It's beginning to look a lot like love . . .
As her thirtieth birthday approaches, deputy Jill Flaherty decides it's time to live a little. When she walks into Sawyer Anderson's bar in her sexiest dress, she's not thinking that he's her brother's best friend or about the many women he dated during his years as a pro hockey player. All she's thinking is that it's finally time to confess to her longtime crush how she truly feels.
Sawyer is done being a player on and off the ice. Yet no one in the small town of Christmas seems to believe he's ready to settle down, not Jill, and certainly not Jack, who is determined to keep Sawyer from breaking his little sister's heart. But as Sawyer and Jill's relationship heats up, can he prove that he's her happy ever after?
As her thirtieth birthday approaches, deputy Jill Flaherty decides it's time to live a little. When she walks into Sawyer Anderson's bar in her sexiest dress, she's not thinking that he's her brother's best friend or about the many women he dated during his years as a pro hockey player. All she's thinking is that it's finally time to confess to her longtime crush how she truly feels.
Sawyer is done being a player on and off the ice. Yet no one in the small town of Christmas seems to believe he's ready to settle down, not Jill, and certainly not Jack, who is determined to keep Sawyer from breaking his little sister's heart. But as Sawyer and Jill's relationship heats up, can he prove that he's her happy ever after?
Deputy
Jill Flaherty sat at her desk wrapping her brother's birthday present
for his surprise party tonight. The yellow helium balloons she'd
ordered were currently bouncing in front of her face. She lifted her
hand to bat them way, ripping the paper off the present in the
process. A present that she'd been painstakingly wrapping for the
last ten minutes. Frustrated, she swore under her breath while
shaking her fingers to free them of the tape and brightly-colored
tissue paper.
"You're
stuck," Suze announced in an authoritative voice from behind her
computer.
"Thank
you for your insightful observation," Jill grumbled at the
forty-something woman sitting at the dispatcher's desk across the
room as she bent her head to pull the tape off her fingers with her
teeth.
Suze
leaned around her computer and grinned. "I didn't mean
literally. I mean you're stuck, stuck. That's why you've been so
bitchy lately. You have the pre-30 birthday blues."
"It's
my fingers that are stuck, not me. And I'm not. . . " Jill
sighed. "Okay, so maybe I have been a little bitchy. But it's
because of all the overtime I've been putting in the past couple of
weeks. I'm tired."
She
ignored the reference to her thirtieth birthday. She wouldn't admit
to Suze that she was partially right. Like an ominous black cloud,
the big 3-0 loomed large in Jill's mind. It always had. Her mother
died two days before her thirtieth. Preparations for Jack's
thirty-seventh birthday had served to remind Jill that her
thirtieth was only five months away.
"Because
you don't have a life."
Jill
lifted a hand still covered in tape and paper in an
are-you-kidding-me gesture. "I do so. I have--"
"Yeah,
yeah, I know. You have friends and family and a job you love. Still
doesn't mean you have a life. You put yours on hold when Jack was
MIA. I had a front row seat so I know what I'm talking about."
"I
have a life," Jill reiterated without elaborating. Suze had
stolen her ammunition. If having friends, family, and a job she loved
didn't count, Jill didn't know what else to say.
A
chair scraped noisily on the tile floor and Suze took a seat across
from her. "Okay, so tell me, when was the last time you hid the
salami?" she asked.
Jill
frowned. "What . . ."
Suze rolled her brown eyes as she peeled the last of the tape and
tissue paper from Jill's fingers. "Bumped uglies. . . Did the
horizontal mumbo?"
"I
have no idea what you're--"
"Oh
for godsakes, when was the last time you got laid?"
Since
the answer didn't immediately pop into her head, Jill hedged, "What
does that have to do with anything?"
"And
there's your problem. You can't remember, can you?" Suze said as
she rolled the paper and tape into a ball.
"Yes,
I can. Seven months ago," she said, taking a guess. Then
realizing the number of months might unwittingly validate Suze's
no-life pronouncement, Jill added, "Before you say anything,
I've been busy."
Suze
pursed her lips and tossed the ball into the garbage can. "Don't
buy two-sided tape again. And it was eight months ago with that
accountant from Logan County."
"Really?
Huh. I could have sworn . . . " She took in the I-told-you-so
look on Suze's lightly freckled face. "Oh, come on, that doesn't
mean anything."
"Yeah,
it does. It says it all. You have unmemorable sex with unmemorable
men. And do you know why you do?"
"No,
but I'm sure you're going to enlighten me," Jill said, carefully
working the rest of the paper off Jack's present with a pair of
scissors.
"Fear,"
Suze said, taking the scissors from Jill's hand and looking her in
the eyes. "You're afraid to get your heart broken. That's why
you spend your time fantasizing about the man and life you want and
not doing anything about it."
"I
do not fantasize about Sawyer," Jill blurted without thinking.
She caught the triumphant look in Suze's eyes and quickly added, "Or
any other man in town."
What a sweet, wonderful, heartwarming, romantic read. Debbie Mason has had me hooked on her books for so long now. And having this one is just the icing on the cake. I love the characters and story line. I can't wait to read more.
Thank you for giving me advance copy so I can give my honest review. And I honestly love it!
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