Series:
Christmas, Colorado #7
On
Sale: June 28, 2016
Formats:
Mass Market & eBook
Price:
$5.99 USD
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?
Excerpt
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."
About the Author:
Debbie
Mason is the bestselling author of the Christmas, Colorado series. Her books
have been praised for their "likable characters, clever dialogue and juicy
plots" (RT Book Reviews). She also writes historical paranormals as Debbie
Mazzuca. Her MacLeod series has received several nominations for best
paranormal as well as a Holt Medallion Award of Merit. When she isn't writing
or reading, Debbie enjoys spending time with her very own real-life hero, their
four wonderful children, an adorable grandbaby, and a yappy Yorkie named Bella.
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