PLAYING FOR KEEPS
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Single mother Joanna Swan had already married one man with a Peter Pan complex, and one was her limit. So now she is determined that romance is for dreamers—and she is one woman with her feet firmly planted on the ground. Even if she does design custom-made Santa Clauses for a living.
And that's where Dale McConnaughy comes in. The sexy-as-sin former baseball superstar—now a toy store mogul—might be irresistible to most women, but Joanna had to resist him. Because after all that she'd been through, what kind of fool would she be to let herself fall in love with another man so determined to remain a boy?
For Dale, though, baseball hadn't been a game but a way out of a childhood filled with betrayal and heartache. And even though he'd refused to let the past embitter him, it had left its share of scars—scars that perhaps one woman could help to erase. But only if he could prove to Joanna that, where the game of love was concerned, he was willing to risk all….
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Joanna Swann has three kids, a roof that leaks, a business carving wood Santas and no sex life until she meets retired baseball pitcher Dale McConnaughy. The two meet inauspiciously after Joanna's Santas are rejected by the local art gallery and she breaks down crying in the toy store Dale now owns. But when he arrives at her house to set up a swing set for her twin boys a few days later, their relationship begins to bud, coaxed along by Joanna's best friend and her ex, Bobby. Although Dale is a player in every sense of the word, Joanna's warm honesty seduces him despite his defenses. Joanna, meanwhile, worries she's falling for another overgrown boy like her ex. Add Bobby's young pregnant fianc e and a secret Dale has kept since he was 10, and you have a complicated but compelling romantic yarn. Initially, it's difficult to see why Dale would be attracted to Joanna, a frumpy single mom with an attitude and issues, but their relationship blossoms believably after their first few encounters. Templeton (Loose Screws) has drawn flesh-and-blood characters and a rare sympathetic portrait of Joanna's ex. With its pitch-perfect prose, spot-on dialogue and steady pacing, Templeton's newest should score a home run with readers.
