Showing results by author "Sarina Bowen"

The moment Sadie Matthews walks through the daycare center door, I feel my world tilt in her direction. Again. I fell for her when I was 14, and I’m still not over her. Problem: She still thinks of me as a teen she used to babysit. But I’ve learned a few things about pleasing a woman in the last 15 years. I can’t wait to show her how good it could be. I need to move quickly before I lose her again. This is more than a game to me, but I still plan to win. 

I’ve been listening to my father sing for my whole life. I carry him in my pocket on my MP3 player. It’s just that we’ve never met face to face. My mother would never tell me how I came to be, or why my rock star father and I have never met. I thought it was her only secret. I was wrong. When she dies, he finally appears. Suddenly I have a first-class ticket into my father’s exclusive world. A world I don’t want any part of - not at this cost. Only three things keep me going: my a cappella singing group, a swoony blue-eyed boy named Jake, and the burning questions in my soul.

Mike Beacon is a champion at defending the net, but off the ice he's not so lucky. A widower and a single father, he's never forgotten Lauren Williams, the ex who gave him the best year of his life. When Lauren reappears in the Bruisers office during the playoffs, Beacon sees his chance to make things right.

The last person Griffin Shipley expects to find stuck in a ditch on his Vermont country road is his ex-hookup. Five years ago they shared a couple of steamy nights together, but that was a lifetime ago. At 27 Griff is now the accidental patriarch of his family farm. Even his enormous shoulders feel the strain of supporting his mother, his three siblings, and a dotty grandfather. He doesn't have time for the sorority girl who has shown up expecting to buy his harvest at half price.

At 34, I'm reeling from a divorce. I don't want to party or try to move on. I just want to stay home and post a new recipe on my blog: Brynn's Dips and Balls. But my friends aren't having it. Get out there again, they say. It will be fun, they say. I'm still taking a hard pass. Free designer cocktails, they say. And that's a game-changer. Too bad my ex shows up with his new arm candy. That's when I lose my mind.

You'd think a billion dollars, a professional hockey team and a six-bedroom mansion on the Promenade would satisfy a guy. You'd be wrong. For seven years Rebecca has brightened my office with her wit and her smile. She manages both my hockey team and my sanity. I don't know when I started waking in the night, craving her. All I know is that one whiff of her perfume ruins my concentration. And her laugh makes me hard.

As team captain and enforcer, Patrick O'Doul puts the bruise in the Brooklyn Bruisers. But after years of hard hits, O'Doul is feeling the burn, both physically and mentally. He conceals his pain from his coach and trainers, but when his chronic hip injury becomes too obvious to ignore, they send him for sessions with the team's massage therapist.

Jamie Canning has never been able to figure out how he lost his closest friend. Four years ago, his tattooed, wisecracking, rule-breaking roommate cut him off without an explanation. So what if things got a little weird on the last night of hockey camp the summer they were 18? It was just a little drunken foolishness. Nobody died.

Hosting her brother's wedding for an MVP guest list is the challenge of Jess Canning's life. Already the family screw-up, she can't afford to fail. And nobody (nobody!) can learn of the colossal mistake she made with the best man during a weak moment last spring. It was wrong, and there will not be a repeat. Absolutely not. Even if he is the sexiest thing on two legs.

Did you hear the one about the girl who walks into a bar and catches her live-in lover kissing someone else? No? You’re the only one in town who missed it. Luckily Alec is there to wrap me up in strong arms and carry me out the door before things get too ugly. And that’s not all Alec is good at. Our unexpected chemistry makes him the perfect rebound guy.  

Five months in, NHL forward Ryan Wesley is having a record-breaking rookie season. He's living his dream of playing pro hockey and coming home every night to the man he loves - Jamie Canning, his longtime best friend turned boyfriend. There's just one problem: the most important relationship of his life is one he needs to keep hidden, or else face a media storm that will eclipse his success on the ice.

Hailey Taylor Emery has a hunch that her favorite client at Fetch - an anonymous virtual assistant service - is actually hockey star Matt Eriksson. Although it's against the rules for her to check his file, she's 95 percent sure she spends at least part of each day texting with her lifelong crush and catering to his every need. Still nursing a wounded heart thanks to her recent breakup, Hailey is perfectly content with some harmless online flirting...until she has to meet her client.

Lark Wainright, 23, has nightmares. She used to be fearless. But while overseas for her nonprofit employer, she was kidnapped and held at gunpoint in a dusty shack. Everyone has an opinion about what might have happened to her there, but she's not saying much. She's too consumed by guilt to talk about it.

Hockey player Leo Trevi has spent the last six years trying to do two things: get over the girl who broke his heart, and succeed in the NHL. But on the first day he's called up to the newly franchised Brooklyn Bruisers, Leo gets checked on both sides, first by the team's coach - who has a long simmering grudge - and then by the Bruisers' sexy, icy publicist - his former girlfriend, Georgia Worthington. Saying goodbye to Leo was one of the hardest things Georgia ever had to do - and saying hello again isn't much easier.

For one night she had everything. Pro snowboarder Stella Lazarus has always loved her brother's best friend. But the one time she tried to show him, she was shot down faster than you can say "competitor disqualified". Until one blissful night in Tahoe, when Stella finally gets her man. Or does she? In the morning, Stella and Bear wake up to horrible news. The sort that sends them racing back to Vermont, and straight into the arms of guilt and family obligations.

As a sorority pledge, there are commandments that Katie Vickery must live by. One: Thou shalt not show up for the party without a date. Two: The guy shall be an athlete, preferably an upperclassman. Unfortunately, Katie just broke up with her jerkface football player boyfriend. Even worse, her last encounter with him resulted in utter humiliation. She'd rather hide under the bed than attend a party where he'll be. Yet staying home would mean letting him win.

Jude lost everything one spring day when he crashed his car into an apple tree on the side of the road. A man is dead, and there is no way he can ever right that wrong. He would forever steer clear of Colebury, Vermont, if he could. But an ex-con in recovery for his drug addiction can't find a job just anywhere. >Sophie Haines is stunned by his reappearance. After a three-year absence, the man who killed her brother and broke her heart is suddenly everywhere she turns. It's hard not to stare at how much he has changed.

Ash: I still don't know how it happened. One minute, I was arguing with my arrogant competitor - our usual trash-talk over who deserves the larger commission. But somehow, I went from throwing down to kneeling down.... It can never happen again. I don't even like him. He's too slick. He's a manipulating, mansplaining party boy in preppy clothes. So why can't I get him out of my head? Sebastian: Ash is my missing my piece. She's the sweet cream to my gourmet espresso. And nothing gets me going faster than her contempt for me.

No last names. No life stories. Those were the rules. Once upon a time a cocky, copper-haired tourist sauntered into Zara's bar. And even though she knew better, Zara indulged in a cure for the small-town blues. It was supposed to be an uncomplicated fling - a few sizzling weeks before he went back to his life, and she moved on. Until an accidental pregnancy changed her life. Two years later, she's made peace with the notion that Dave No-Last-Name will never be found - until one summer day when he walks into her coffee shop.

Five years ago Michael Graham betrayed the only person who ever really knew him. Since then he's made an art of hiding his sexual orientation from everyone. Including himself. So it's a shock when his past strolls right into the Harkness College locker room, sporting a bag of hockey gear and the same slow smile that had always rendered Graham defenseless.