Showing results by author "Rosalind James" in All Categories

Will Tawera doesn't do commitment, except on the rugby field. Moving to Las Vegas to become a kicker for the NFL would be a big change from New Zealand rugby, but then, he's ready for a change. And when he's asked to do a little modeling on the side? Thousands of dollars to hold a beautiful blonde while looking dark, dangerous, tattooed, and Maori? He could do that.

Eight smoking-hot rugby players. Eight partners. Seventeen kids. Beaches and barbecues and beer, salt and sand and sea. Family and good mates and no worries. December in New Zealand. One very pregnant, very tired Hannah Montgomery Callahan is playing hostess to it all, doing her best and wondering if her best is good enough. And one legendary All Black captain is willing to do whatever it takes to show her that when he promised to be there for her forever, he meant it.

Hemi Ranapia isn’t looking for love. Fun, yes. Love, not so much. But a summer fishing holiday to laid-back Russell could turn out to be more adventure than this good-time boy ever bargained for. Reka Harata hasn't forgotten the disastrously hot rugby star she met a year ago, no matter how much she wishes she could. Too bad Hemi keeps refusing to be left in her past.

There's no place like home... For teacher Jenna McKnight, nothing spells "heartbreak" like finding her husband with somebody else--in her bed. It's clearly time to reinvent herself. A new body, a new city, and a new job later, she's done just that. The beautiful Auckland villa isn't really her home, though. Finn Douglas and his kids aren't really her family, however much she wishes they were. And playing house can be a dangerous game. Rugby star Finn Douglas is just looking for a temporary nanny and housekeeper. Not a girlfriend, and definitely not a wife. He can't resist Jenna's cooking, it's true. Who knew he'd have so much trouble resisting her? He wants to do what's right for his kids. But waiting is so hard... Note: This romance, like New Zealand, contains a bit of steam. If that isn't your cuppa, maybe visit some other country... er, audiobook.

Kevin McNicholl may be a brutal force on the rugby field, but off the field, the star New Zealand All Black is a famously nice guy. His new tenant, though, arouses more than his protective side. She sets him on fire. Pity he's evicting her. Every woman deserves her dreams. Chloe Donaldson can't afford dreams, though, so she's given them up. Marriage, her ballet career, and now, her beautiful tower apartment with its view of the sea. Her new landlord is kicking her out, along with her three-year-old son, Zavy.

Mira Walker is hoping that competing on a "living history" reality show will give her what's missing from her real life. Maybe she'll get closer to her boyfriend, who hasn't been all that nice to her lately. Get fired up about her job again. Who knows, she might even win a million dollars. Gabe Kincaid and his brother, Alec, are after that million, too, though. Mira and Scott are no threat at all, not when everybody involved is going to want to kill Scott after the first day. And there's no bond stronger than a twin's. What could possibly go wrong?

Nate Torrance has a job to do, and the biggest rugby boots in the world to fill. He can't afford to lose his focus, especially not to a brown-eyed Canadian who pushes all his buttons and looks much too good in a climbing harness. Allison Villiers may not know what she wants to do with her life, but she's clear about one thing. She's not impressed by the new captain of the All Blacks, however big a deal he is to the rest of New Zealand.

Rescuing a woman dressed in a nightdress at a costume ball? That worked for me. And holding her up against the wall, to shield her from the cops, was pure enjoyment. Driving with her to a barbecue, a fruit salad in my lap, and her twins - her girl twins - in the back seat? Out of my comfort zone. And that was before she started asking me for dating lessons, and wondering how to explain that she couldn’t have sex before marriage. I had it under control, though. I was coping. Until four sisters of mine decided to go looking for their sperm donor.

There are secrets. There are guilty secrets. And then there's switching places with your twin. Paige Hollander and her identical twin Lily stopped switching places a decade ago. But Lily's run into trouble, and Paige is on leave from the SFPD, recovering from a traumatic shooting. It's not like she has anything better to do, and she remembers how to be feminine. Sort of. How hard could it be?

Beth Schaefer isn't just on the partnership track at her Portland law firm, she's in the lead. Unfortunately, she's about to fall at the finish line. When she makes a list of breakdown destinations, she can't even manage to choose between them. Which means she has to come home to Wild Horse, Idaho, for her breakdown. She has exactly 18.5 days of accumulated vacation time to devote to it.

I never asked Hemi Te Mana to rescue me. It was true that I had a lousy job. Not to mention a lousy apartment and too much responsibility, although it was a responsibility I wouldn't have given up for the world. That still didn't mean I needed rescuing, if that was what you'd call the situation I ended up in. And anyway, I knew that a multimillionaire Maori CEO with too many muscles, a tribal tattoo, and a take-no-prisoners attitude was way, way out of my league.

Nic Wilkinson is a responsible, organized, disciplined rugby player at the top of his game. Emma Martens is a sometimes-scattered, often-emotional, and always-broke would-be designer with a big chip on her shoulder where Nic's concerned. They have no history together, except one perfect week. Nothing in common anymore, except the most important thing of all. Getting together again would be messy. Complicated. Scary. And, just maybe, worth every risk.

Even princesses have problems. That line doesn’t exactly invite sympathy, does it? I was a fairly ersatz princess anyway, although you should try convincing my mother of that. And when I ran away from my family, my tech-bro groom, my almost-Stanford degree, and our fabulous future and right back to my trailer-living, hard-hatted life? Even I couldn’t explain it to anybody’s satisfaction.

Breathe, smile, and move on. When you’re writing the next chapter in your rags-to-riches-to-rags story, you need about a million quotes like that. I might have been short on inspiration, but I had determination. That was it, except for a very young cousin and a very old campervan, but I was all about starting over. Nobody knew me in New Zealand other than a series of café and motel managers, and anonymity suited me fine. Manlessness suited me even finer.

People who say “love is trust” probably didn’t grow up in a cult. My name is Daisy Nabhitha Kittredge. I chose it myself. As an RN in the emergency department in one of New Zealand’s largest hospitals, there wasn’t much left in me of the 16-year-old girl, covered from neck to ankle and not allowed to make eye contact with a boy, who’d run away with five dollars in her pocket and terror in her heart.

Hugh Latimer's coping with a few problems just now. A broken hand, missing the European rugby tour... and a half-brother and sister who are playing havoc with his love life. Instead of packing down in the scrum, he's driving the carpool to ballet - or forgetting it's his turn. When he hears his neighbor wailing out bad pop in the wee hours, it's the last straw.

When I'd taken Hope Sinclair and her sister to New Zealand to meet my grandfather, I'd known I'd be making the return journey as her husband. I hadn't reckoned, though, on the demons of my past coming back to threaten our future. And, as always, I hadn't reckoned on Hope. I had hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of employees to tell me I had better judgment and more self-discipline than most people, and neither my self-control nor anything else I possessed had been won the easy way.

There's that phrase, though. "How's that working out for you?" The answer, when it came to Hope Sinclair, was, "not so well". She might be little, she might be sweet, and she might be young, but if I'd thought she'd be compliant anywhere but in bed, I'd learned my lesson. To keep her, I had to let her go. To hold her, I had to turn her loose. To have her in my life, I had to accept that she was 9,000 miles away in New Zealand.

Being sentenced by a woman in a black robe is not a meet-cute. Quinn Jeffries follows the rules. A judge in small-town Sinful, Montana, doesn’t have much room for missteps, and when you spend your childhood training for the Olympics, you don’t have time for anything but discipline anyway. And, see? It’s worked! Her life is just fine. Of course, it doesn’t include any romance, but her new six-first-dates plan could fix that. She just has to be feminine and beguiling, or maybe marginally less take-charge. Too bad she doesn’t know how.

Meet a big-city cop trying to run her twin’s small-town lingerie shop and milk her goats, an Australian actor/professional werewolf who’s getting pretty bloody tired of hearing his tagline quoted back to him, an American businessman terrified of water who’s forced to wade into the Australian surf in his shirt and tie, and much more.