Baseball bores me to tears–but I LOVE reading about baseball heroes! Check out Pamela Aares’s new series, Heart of the Game 🙂
Love Bats Last
Pamela Aares
Book Tagline
When love’s in the game you can’t play it safe…
Book Description
In LOVE BATS LAST, author Pamela Aares introduces you to the Heart of the Game series. Get ready for All-Star alpha males and the strong women they come to love!
A stormy night changes their lives forever…
The baseball diamond isn’t the only field for all-star player Alex Tavonesi; he also runs his family’s prestigious vineyard. What he can’t seem to run is his love life. He’s closing in on the perfect vintage and the perfect game, but so far the perfect woman has eluded him.
Veterinarian Jackie Brandon is eluding her aristocratic past and memories of a soccer star who jilted her just before their wedding. She devotes herself to a marine mammal rescue center on the northern California coast, where hundreds of seals and sea lions are washing up dead.
A chance meeting in a midnight storm brings Alex and Jackie together to rescue a stranded whale. Watching her work, he realizes she’s the passionate, courageous woman he thought he’d never find–he just has to overcome her deep distrust of jocks. Jackie’s passion and courage lead her to discover what’s killing the sea mammals. The culprits want to silence her, and Alex is the only one standing in their way. What will he sacrifice to save the woman he loves?
Excerpt:
“It’s a bit early in the season for a swim.”
Adrenaline shot through her as she scrambled to her feet. A tall and ridiculously handsome man stood blocking the trail. He looked like he’d been airlifted out of a men’s fashion magazine. He squatted, bringing him to her eye level. She froze, unprepared for the intensity of his gaze. He had deep blue eyes, the color of the sea before a storm. Those eyes crinkled as a slow, easy smile curved his lips.
“Just testing the water,” she said with a bravado she didn’t feel.
Goose bumps rose along her arms as she sloshed out of the water and stepped onto the riverbank. She wished they were just from the cold. To give her hands something to do, she brushed ineffectively at the mud on her jeans.
“Can I give you a hand?”
He held a half-eaten sandwich, one of those piled-high deli sandwiches that Americans loved. Her stomach grumbled; she’d forgotten her own lunch. But this was no time to be thinking about food.
He didn’t look dangerous. But the expensive-looking slacks and perfectly tailored shirt he wore were out of place. She was from England—she knew a custom-tailored shirt from a Savile row tailor when she saw one. Why anyone would be wearing a three-hundred-dollar shirt and Prada loafers in river brambles was anybody’s guess.
“No,” she said, backing up a step. “I was just leaving.”
His assessing gaze sent a shiver down her spine, pushed it deep. She tugged at her shirt. Wet and plastered against her skin, it was almost transparent. She didn’t have to look down to know he could see her nipples puckered from the chilled water. She wished she’d taken the time to put on a bra.
She glanced up, and he quickly averted his eyes. Every cell in her body suddenly said flee.
She leaned over the pontoon and grabbed her backpack, rummaged to the bottom, found her jacket and pulled it on. She felt his eyes on her once again as she tugged up the zipper. At least she didn’t feel naked anymore.
She put a hand on the Zodiac, wishing that her touch would magically free it.
“What brings you up here? I don’t see many people boating in this stretch of river—just the occasional kayaker doing some bird watching. It’s mighty shallow.”
He gave her the perfect answer.
“I was looking for nesting clapper rails.”
“That shouldn’t take long,” he said. “There’ve only been a few sightings in this area since I’ve lived here. They’re endangered, you know.”
The man knew something about birds. And he was local. Could be good. Could be bad.
“I know.”
He quirked his brow. “And you’d be more likely to find clapper rails in the fields, wouldn’t you?”
He thought she was a clueless bird watcher. She should’ve chosen a different bird, but she really didn’t know the birds of the region all that well, except for the marine birds.
The man smiled again.
A smile shouldn’t send a zip of unnerving energy straight into her, but it did. She’d sunk herself in her work for so long, studiously avoiding exactly that kind of smile. He had the ease of a man who knew the effect he had on women. An ease she knew only too well, having once fallen prey to it at the hands of another man who knew how to wield his charm and allure.
She looked away from his face and down to his hands.
“Nice-looking Zodiac,” he said. “But you couldn’t have come up from the bay. It’d take you half a day with that small motor. You put in somewhere south of here?”
An observant man. Usually she liked that type. She tried not to be dazzled by his near perfect physique and a face that was more handsome than any man should be allowed. It was distracting. And dangerous. That she also knew from experience.
“I might ask what you’re doing here,” she said, deflecting. She eyed the Zodiac, assessing another approach to freeing it from the mud.
“Eating,” he said with the same dazzling smile.
Sound tempting? I thought so! More information and buy links can be found here.
Quotes and Praise:
“Pamela Aares deftly weaves together the desires and strategies of world-class sports with the equally charged realm of the heart to create fast-moving tales you’ll wish would never end.”
—Mary Beath, award-winning author of Refuge of Whirling Light on the contemporary series the Heart of the Game.
“A new star in the romance world!” —E. Alexander, New York Times best-selling author
About the Author
Pamela is an author of contemporary and historical romance novels. Her first book, Jane Austen and the Archangel (Angels Come to Earth, #1) was released in 2012. Midnight Becomes You, (Angels Come to Earth, #2) will release in 2014, along with three more books in the Heart of the Game series, all releasing in 2014.
Before becoming a romance author, Pamela Aares produced and wrote award-winning films and radio shows including Your Water, Your Life featuring actress Susan Sarandon and the NPR series New Voices. After producing The Powers of the Universe and The Earth’s Imagination, she knew without a doubt that romance lives at the heart of the universe and powers the greatest stories of all.
Pamela holds a Master’s Degree from Harvard and lives in the wine country of California with her husband and two curious cats. Her love of nature led to adventures scuba diving the coral reefs of Fiji, exploring the cliffs of Greece, sea kayaking the Rosario Straits and white water rafting the wild and scenic rivers of the west—and romance!
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