Reality Check
(Book 4 of the To Love a Wildcat Series) by V.L. Locey
Erotic Hockey Romance
BOOK SYNOPSIS
The team owner/head coach relationship can be a tenuous one at times. Isabelle Lancourt can testify to just how stressful it can be. Ever since her husband passed away, leaving her his beloved Wildcats, she and Philip Moore have been at loggerheads. When the opportunity to sign a Russian hotshot presents itself, Isabelle leaps at the chance to prove herself as more than just a pretty face. Dealing with hot flashes, salary caps, and trade deadlines she can handle with ease. The aftermath of an ill-advised, but erotically superb, rendezvous in Siberia with the handsomely annoying Coach Moore? That was not in any Wildcats playbook. Can Isabelle and Philip handle the changes life is about to throw at them? Or will combining their personal and professional lives prove to be a misconduct penalty that the league simply cannot overlook?
BUY LINKS
EXCERPT
“I hate to be termed over-reactionary or whiny bitch,” I opened with. The man crammed into a seat two sizes too small for him mumbled something unintelligible across the thin aisle. “And far be it for me to complain, but I think the left wing is about to fall off.”
Within a heartbeat Moore was out of his seat and leaning across me. My nose was burrowed into his shirt pocket. That brisk seafaring scent he wore wrapped its arms around my olfactory to hug my sense of smell tightly. I drew in a deep breath, held it, tasted the tang of cologne and man, then exhaled through my mouth. Philip shifted a bit.
“Sorry,” he murmured, his bulk sliding downward a bit, so that his stomach rested on the rickety arm of my mouse-chewed seat. “I think it’s just the bounce of the plane over the turbulence,” he announced after a long, and not unpleasant, moment of his abdomen brushing my breasts. When I made a weak sound of hope in reply, he glanced from the window to me, a small twist of a smile playing on his lips. The impact of our positions hit me like a cinderblock to the head. His mouth was mere inches from mine now. I could see him swallow roughly. His jaw and neck were dark with new whiskers. I wanted to feel the rasp of his stubble on my neck, breasts, and inside my thighs. I wanted. Oh, hell yes, I wanted.
The blue of his irises darkened as I studied my reflection in his eyes. Was it desire I saw, or something else profound and powerful? Love and hate share lots of secrets, being such close friends as they are. The plane hit a ball of violent air. My head coach nearly went to his knees in front of me. My fingers dug even deeper into the arms of my seat. Philip gathered himself quickly, wiggling from the space between my knees and the crummy seat in front of me.
“Sorry,” he coughed, hurrying back to his own seat. I nodded, neck tight, spine stiff, heart hammering, and thighs twitching. “You remind me of Christine,” he said out of the blue. I managed to make my head creak around to look at him. The man was in control once again. Wish I could be so quick to move from one frightening thing to another. Shit, I was still freaking out about the way my body responded to his. “She didn’t mind flying until we hit turbulence,” he explained, wistfully.
“Every time we would run into a rough patch, her eyes would grow bigger.” He paused to find me looking at him. “She had these wide eyes anyway, so she always looked surprised,” he clarified. I nodded, knowing how important talking about our lost ones is.
“Anyway, when she would feel the slightest jounce up she would go, eyes as big as basketballs, and into the ladies’ room she would dash. Once, on a flight down to Florida to see our youngest son Drew when he was in college, Christine spent the entire flight in the bathroom.” He chuckled in amusement. The sound was incredibly pleasing. My anxiety lessened a bit. “I used to tease her about the well-known safety features of a ladies’ powder room during a plane crash. Sometimes our fears get the best of us, though. She knew she was just as screwed as everyone else on that plane, but something about that cramped little girls’ room made her feel less vulnerable, I suppose.”
“Colton used to say ‘There ain’t no point in fretting about dying. If the good Lord says it’s your time, then it’s your time, darling!” I tossed out in my best Texan accent. Philip laughed uneasily.
“That sounds like Colton,” he said, running his palms over his thighs briskly. I wanted to ask him how he had dealt with his wife’s death. I knew she had passed a few years back from cancer, leaving him and their two grown sons to carry on. “He was a good man. He’s sorely missed.”
AUTHOR BIO
V.L. Locey loves worn jeans, yoga, belly laughs, reading and writing lusty tales, Greek mythology, the New York Rangers, comic books, and coffee. (Not necessarily in that order.) She shares her life with her husband, her daughter, one dog, two cats, a flock of assorted domestic fowl, and three Jersey steers.
When not writing spicy romances, she enjoys spending her day with her menagerie in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania with a cup of fresh java in hand. She can also be found online on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and GoodReads.
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