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RYKER
Cold Fury #4
Sawyer Bennett
Releasing Sept 8th, 2015
The
rugged men of the Carolina Cold Fury hockey team are winning hearts once again
in another scorching novel from New York Times bestselling
author Sawyer Bennett.
The
stakes have never been higher for Carolina Cold Fury goalie Ryker Evans. With
his contract running out, he’s got a year left to prove he’s still at the top
of his game. And since his wife left him, Ryker has been balancing life as a
pro-hockey star and a single parent to two daughters. Management is waiting for
him to screw up. The fans are ready to pounce. Everybody’s taking dirty
shots—except for the fiery redhead whose faith in Ryker
gives him a fresh start.
As
the league’s only female general manager, Gray Brannon has learned not to mix
business with pleasure. And yet even this tough, talented career woman can’t
help breaking her own rules as she gives Ryker everything she’s got. She hopes
their hot streak will last forever, but with Ryker’s conniving ex plotting to
reclaim her man, the pressure is on Gray to step up and save a tender new love
before it’s too late.
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Excerpt
“D-a-a-a-d,” Ruby shrieks from
upstairs.
It’s a sound that once used to cause
all the hair to stand up on my arms and on more than one occasion caused me to
go tearing after the call of my youngest daughter thinking she was being
murdered by an intruder. I’ve since come to recognize that particular shrill
cry as one of excitement and wonder, and I can’t help but grin over what Ruby
is possibly into now. At almost five years old, she refuses to accept the
concept of a well-mannered, indoor voice and goes balls to the wall in
everything she does.
“Is the house on fire, Rubes?” I
call out.
Her little voice shouts back to me
in a squawk. “No.”
“Have aliens landed?” I keep my
voice just loud enough to carry up the stairs but still
decibels below her own.
“No,” she yells, and there . . .
right there . . . that’s a little giggle from her.
“Did Timmy fall down the well?”
“No, Dad . . . but you have to come
here,” she yells, and, to give her credit, it’s toned down just a bit. When I
don’t answer her right away, she calls down in a sweet voice that makes my
heart pitter-patter. “Please, Dad.”
Brilliant, little brat. Throwing in
some manners to throw me off my game.
“I’ll be right there,” I tell her as
I finish the last of Violet’s braid and manage to efficiently bind it with a
hair elastic. Leaning over, I place a kiss on her head. “All done, dreamy
dwarf.”
Violet leans her head back and gives
me an upside-down grin. I love the sprinkle of freckles on her nose and it
compels me to kiss her again.
“Do me a favor,” I tell her as I
turn toward the living room. “Get the cereal and milk out for me while I go see
what your sister needs?”
I don’t bother waiting to see what
she does, because Violet has become my metaphorical right hand over the last
few months. While she still loves for me to braid her hair and help with her
homework, she’s also relished taking on a bit of a caretaker role since the
girls moved in with me permanently this past summer.
They’ve been here almost six months
and I actually feel like I know what the hell I’m doing now. It wasn’t always
like that, and thank God for Kate’s help or I would have gone insane in those
first few months of becoming a single parent of two little girls. Kate
patiently helped me establish a routine and taught me how to braid hair,
distinguish excited shrieks from cries of pain, and most important . . . how to
conduct the perfect princess tea party.
I skirt my way through the living
room, bending over to pick up one of Ruby’s dolls from the floor, and bound up
the stairs taking two at a time. I find Ruby in the bathroom that she and
Violet share, bent over the toilet and peering at something.
She shares the same dark hair and
gray eyes as Violet, except her locks spring out everywhere in a mass of tiny
curls. I have no idea where that came from, but assume it’s a rogue strand of
ancestral DNA from either me or my soon-to-be ex-wife, Hensley. Both of us, as
well as Violet, have fairly straight hair, so Ruby is definitely dipping into
the family gene pool with her wild curls, but damn . . . they totally fit with
her personality.
“What’s up?” I ask as I walk over to
the toilet.
She straightens up, shoots me a grin,
and points. “Look . . . a spider.”
I cautiously take a step forward and
lean over, grimacing as I look into the bowl.
And holy shit . . . a spider the
size of a T rex is floating on the surface, all eight legs spread out,
bent and poised to look as if it’s ready to leap out and attach itself to my
face. I suppress a full spinal shudder and reach a tentative hand toward the
handle to flush it.
Two things happen almost
simultaneously that take at least three years off my life.
The spider somehow manages to
skitter across the water, the beast so large it actually creates waves, and
Ruby shrieks at me, “No! Don’t kill it, Dad!”
It is with a major blow to my
pride—as a man, as a dad, as a six-foot, six-inch professional hockey player
nicknamed the Brick because I’m as big and tough as a brick wall—that I jump
backward at least two feet from the monster-infested toilet and banshee-crying
sprite, causing my hip to slam into the corner of the sink.
“Shit,” I curse loudly, and Ruby’s
eyes go round, followed by her lips.
“Oh, Dad . . . that’s a bad word.”
No shit.
I smile at her as I rub my hip.
That’s definitely going to leave a bruise. “Sorry, Rubes. I’ll put a dollar in
the swear jar.”
She merely nods her acceptance of my
apology and turns worried eyes back to the toilet.
“You have to save it,” she implores.
Yeah . . . that’s not going to
happen. Not now. Not ever.
“Sure, baby,” I tell her as I take
her by the shoulder and turn her toward the bathroom door. I swear the spider
glares at me with a million red, evil eyes. “Go on down and get breakfast.
Violet’s fixing your cereal. I’ll get the spider out.”
“Okay,” Ruby says as she pulls away
from me, but continues to give me instructions. “But let it out the front door
and I’ll bring it some food later.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I assure her
as she disappears down the stairs. When I hear her feet hit the bottom landing,
I turn toward the toilet, intent on a quick flush to put me out of my misery.
Except when I look in the bowl, the
fucking thing is gone.
I’ll just go ahead and admit it.
Spiders scare the living hell out of me. I have no clue why, and while I would
battle the biggest, baddest monster to the death for my daughters, I’d much
rather flush a little spider down the toilet.
I immediately scramble backward out
of the bathroom, grabbing the doorknob and shutting it quickly behind me. My
heart is racing a million miles an hour, the thought of that furry hell beast
now loose in my house.
Just one more thing on the list of
things I still need to do today.
Get the girls dressed and ready for
school.
Take the girls to school.
Clean up the spilled laundry
detergent.
Finish the laundry.
Arm myself with a can of hairspray
and a lighter to torch the rogue spider in the bathroom.
Pick up my dry cleaning.
Work out.
Team practice.
Pick up the girls from Kate and
Zack’s house.
Dinner.
Baths.
Story time and cuddling.
Go to bed because I’ll be exhausted.
Easy as fucking pie, and I’ll get up
and do it all over again the next day with a smile on my face. I’m finding life
as a single parent isn’t as daunting as I thought it would be and I’ve finally
found my groove.
I love a good sports romance. Throw in a sexy hockey goalie,
a confident heroine and some steamy scenes and I’m there. Add great storyline
and you have a perfect book for me. Ryker had all that I love in a good book.
Ryker has so much to loss and needs to prove his worth. He’s smart and sexy but oh so sweet
especially with his two little girls. He’s a dirty talking alpha and oh so
swoon worthy. But he’s been burned and doesn’t think he needs a woman.
Gray the new GM for
the Carolina Cold Fury; the first woman in that postion. So she too has
something to prove. She’s a very smart woman with a genius IQ and the hockey
smarts to run a hockey organization. She’s a kick ass chick who knows what she
wants and isn’t afraid to go after it.
Ryker and Gray ignite a fire with their chemistry and easy
going relationship. But Ryker doesn’t do flings and once these two give in
there’s no stopping them. But neither one can afford the uproar if word got out
of their relationship. So they must hide.
This story is perfectly balanced for a great book. There’s
tension and agnst with romance, comedy and lots of sexy times. Also with lots
of ice time too for the hockey fan. I
think Ryker is my new favorite in this series. He’s just perfect.
Sawyer is the author of several contemporary romances including the popular Off Series, the Legal Affairs Series and the Last Call Series. She will be releasing her third book in the Cold Fury Hockey Series with Random House Loveswept, June 2015.
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