Love of the Game
Stardust, Texas, #3
by Lori Wilde
Releasing
April 26th 2016
Avon
From The Book Junkie Reads . . . Love of the Game (Stardust, Texas, #3) . . .
Axel was you all American athlete that does not know when its time to take a rest. he does not understand its more to life. Or do he? Loss of love has a way to make you not care about a lot of things. Including when you are injured and in need of time to heal.
Kasha was strong, goal oriented, and real. She said things the way they were not sugarcoated. Self-control was one of her things. She had one very important goal and that was to attain guardianship of her half-sister, Emma.
We have a contemporary romance that was built in Texas around an athlete and a physical therapist for an athletic team but this was not a sports romance. In this romance we find that burn of attraction that builds to a inferno as time goes on. The build of their relationship makes this that much sweeter to savor. Minding hearts, repairing souls, and fixing families can make a romance that much sweeter.
Lori Wilde knows how to bring the romance with that special Texas flair.
**This ARC was provided
via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.**
Stardust, Texas series:
Back in the Game - Stardust, Texas, #1Rules of the Game - Stardust, Texas, #2
Love of the Game - Stardust, Texas, #3
A sexy sports superstar discovers his body isn’t the only thing that needs healing in this newest Stardust, Texas novel from New York Times bestselling author Lori Wilde…
With major league good looks and talent, Dallas Gunslingers relief pitcher Axel Richmond was living the good life. Even if the roar of the crowd could never distract him from the loss of his young son. But now with an injured shoulder and his career on the line, Axel is stuck recuperating at a ranch in Stardust, Texas . . . striking out only with his gorgeous physical therapist.
Kasha Carlyle has one week to get Axel back in action or she can kiss her much-needed job with the Gunslingers goodbye. And any chance to seek custody of the orphaned half-sister she never knew existed. She quickly learns that Axel’s guarded heart also needs healing . . . requiring all kinds of sneaky plays and sexy moves in extra innings.
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It
starts like this: an unexpected spark, instant attraction, the jolting jab of
oh-so-you-feel-this-too? Flash fire in the belly. A corkscrew twist in the
center of the chest. A physical ache that punches low and heavy and spreads out
hard and fast through muscles and tendons, blood and bone.
Heady.
Erotic.
Thrilling.
Physical therapist Kasha Carlyle had
felt it before, this hot flare, runaway-mine-train-express that stirred fear in
the dark recesses of her mind. She’d resisted it then. Resisted it now.
But this? This here? This was something more.
Stronger.
Bolder.
Scarier.
Coal black eyes melted her resistance,
seared it to ash. In that stopwatch moment when her gaze struck, and stuck to
the steely stare of the Dallas Gunslingers’ most valuable pitcher, Axel
Richmond.
He’d just completed a physical therapy
session with his trainer, Paul Hernandez, and he was sitting on a bench wearing
nothing but red workout pants, his bare chest on display. Every glistening
muscle was finely etched. Not a drop of fat on him. He was a splendid specimen
of adult male in top physical shape, life and passion oozing from his pores.
The only thing that seemed out of
place was the black tattoo over his heart that spelled out
“Dylan.”
One look and everything and everyone
blended and blurred as white-hot need transported them into their own little
world far from the sports medicine facility in North Dallas, where baseball
coaches, managers, administrators, and sports medicine specialists surrounded
them.
For a split second.
Then pure panic set it.
It was Tuesday, May seventeenth, and
the second week of Kasha’s three-month probationary period at her new job
working with injured major league baseball players.
And she was already falling in lust.
No. No. This simply would not do.
Keeping her job was essential.
Now that she had Emma to consider, she
urgently needed the bump in salary to pay off the student loans that had gotten
her through her PhD. Not to mention the excellent health insurance coverage.
Finding out about Emma had changed everything.
Quickly, Kasha peeled her gaze from
Axel’s and studied the insignia on the wall above his head—the blue and green
Gunslingers crossed dueling pistols logo—but she didn’t see a darn thing.
Purposefully, she slowed her breathing, and forced herself to listen to the
conversation.
“I wish we had better news,” Dr. Tad
Harrison, the lead physician on the team, said to Axel.
Dr. Harrison had been the one to hire
Kasha, and the one to caution her that only thirty percent of probationary
employees made it past the first three months. “It takes a special breed to
work with these ballplayers. They’re long on arrogance and stubbornness and
always think they know best.”
“I have a lot of patience,” she’d said
because it was true.
“I heard they call you the Exorcist in
your current job,” Dr. Harrison had said. “Why is that?”
She couldn’t keep from smiling. “My
colleagues say I have a talent for taming difficult clients.”
“And do you?”
“I consider physical therapy a
calling.” She folded her hands in her lap, and said without a hint of ego. “I
was born for this work.”
Dr. Harrison stroked his chin. “That’s
what Rowdy said too.”
Rowdy
Blanton was the field manager for the Gunslingers. He was also Kasha’s
brother-in-law, married to her younger adoptive sister, Breeanne, and he’d
recommended her for the job.
“If I hire you,” Dr. Harrison had
continued. “It will be on your own merits, not your relationship to Rowdy. He
got you this interview, but that’s as far as nepotism goes.”
“As it should.” Kasha bobbed her head.
The uncertainty of the job was why she
hadn’t yet rented an apartment in Dallas. Every day, she made the one hundred
and thirty-five mile, one-way trek to the stadium from her hometown of
Stardust.
While she was optimistic, she was also
practical. She’d learned that fate could derail even the best intentions and
you had to be ready to flow whichever way the current took you. For the next
three months, until she solidified the job, she would keep making that drive.
For Emma.
Her thoughts took off in a hundred
different directions at once. Stalled. Spun. Gathered momentum like an
encroaching hurricane. Realizing her mind had wandered, she forcefully shut
down the unproductive thoughts and directed her attention back to the patient.
Axel Richmond.
One more look and Kasha was on fire
and she hated it. The last thing she wanted right now was to meet a guy,
especially this guy. Whose stark dark hair was drenched in the heady sheen of
sweat.
He was as sexy as ten kinds of sin,
and twice as handsome, and he was studying her through heavily lidded eyes as
if she was the most fascinating creature he’d seen in years.
Um . . . yes . . . that’s why her mind
had wandered. To keep from dealing with the feelings his hot-to-trot gaze
churned inside her.
She let out such a long sigh that
everyone in the room swiveled to stare. She kept her face blank and examined
her fingernails, pretending she’d discovered a ragged cuticle.
From the moment Axel had strolled into
the therapy room with his pro-athlete swagger and princely sense of
entitlement, she’d been mesmerized.
Spellbound by the way his fitted
T-shirt hugged his intricately muscled body. Then he’d stripped off the shirt,
giving her an even more arresting view. A thick head of lush brown hair curled
around his ears, and those powerful thighs strained at the seams of his workout
pants.
Whew.
Author Info
New York
Times and USA Today bestselling author, Lori Wilde has sold seventy-eight works
of fiction to four major New York Publishing houses.Her first NYT bestseller, the third book in her Twilight, Texas series, The First Love Cookie Club has been optioned for a television movie. The town of Granbury, Texas, upon which her fictional town of Twilight, Texas is loosely based, honors Lori with an annual Twilight, Texas weekend each Christmas.
A popular writing instructor, Lori is a two time RITA finalist and has four times been nominated for Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Award. She's won the Colorado Award of Excellence, the Wisconsin Write Touch Award, The Golden Quill, the Lories, and The More than Magic.
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