ONE NIGHT WITH HER BACHELOR

ONE NIGHT WITH HER BACHELOR               KAT LATHAM
Posted:  April 15, 2015

One Night with Her Bachelor by Kat LathamBid on a date with this wounded warrior for an unforgettable night of adventure. Aim high—and bid higher!—because no one comes close to local hero Gabriel Morales.

Molly Dekker hates being the town charity case, but when her son Josh is seriously injured she has no choice. She lets her best friend organize a bachelor auction to help pay her massive bills and make Josh’s life more comfortable. She can’t bid on any of the men, but a surprise bidder gives her a gift she never expected: a date with the man who saved her son’s life—the only one she’s in danger of losing her heart to.

Former Air Force pararescueman Gabriel Morales made a career of flying to the rescue, until a tragic helicopter crash stole more than his livelihood. Being auctioned off like a slab of beef isn’t in his recovery plan. But one look, one touch and one night unlocking Molly’s pent-up passion makes him realize how badly he needs to be rescued…and how badly he wants to rescue Molly right back.

Will Molly and Gabriel’s never-quit attitude have them rushing head-first into love? Or will Gabriel’s secret pain stall their relationship before it can get off the ground?

MY REVIEW:
     Okay call me a sucker for love but you add a military man who was injured and damn who can resist?  Not me.  This is a book that shows that with a disability you can make it back some make have a hard time finding that way back and a new way of doing things and others will just ROLL with the punches.
     I have to say that throughout the story I heard Sam Elliott’s voice and the looks that he had in the 1970’s with dark hair and tan.  Gabriel Morales is a man’s man.  He wants to live off the land and be left alone.  You see he and his best friend Scott Dekker knew each other since forever.  They went all through school together, college and the Air Force too.  But on their last mission he was the only one made it home alive.  Unfortunately, the one thing he didn’t get to do with Scott was attend his funeral with him for he was in Germany being treated for his injuries.
     Gabriel seemed to have forgotten really that Scott had a sister.  He was so focused once he got back to Marietta, Texas to stay off the grid.  Which was easy for him to do since his grandpa had left him his cabin up on the mountain but it had no water, electricity, or shone just the basics.  Being trained well Gabriel was able to make it work and well.  He only came off the mountain to get food and other supplies.
     One day after almost a year he runs into Molly Dekker, Scott’s sister, at the grocery store.  She doesn’t have a basket so she drops all her things on the floor when he bumps into her.  Shattering everything breakable.  They say Hi! And just stare at one another as they wipe their shoes.  When it starts to become awkward Molly’s 10 year old son Josh, who she is raising alone, comes running up chattering away.
     For Molly she felt a connection.  For her not only was Gabriel her brother’s best friend but her was her all time crush.  The guy she has dreamt about since she was 10 years old when she fell in love with him.  Josh is just so hyper that she has to focus into him gladly.  He is always moving just the way she always did.  Seeing him and the way he is so hyper jars memories for Gabriel of Scott saying that Molly got divorced like 5 years ago from the douchebag she married. At that point they nod goodbye.
     That next Saturday Josh is off to a 2 night camping trip with the scouts.  Molly has decided to do the same.  She not only wants to catch up with Gabriel but she down right wants to get laid!  She knows she can trust Gabriel he was always a nice guy to her and her brother said so.  She takes the 3 miles trek up the mountain and surprises him.  Boy was he surprised.
     When things start to heat up she hears on his two way radio the rangers mention her son’s name and his friend and that they are missing.  Also the spot of their last location and that they are starting a search and rescue.  She goes crazy looking for her phone.  Gabriel tries to get her attention 3 times to let her know that there is no cell service up there.  She cries out again that she needs to use her phone to call so she decides to leave.  But he know she is to upset and would end up getting lost since it was getting darker too.  He tells her that she needed to get ready for they would be taking the motorcycle.  He grabs his emergency kit like the one he had in the military minus the guns and ammo of course.
     He thinks of the place he would go if he were a kid they go there and sure enough danger had befallen Josh he had fallen into a mine shaft.  Gabriel had to order Molly to stay away from the hole for Josh’s safety as well as her own.  Even with Gabriel’s bad leg he was able to get him out, before the mine collapsed.  Unfortunately, Josh lost the use of his legs for good.
     Molly got behind on bills so her friend Lily, Josh’s godmother, decides to have a Bachelor Auction on her behalf.  Which is a good thing because Gabriel had gone into hiding feeling guilty for enjoying the fact he was needed in the rescue and able to do it in spite of his leg.  Molly too was feeling guilty because while she should (her thoughts) have been at home for that “just-in-case-phone-call.”  She was trying to get her groove on.
     Can these two get past there issues?  You have one who can’t share his feelings at all.  Then you have another who shares so well she scares the heck out of the poor guy.  At one point they have a moment when their sharing and she’s telling about how she met Lily at Josh’s birth.  Could not stop laughing.  Not the story Josh knows about his birth that is for sure.  Hilarious!!!  I give this story 5 stars.  Provided by Net Galley.  Follow us at: www.1rad-readerreviews.com

IN BED WITH THE BACHELOR

IN BED WITH THE BACHELOR                MEGAN CRANE
Posted:  April 15, 2015

In Bed with the Bachelor by Megan CraneOur latest bachelor has enough family in Marietta to qualify as an honorary native, but hails instead from Seattle, WA, which is where he’ll fly you for a glamorous weekend on the shores of the sparkling Puget Sound. Jesse Grey will treat you the way a local boy turned construction tycoon should: five star accommodations, gourmet dinners, and celebrated Washington wines. We just can’t promise he’ll smile much. Or at all.

Sold to the highest bidder!

Jesse Grey, notorious bachelor and one of Seattle’s foremost construction tycoons, has been roped into participating in the Marietta Bachelor Auction thanks to an expertly executed guilt trip laid out by his family.

Michaela Townsend already has a fiancé and certainly doesn’t need another man in her life. So when her family buys her surly, sexy Jesse at the auction and wrangles him into driving her from Montana to Seattle, she’s appalled yet disturbingly attracted.

As far as Jesse is concerned, Michaela is forbidden fruit. Even though he knows her fiancé isn’t all he seems, Jesse would never take what didn’t belong to him. But how long can he resist the one woman he shouldn’t touch?

MY REVIEW:
     This is a story of two people from Seattle, Washington who are in Marietta, Texas visiting family.  They’ve never met but the family sure have.
     Jason Grey the uncle to Jesse Grey local boy-turned tycoon.  Once he went off to college at U.W. he never returned.  He became a contractor and created an empire in Seattle.  Anything to get away from his endlessly cheating father who tore his family apart.  As if that wasn’t bad enough he stole from his son.
     Not in the way you would think.  You see the Grey family every year gets together every last dysfunctional one of them and meet at his grandma’s.  Even if he hated being with crazy people they were his crazy people so 3 years ago he brings his girlfriend, Angelique home to meet everyone.  By the time they were going to go home on New Year’s she was going home with his father.  They are now married and have twin daughters.  Needless to say they’re not speaking.
     To avoid his father and his new family he now comes at Valentine’s week.  Which saves him from all the crazy women who throw themselves at him trying to convince him they are in love or at least a couple.  Yet, on this one particular morning of his visit his uncle tells him, “Oh by the way signed you up to be one of the bachelors to be auctioned off for charity to help a little boy who is ill, tonight.”  Jesse just wants to write a check.  But his uncle kinda throws in there, “Maybe you need to see if your body can cash one of them, for a change.”
     That night on the block he never smiled in fact he scowled but especially at Michaela Townsend and her table because they kept driving up the bid until they won.  He didn’t know but it was her unofficial bachelorette party.  So all her aunties and cousins pulled their monies together to buy him for her.  She tells him to help her fiancé Terrance Polk who everyone in his circles knew was an egregious loser.  He was a self-proclaimed “money and ideas guy” who never had much in the way of either – renowned to be the biggest slut in the Seattle area.
     Michaela was too beautiful and to wholesome and nice.  Then she started sprouting all this stuff about open relationships and he figured that Terrance’s was brainwash working.  He told her flat out not date with Terrance.  Which disappointed her so not sure why that tightened his chest but it did.  So he agreed to allow him to call and if he had time he would have coffee with him.
     The next morning as she was starting her day she hears a loud knock at her aunt’s front door.  He aunt calls to her it’s Jesse in all his tall, broad, and seriousness.  He says he’s her ride for the long drive and if she was ready.  She says ready for what.  Then he tells her that a big snowstorm was coming, his uncle and her aunt talked and thought it would be best if I tried to outrun the storm by driving us since with business I can’t get stuck.  After heated words she agrees.  So does the adventure of their lives.
     I totally enjoyed this story it is so Alpha of him in his speech at times but his actions the exact opposite.  Chivalry is not dead when Jesse is around.  Even as stubborn as Michaela was Jesse still saw the softness and the fear, vulnerable, and tender sides of her.  He knew she needed and should be treated like a gift.  And he so wanted to be that for her but couldn’t or could he?  Michaela saw almost the same thing in Jesse he was hurting from his past and she needed to help him through it and be his safe place to land.
I give this book 5 stars.  Provided by Net Galley.
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WHERE WE BELONG: COMING FRIDAY AUTHOR EVE CONNELL 7pm PST EXCERPT: AMELIA'S POV



Coming Friday
7pm PST.
Eve Connell

Author of:


EXCERPT:

AMELIA
We had the fight moments after I slipped the robe off my shoulders into a pool around my feet. I had one foot on the shower base, one on the plush rectangular mat.
At that moment, my fiancé, Kristopher, knocked from the other side of the bathroom door, which I’d already locked for privacy.
He had this tendency often. The first word he would speak to me all day? As I stepped into the shower. Was it okay if he went out with his friends instead of the dinner reservation? As I stepped into the shower. His solution to cancer? As I stepped into the shower.
Clenching my jaw, I awaited the question.
“Aftershave, Amelia?” he asked.
I sighed. “You should have gotten it when I told you I needed to shower. Or while I collected my creams and lotions and make-up. Or while I sniffed around for a clean towel in your stash in the corner.”
The soap—as we both knew—was irrelevant in this argument. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if we stayed together out of laziness. And maybe we did. Because I hated many characteristics about my fiancé. Especially his ignorance of this anniversary.
It was September twenty-ninth.
This year I called my boss’s mobile at the crack of dawn to fake a sick day, playing up my groggy tone as a terrible sore throat in addition to a nauseous tummy. She told me to get well, and I swallowed the news with a lump in my throat, guilty for lying. I was an assistant for a medium-sized advertising business and handled paperwork, invoicing and calls all day long—it wasn’t like my absence would be of consequence to day-to-day activities. I’d pick it up tomorrow.
Last year Kristopher and I made dates apart with our respective best friends, and I’d spent it eating all the ice cream along a strip of shops down the coast. I’d thrown up once and then kept on going. Jaffa flavour, I remember.
I’d licked and slurped the drips down the paper cup, and only thought twice of the anniversary. Once on the drive down to the beach, and then once as I’d clutched the sides of a rusty public bin and spewed my guts up to the backdrop of disgusted gasps from passers-by.
I don’t know what Kristopher did that day, but he came back when the night sky was a deep sapphire blue, whisky on his breath as he climbed in bed behind me.
The year before I took a day off from work and spent $600 buying cocktail dresses I would never have occasion to wear. The next day I donated them to charity.
Six years ago today, I died. Hence, it was the one time of the year we didn’t forget the date. Unlike some years when we had to shop for Christmas gifts at two am on the twenty-fourth.
I stared down the white door of the bathroom, one foot tingling with the sharp cold of the shower base, hand clutching the knob. I stepped back onto the tiles, accepting defeat.
“Come on, Amelia,” he said in a low tone. “Just one Goddamn bottle of aftershave. That’s all I need.”
“No. Just wait till I’m done.”
“Babe.”
“Amelia,” I said.
“Amelia, please,” he said, voice breaking. “I haven’t showered and I stink. I just need a few fucking sprays, and I’ll be out of your way all day.”
I gritted my teeth and hobbled from toe to toe, the cold seeping up my legs. If we kept going on like this staying out of each other’s way was pointless. We knew how to nip at each other’s sensitive spots in a way learned from several years of being together. I saw the forthcoming crash, clenched my eyes shut against the pain. My shoulders heaved, bracing for impact.
Was this what happened to me just before my crash?
Was there a moment of wide-eyed fear as my corded, muscled arms grabbed the wheel at the proper ten and two positions, and I flew through the air, reduced to a thin, crushed and crumpled body at the bottom of the lake?
Hot tears grew heavy behind my eyelids as something inside me snapped. I shut the gate to the horrific visions.
It was too late to shower.
Kristopher banged his fist on the door, the boom echoing. I bent and hurried on my new clothes folded on the counter.
“Come on. This is beyond a joke. It will take you a few seconds to pass it.” The door rattled, the handle jerking, but I’d locked the door already. “Amelia.”
I slipped my arms into the cardigan and threw open the door, despite the bags under my eyes and the chill settling over my chest because of the unbuttoned front.
I said, “Have it all,” pushing the aftershave bottle into his chest, then rushed past him.

And I didn’t look back.



Writer, kid-at-heart, awesome partner, graphic design dabbler, book lover.


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