another building nearby. As he uncovered it, the pipe began to get smaller on one end. His gut clenched as realization dawned on him. He brushed off more dirt, revealing the nose of the 155-millimeter artillery round, as well as the metal electrical conduit extending out of it and running underground.
Fuck.
Cooper pushed himself to his feet and backpedaled toward the edge of the crater as fast as he could. An artillery round didn’t usually have a conduit sticking out the end. This one had been booby-trapped so the bomber could set it off manually whenever he wanted. The conduit was there so the IED wouldn’t cut the line if an EOD tech like him destroyed it. And with the conduit there, Cooper couldn’t cut the line either.
This device was an EOD killer put there because somebody knew a bomb tech would come down and look around before turning the site over to the local police.
His mind raced. A projectile this size carried fifteen pounds of high explosive. When it went off, even a bomb suit as good as the one he had on was unlikely to stop all the frag that came off it.
He reached the top of the crater and backed away as fast as he could. He would have been able to run faster if he turned around, but the weakest part of a bomb suit was the rear. If this thing went off when his back was to it, he’d have no chance.
Time slowed as a thousand thoughts zipped through his head. How he seriously didn’t want to die. How maybe the bomber on the other end of that firing line might have needed to go take a piss, and the 155 wouldn’t go off. How his parents and brothers were going to be crushed when they found out. How he should have gone to the prom with that cute girl in his math class back in high school. How one of the junior members on his team was going to be forced to step up and take over his job. How the new unit lieutenant was going to have to write a condolence letter on his first fucking day on the job.
Cooper pushed those thoughts away, yanking his hands inside the arms of the suit to keep them from getting ripped off in the blast as he focused his attention on moving backward as fast as he could.
Just get twenty feet away. Then you might have a chance.
He didn’t make it ten.
The blast threw him backward before his head even registered the flash of the projectile exploding. Luckily, he was so close that the wave took out the brick wall behind him before he could smash into it. But that luck ran out, and he slammed into the one behind it.
He felt a sharp stab in his back, then nothing from the middle of his chest down. The suit’s spine support had broken—and so had his back.
He hit the ground hard, tumbling like a kid’s toy until he came to a sudden stop against a pile of bricks. He felt pain—lots of it—at least from the chest up. He wasn’t sure how he was able to, but he lifted his head enough to look down, and saw long, jagged fragments from the 155 sticking out of him like he was a damn pincushion.
Cooper let his head drop to the ground and swore long and hard. He was so fucked.
A detached part of his mind noticed that pieces of the building were burning around him. That was interesting, considering how little flammable material was in the area. The flames weren’t too bad, but the smoke would probably choke him to death sooner or later. Not that he was likely to live long enough for that to happen. The frag had penetrated the bomb suit. He’d bleed out fast enough. He’d just be too numb to feel it.
Then someone was at his side, roughly prying up his face, telling him to hold on. That’s when he realized his ears weren’t working right. He could barely hear the person speaking. No shock there. The blast had blown out his eardrums.
He opened his eyes, expecting to see one of his junior teammates, and was shocked when he saw that it was Jim Wainwright, a fellow senior team leader and the best friend he’d ever had. Cooper hadn’t even known another team had arrived.
“Get the hell out of here!” Cooper shouted. Or at least he tried to. The words came out as nothing but a gurgling whisper. “Jim, you know this is stupid. There could be another device down here.”
Jim didn’t answer, but simply shoved his arms under the bomb suit, as if he thought he could pick up Cooper and carry him out of here. He didn’t bother to tell his friend how stupid that was. Besides all the frag sticking out of his body, making the task of picking him up akin to hugging a porcupine, Cooper and the bomb suit he wore weighed nearly three hundred pounds combined.
There was no way in hell Jim could pick him up.
“Go!” he ordered again. “You know I’m done anyway.”
Jim ignored him. Tears running down his face, he tried grabbing the heavy-duty rescue strap at the suit’s shoulder and dragged him across the rubble.
“Shit!” Cooper wailed in agony, white-hot fire shooting through his neck and shoulders. “Just fucking leave me alone and let me die!”
Jim disregarded that request too, grunting like a crazy man as he dragged Cooper over, around, and through the obstacles that separated them from the dilapidated building’s exit. Cooper was stunned his friend could actually move him at all. He’d heard of soldiers doing some insane shit in battle to save a buddy, but this had to be the craziest. Too bad he was already a goner. Cooper only hoped Jim would get a medal out of it. Then, at least, one good thing would come out of this day.
Cooper didn’t get much time to think about what the award write-up would sound like because the pain climbing up his neck like a wave of water drowned him until everything went black.
Paige Tyler is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of sexy, romantic fiction. Paige writes books about hunky alpha males and the kick-butt heroines they fall in love with. She lives with her very own military hero (a.k.a. her husband) and their adorable dog on the beautiful Florida coast.
Visit http://paigetylertheauthor.com/.
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NEW RELEASE SPOTLIGHT ~ TEST DRIVE (Body Shop Bad Boys #1) by Marie Harte
TEST DRIVE
(Body Shop Bad Boys #1)
by Marie Harte
A smokin’ hot new series from Marie Harte featuring tough-guy
mechanics and the women who jump-start their hearts.
GET TO KNOW THE BODY SHOP BAD BOYS
Johnny, Foley, Sam, and Lou are the rough and tumble mechanics of Webster’s Garage. These reformed bad boys are used to living fast, but it’s the women in their lives who take them from zero to sixty in a heartbeat.
JOHNNY
Johnny Devlin’s a charmer with a checkered past. He’s had his eye on scorching-hot bartender Lara Valley for ages, but she’s rejected him more than once. That doesn’t mean he won’t come to her aid when some dirtbag mauls her. When she asks him on a date as a no-strings-attached thank you, he can’t say no.
And then he’s saying nothing but hell, yes.
Excerpt:
When they left the car, the wind picked up, and she wished she’d brought a heavier jacket. So unnerved by his presence, she’d grabbed the first thing she’d found in the closet.
“Cold? Here. Let me help.” Johnny hugged her to him, and the subtle scent of his cologne, which had driven her crazy all evening, hit her hard. “Stay close to me, and I’ll keep you warm.”
She felt his smile against her hair. “Is that a line?”
“Why? Is it working?”
“Not yet. But if it gets any colder out here, it might.”
He laughed as they walked into the movie theater. After she purchased the horror film tickets, he grabbed her by the hand and squeezed. “Thank God. I thought for a minute there Alfred’s Three Loves might have swayed you.”
“No way. I’m not into period pieces.” She made a face. “But I can do horror.” She just had to say it. “I’m on a date with you, aren’t I?”
“Ha-ha. Very funny.” He swatted her on the ass, and she warmed all over. “After you.” He motioned for her to precede him.
To her surprise, she enjoyed the frightfest. She jumped at all the right parts and laughed when he did the same. Unlike most guys, he didn’t try to act macho. He had fun, made her laugh, and turned her on without trying. He was just so…Johnny.
They exited the theater amidst chatter about the excessive gore in the movie. “Wasn’t that great?” she gushed.
“A little over the top when the doll started bleeding from every orifice, don’t you think?”
“I thought that made her seem more real.”
He snorted. “Yeah. Dolls that bleed black and screech about demonic possession are so lifelike.”
“Exactly.”
He dragged her with him out of the way of a throng of theatergoers exiting from another movie. The multiplex had been packed, and she felt the crush as they moved toward the building’s exit.
“Thanks,” she said, breathless, as the wall of the corridor braced her back.
Then his mouth was on hers, a whisper of a kiss full of heat and desire. It was gone before she could blink, and she could only stare up at him, wanting more.
“I’ve been dying to do that all evening. And, well, a guy can only take so much temptation.”
“Temptation?” she echoed weakly.
“Yeah.” He sighed. “You loved a demonic doll. I mean, you hate baseball, but you loved Suzy Oozy—she of the hellish diapers and acidic eats-through-anything vomit.”
She nodded, still dazed. “I know, right? Great stuff.”
He chuckled and moved closer, away from the crowd pushing through the complex.
“Problem is I really liked Suzy. Now I’m going to have to hide my niece’s baby-cries-a lot doll the next time I see it. Talk about super creepy.” She rubbed her lips, staring at his, still reeling from that kiss.
“You say creepy, then you touch your mouth where I kissed you. I’m sensing a correlation.”
“Big word for a self-proclaimed knuckle-dragger—wasn’t that what you called your friends at Ray’s the other night?”
“Well, them, sure. But I’m more advanced than that. I can even spell correlation.” He paused. “With a dictionary.”
She was enthralled with him, despite being on her guard not to be. “How are you so much fun? Is this part of your shtick?”
He frowned. “My what?”
“Your shtick. Your routine. Do you get your dates laughing so hard that they don’t notice when you have them half-undressed?”
“Now, Lara. They always know when they’re getting naked with me. How could you think otherwise? I have standards, you know.”
He looked wounded, and she laughed and let him pull her along with the crowd. He kept his hand around hers, even when they left the theater, and she didn’t pull away.
“So, batting cages?” he asked hopefully as they found the car.
She groaned. “No thank you.”
He shrugged. “Your loss.”
“Thanks, Kareem.”
He looked pained. “That’s basketball.”
“Whatever. I’m not a fan of either sport.”
“Obviously. Kareem?”
She laughed at him. “I was kidding. Kareem Abdul Jabbar played for the Lakers from ’79 to ’85. Do you know what pro team he started with?”
“Do you?” He opened the car door for her, then circled to the driver side.
“The Milwaukee Bucks in 1969.”
“Okay, I’m impressed. That almost makes up for not liking baseball.”
She got into the car with him and confessed, “I only know that because my dad used to force me to watch old games with him when I was a kid. The basketball I could tolerate, but show me a Mets game, and I want to throw up. I think my head might spin too, worse than Suzy’s did for sure.” She sat with him in the quiet of the moment, wondering if she’d gone too far. Vomit wasn’t exactly sexy. “Um, not that sitting in absolute silence with you isn’t awkward or anything—”
“Glad to hear it.”
“—but if we’re not going to do the baseball thing, what did you have in mind? And don’t even think of suggesting we go back to your place.” She liked that neither of them had yet mentioned just ending the date. It was only a little after ten on a Friday night. Early by anyone’s standards.
“Well then. Take the wind out of my sails, why don’t you?” He blew out a breath. “Fine. We’ll go to yours.”
“My place?”
He started the car and drove out of the lot. “Exactly. Great minds think alike.”
Her heart pounded. “Exactly what are we thinking?”
“That we’ll hang out at your place, where you’ll practice more nursing on me. You can examine my pitiful bruised cheek, you know, the one I got rescuing a damsel in distress?”
“Going to milk that for all it’s worth, aren’t you?”
“Hell yeah. I figure if I remind you enough, you might take pity on me and let me kiss you again.”
BLP REVIEW ~ Tracy
I loved the McCauley Brothers series by Marie Harte and when she announced that she was releasing a spin-off series I was delighted!
We had come across the mechanics that are gonna be the main characters in the Body Shop Bad Boys books as they work for Del and her dad – Del being the leading lady in the last McCB story.
I really liked TEST DRIVE. Both main characters were fun and likable.
Johnny comes across as a bit of a player who never has to chase the ladies but Lara has spurned his advances for more than a while and this makes him more interested in her.
Lara is working at night in the bar the guys frequent and by day she’s studying to become a nurse. She has her eyes firmly fixed on her future and no hot, full of himself mechanic is gonna mess with the schedule….. or so she thinks!!
As they begin to spend time together we see that there’s more to both characters than we originally saw. Johnny is bright, interesting, sweet, loyal and fun but unsure of how to deal with a relationship.
Lara was independent, strong willed, focused and caring – especially when it came to family and those who mattered to her.
The build up of their relationship made for good reading and together they were hot as hell!!
The relationship between the guys at the garage was a fair part of the story too, and while they rib each other mercilessly at times, they are a family and have each others backs. no matter what. Some of their antics are laugh out loud funny and I can’t wait to find out more about each of them!!
Test Drive was a great start to this new series and a 5* read for me!!
About Marie Harte:
Caffeine addict, boy referee, and romance aficionado, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author MARIE HARTE is a confessed bibliophile and devotee of action movies. Whether hiking or biking around town, or hanging at the local tea shop, she’s constantly plotting to give everyone a happily ever after. She lives in in Central Oregon.
Visit Marie’s website and fall in love.
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BLOG TOUR ~ The Change Up (Arlington Aces #1) by Elley Arden
Readers looking for something a little different will love The Change Up by Elley Arden,
a twist on the traditional billionaire romance.
Out now!
The Change Up
(Arlington Aces #1)
by Elley Arden
Follow the tour and enter to #win a grand prize of a $25.00 Amazon Giftcard
& a signed bundle of the Kemmons Brothers series!
Enter HERE:
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Title: The Change Up
Series: Arlington Aces #1
Author: Elley Arden
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Release Date: May 16, 2016
Publisher: Crimson Romance
Length: 66k words
Format: Digital
Digital ISBN: 978-1-4405-9151-8
Synopsis:
Commercial real estate mogul Rachel Reed is the one person her father can depend on, so when he walks into her Philadelphia office two weeks shy of her fortieth birthday to drop a personal and professional bomb, she rises to the occasion. She will help get his independent professional baseball team up and running before the inaugural season, and then … she will sell the team to recoup his substantial investment. It’s a tall order, but Rachel knows one thing for sure: a sexy nuisance from her past and a few acres of trees won’t stand in her way.
Former minor-leaguer-turned-landscaper Sam Sutter is surprised to find his brother’s ex in the woods behind the house he bought when he cashed out his signing bonus and said so long to baseball. He’s even more surprised to learn “his” trees are on her chopping block. There’s no way he’ll desecrate his nature-loving mother’s memory by letting that happen. But butting heads with the beautiful business woman is a tricky task that leads Sam to accept a position as head groundskeeper at her father’s stadium. Working under Rachel’s watchful, smoldering eyes might be Sam’s undoing.
She doesn’t know a thing about baseball. He swore off the sport ten years ago. But strange things happen when field dust gets in your veins.
Find out more at: Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks
Excerpt One:
He didn’t trust her, and that was even before she tilted her head and regarded him through narrowed eyes. “You of all people must be excited about my father bringing professional baseball to Arlington.”
Here we go. Sam shrugged. “I don’t really follow baseball these days.”
“That’s a shame. Sam used to play for the …” she looked from Wes back to Sam, “The Cubs, right?”
Sam nodded once and added, “Never made it out of the minors.” Why sugarcoat it? Chasing “the bigs” in a rusty bus, believing he was the next big thing, caused him to miss out on a lot of things. He was still trying to make up for some of that.
Again he thought of his mother, and this time the guilt was almost too much to swallow.
“What are you doing now?” Rachel asked, surprising him, not because he expected her to keep tabs on his career, but because she’d never been the kind to care much about other people—at least that had been his experience when she’d labeled him “whiny little Sammy” who was always trying to come between her and Luke.
“I’m working for my dad,” he said with little genuine interest in keeping this conversation going.
“Just like me.”
Except he wasn’t like her, and he couldn’t leave that assumption hanging between them. “We’re nothing alike, Rachel. For starters, I would never even think about cutting down these trees. That would be a really shitty thing to do.”
She shrugged. “What can I say, Sammy? Progress can be painful, but in the end, it’s the best thing for everyone.”
“Because the best thing for you is the best thing for everyone?” He scoffed. She hadn’t changed one bit in twenty years. “Try telling that to the birds.” Sam looked at the wide-eyed man taking this all in beside her, and nodded curtly. “Nice to meet you.”
But that was a lie. It would only be nice if the guy drove back to Pittsburgh without touching a single tree. If one trunk fell … Sam hated to even think about it. Thank God his nature-loving mother wasn’t alive to see this.
He wandered off with Babe beside him and the warbler overhead, craving the usual Sunday peace and quiet, but he kept hearing phantom chainsaws and wood chippers. How much parking did the Reeds need? Surely they wouldn’t cut down all of this. He reached out and let almond-shaped leaves tickle his palm. But what if they did? What if he had to say goodbye to Sunday walks and evening fireside chats with his dad? And what if he had to look out his kitchen window and see a baseball stadium every damn day. He stopped. Babe stopped, too.
That was not going to happen.
BLP REVIEW ~ Tracy
I really enjoyed The Change Up. It was a good, fun, well written read and I’m looking forward to more in the series. Even though I know next to nothing about baseball, I did find that element of the book entertaining and the story thread around the team was interesting.
One of the things that I particularly liked about the lead characters was that they were a bit older, not some 20+ year olds with no life experience.
Initially, Rachel didn’t win me over. She came across as having a kinda crappy attitude, lack of interest in anything but business, a coolness and general lack of anything resembling emotions which wore on my patience; but as the story moved on and she started to thaw out and lose the constant ‘business Rachel’ head I began to like her, especially when we found out why she felt she had to be so work driven and that under that tough as nails front she really did care.
Sam… I really liked Sam from the get go. He was sweet, hot and sexy. My heart hurt for him – the things he regretted and blamed himself for and the responsibility he felt to his dad, brother and business held him back from acknowledging the things that were important to him and from doing what would make him happy.
The Change Up was in a way about second chances for Rachel and Sam – in both their professional and personal lives. Sam had once been a baseball player and the reasons around him retiring had him living a less than truly happy life. Rachel lived in the shadow of her father, constantly trying to prove herself to him to the extent that she gave up just about everything that should have mattered in her life.
The banter and interactions between the two main characters lead to a reassessing of their opinions of each others – Rachel had gone out with Sam’s older brother when they were younger before she set her sights on bigger and better things and left him to move to the city. Neither had good memories of the other but as they started to get to know each other things between them started to change and their attraction was obvious.
There was a good supporting cast – one or two of them I’d like to learn more about – and I’m hoping that Elley will be featuring them in future books in the series.
The story around Rachel’s dad having Alzheimer’s was well written and felt very real – having had family experience with this horrible condition I could totally relate to the feelings and emotions that those around Danny experienced.
All in all, for me, The Change Up was a good 4* read that I’d definitely recommend whether you are a sports fan or not.
Excerpt Two:
She thought about that for a minute, thought about him, standing there, looking at her like she was the only woman in the world, and the heat was undeniable. The attraction unmistakable. Sam Sutter was a mouth-wateringly beautiful man. Five years younger and without a discernible life plan, but damn it, libidos didn’t care about those things. And honestly, the only thing holding her back from taking out all her recent frustrations on his blessed body right now was the fact his crew was just outside the leftfield wall.
To neutralize the lust bubbling in her veins, she asked, “Do you miss baseball?”
He looked broadsided by the random question and didn’t rush to answer.
“I know that came out of left field …” she grinned at her cleverness, “but I’ve been wondering about it ever since the festival. When my dad was asking you about baseball, you looked very uncomfortable.”
His gaze shifted away from her and anchored onto something in the grandstand, but then he shrugged like she hadn’t hit a nerve. “I was uncomfortable because I was worried about your father. I wasn’t sure what was going on. That’s all.” But his jaw pulsed, and she knew better.
“Sam …” She stepped closer, narrowing the space between them. “I saw that same look a minute ago when I asked you to help me out with the coaching prospects. You miss baseball. It’s okay to admit it. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be human. God, you played every year of your life until you were how old? Just because you were ready to hang it up professionally doesn’t mean you don’t miss the game personally.” He looked at her then with a hurt in his eyes that seemed to be saying maybe he wasn’t as ready to hang it up as he pretended to be.
“I miss some things more than others,” he said. “There’s a rush you get from playing the game.” Silence stretched out between them as the warm wind wrapped them in the sun-dried fragrances of spring. All the while, his eyes roamed her face until they focused on her lips. “Fortunately you can get that rush from other things.”
“Like?” she asked, breathlessly, knowing damned well she was encouraging him.
“This,” he whispered before he leaned in and kissed her, a brush of his lips, soft as the breeze that carried the heated scent of his skin to her nose and then to her brain.
Author Bio:
Elley Arden is a born and bred Pennsylvanian who has lived as far west as Utah and as far north as Wisconsin. She drinks wine like it’s water (a slight exaggeration), prefers a night at the ballpark to a night on the town, and believes almond English toffee is the key to happiness.
Elley has been reading romance novels since she was a sixteen-year-old babysitter, sneaking Judith McNaught and Danielle Steele novels off the bookshelves of the women who employed her. To say she’d been sheltered up to that point is an understatement. No one had ever told her women could live bold, love freely, and have sex lives that were exciting and fulfilling. (They don’t teach these things in Catholic school!) Now that she knows, she’s happy to spread the word. The women she writes about may be fictional, but the success, respect, and love they find on the page is a universal right for women everywhere.
Elley writes books with charming characters, emotional stories, and sexy romance. Visit The Bookshelf for a detailed listing.
You can also visit her online at the following places: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon
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