Author:
Elizabeth Marx
Genre:
Romance, Family Saga, Contemporary/Chick Lit
Publisher:
Self Published
Paperback/Ebook
Pages:
477
Purchase:
Book
Description:
Through
the corridors of the Windy City’s criminal courts, single mother
Libby Tucker knows exactly how far she’ll go to save her
cancer-stricken son’s life. The undefeated defense attorney is
prepared to take her fight all the way to the majors.
Circumstances
force Libby to plead her case at the cleats of celebrity baseball
player Banford Aidan Palowski, the man who discarded her at their
college graduation. Libby has worked her backside bare for everything
she’s attained, while Aidan has been indulged since he slid through
the birth canal and landed in a pile of Gold Coast money. But helping
Libby and living up to his biological duty could jeopardize the only
thing the jock worships: his baseball career.
If
baseball imitates life, Aidan admits his appears to be silver-plated
peanuts, until an unexpected confrontation with the most spectacular
prize that’s ever poured from a caramel corn box blindsides him.
When he learns about his son’s desperate need, it pricks open the
wound he’s carried since he abandoned Libby and the child.
All
Libby wants is a little anonymous DNA, but Aidan has a magical umpire
in his head who knows Libby’s a fateball right to the heart. When a
six-year-old sage and a hippy priestess step onto the field, there’s
more to settle between Libby and Aidan than heartache, redemption,
and forgiveness.
Excerpt:
Aidan 2:15 p.m.
Survival instinct
is the reason I initially refused this meeting. Exposure being the
next justification, because a potential scandal was the last thing I
needed right now. I paced the sidewalk in front of the plate glass
window, refusing to glance at my own reflection. I was avoiding the
consequences of the only game, in thirty odd years, I hadn’t seen
to completion.
Curiosity is what lured me here, like
a die-hard Cubs fan to the seventh inning stretch. I wanted to face
her and ease my conscience by laying all the blame on her locker room
floor. I glanced at my watch and pitched myself across the threshold.
“Palowski,” the
bartender sneered from behind a beer stein she was polishing, as if
she were expecting me.
Gutheries was a local hangout two
blocks from the ballpark in Wrigleyville. While I’d been here
before, it wasn’t a regular haunt. I enjoyed the earthiness of its
roughly carved bar and rugged, wide-plank flooring, but I lived in
Lincoln Park, and neighborhood bars are a dime a dozen in Chicago.
The soft Irish ballads playing in the
background gave me the impression I’d stumbled into an Irish wake,
which wasn’t reassuring. Whiskey fumes and fish-n-chips filled the
air, threatening to bring the bile up from my stomach. I shook off my
nausea and concentrated on the sepia photographs that hung on the
plastered, white-washed walls. The turn of the century photographs
ran the gambit from immigrant families in tattered clothes to beefy
brutes in the stock yards slaughtering cattle right off boxcars. The
vast majority of the images appeared to have last been cleaned during
that same era.
I was waiting at
the ascribed place, at the assigned time like a cosseted school boy.
I retreated to a table farthest from the surly barmaid, keeping a
direct bead on the door.
Strike one. The ump
grumbled.
“What’ll it be, glitter-boy? The
bartender focused on the trash bags in her hands, instead of looking
at me.
“Pale Ale.”
When she returned,
she banged the beer on the table, a spray of foam danced across its
top sloshing onto the sleeve of my coat. No napkin, no nuts, no
apology. The feeling she’d like nothing more than to incinerate me
along with the trash at the rear of the establishment snaked up my
spine. She returned to her post in the watering hole and snapped the
pages of the Tribune up in front of her, effectively
obstructing me from her line of sight, but I heard her whispering
into her cell phone.
A few gulps of beer later the small
silver bell at the top of the frosted glass door chimed on a blustery
wind. A tall woman, whose expensive boots looked like they’d never
step foot in a place like this, swept through the entry and forced
the door shut. She shook off her trench coat exposing a navy suit.
Her lengthy chestnut hair was pulled back into a chic French twist
with a silver barrette exposing a classic profile.
Her briefcase
strained her delicate features, but at the same time anchored her, if
only for the hesitant moment between each determined stride. I
couldn’t pull my eyes away, as I stared at her from behind my
shades. My pulse accelerated.
The woman took in the interior with a
wide sweep of her head as the lenses of her glasses lightened. It
wasn’t until she started toward me with her boots clicking the
hardwood that I realized this ravishing woman was the one I never
thought to see again.
That would be a
curve ball.
All these years later, I couldn’t
allow myself the luxury of a full recollection of time spent with
her. That might’ve required admitting I’d never scratched my itch
for her out. All the numerous women, every shade from platinum to
strawberry- blonde, couldn’t dish out half the heartache a
wild-haired brunette cutter had put me through with her flaming green
eyes and a mouth so lush it made my tongue ache to taste it.
I swallowed a long swig of beer, the
steely grain helping me bottle my reaction. I attempted to reconcile
what I was seeing with what I had expected. She still had it, more of
it--that special something some women have that first draws men’s
attention--then buzzes their brains into crushed barley.
She hesitated in front of the table. I
refused to stand and I didn’t remove my Oakleys. Let her stare at
her own likeness, while I took my time studying the perfectly
sculpted lines of her face, which lead to a defiant chin.
Libby tossed her briefcase between us
on the tabletop, as if that paltry item could provide a barrier
between us. I grinned at the thought of it until my dimple ached.
She perched on the edge of her chair.
I spun my beer
bottle on the graffiti-riddled wood.
I watched her green
eyes blink in agitation, her opal skin blanched to ivory and her
overly generous lips flattened out. She threaded her hands together
like an angry teacher about to reprimand an unruly school boy. We
stared each other down.
“You’ve grown
even more beautiful with time.” I saluted her charms with my
bottle, arching a brow in challenge.
Her eyes enlarged for a second; the
rest of her demeanor was a veiled mask of harnessed hostility.
“Smarter too.”
She’s cute, cute, cute for a cutter,
She ain’t easy to fluster.
I ignored the ump’s baritone.
Libby’s calm demeanor gave the distinct impression that she was an
Elizabeth now. “You always were too smart for your own good.”
I thought I saw an
instantaneous spark of pain, but then her eyes bored into me.
“Obviously not, or we wouldn’t be having this exchange.”
“Does that say
something about me, or you?” I grinned.
“Whatever, I don’t care to rehash
the past. And thank you, but no, I don’t care for a drink.”
“I don’t see what else we would
have to talk about.” I shuffled in my seat, making to leave like a
rude jerk.
She put her hand on the sleeve of my
leather jacket holding me in place with those serious eyes, which I
had been able to read once upon a time. “Don’t you?” A red
flush crept up her neck, as she jerked her hand away, shaking it.
“Why don’t you dispense with the
mystery, and tell me what you want? Just be prepared to get in line
like everyone else.”
Libby swallowed. Whatever it was, she
wasn’t any happier about asking, than I was about waiting. She
fished around in her briefcase and pulled out a computer printed
form. “All I need is a blood sample.” She pushed it toward me
with a perfectly manicured hand.
My eyes went to the title on the form
and my hands clinched the beer bottle. She held out all this time
never asking for anything. I was about to get my biggest one-year
paycheck, and somehow she not only knew the exact figure, she wanted
a share. She thought I owed her something. I pushed the lab form back
at her. “Why on earth would I want to do that?”
Her long dark lashes met her cheeks
and her voice wobbled over words that had much of the emotion sucked
from their core. “Because my child is dying from Leukemia, and you
might be the only chance he has to live through the rest of this
year.”
Strike two.
It was the second
sucker punch I’d received today. My chest felt like someone had
dropped a two hundred-pound barbell across it, when I didn’t have a
spotter. When I caught my breath, I took in her serious bearing.
Whatever I had anticipated this meeting would be about, it wasn’t
some concocted story to see me again or even to blackmail me. She
might’ve tried to check the volatility of her words, but the fear
that washed her face was right below the surface, ready to erupt from
her quivering lips.
She blinked in rapid succession before
looking at me. She was angry and hurting and there were other
emotions I couldn’t read in her fathomless eyes. But none of that
could appease the beast raging in me. “You kept the kid?” I
seethed.
“…equal parts heart-tugging and
steamy—strictly for romance enthusiasts.” ~Kirkus Reviews
“Marx’s romance is full of twists
and turns, some expected, and some not, with an emotionally complex
central conflict, lively (though at times infuriating) characters and
a carefully drawn Chicago setting.” ~Kirkus Reviews
Also
check out Cutters vs. Jocks!
On the
idyllic campus of Indiana University, Little-Libby-Nobody runs into
Band-Aid, All-American-Athlete, and fireworks explode. Libby and
Aidan spiral into a collision course of love at first sight versus
lust you can’t fight. As the game plays out and their affection
grows, they soon realize that labels like cutters and jocks can’t
keep them apart.
But when
Libby and Aidan find themselves in trouble they have to confront the
reality of where they each fit in the others’ world. Libby believes
superstar jocks don’t take cutters to Rose Well House, in the
center of campus, at midnight and pledge their undying devotion
beneath its sparkling dome. And Band-Aid imagines there’s no place
for a pregnant, small-town waitress in his bull-pen or the major
leagues. What happens when worthy opponents refuse to play their
hearts out?
About
the Author:
Windy
city writer, Elizabeth Marx, brings cosmopolitan life alive in her
fiction—a blend of romance, fast-paced Chicago living, and a
sprinkle of magical realism. In her past incarnation she was an
interior designer, not a decorator, a designer, which basically means
she has a piece of paper to prove that she knows how to match things,
measure things and miraculously make mundane pieces of furniture
appear to be masterpieces. Elizabeth says being an interior designer
is one part shrink, one part marriage counselor and one part artist,
skills eerily similar to those employed in writing.
Elizabeth
grew up in Illinois, but has also lived in Texas and Florida. If
she’s not pounding her head against the wall trying to get the
words just right, you can find her at a softball field out in the
boonies somewhere or sitting in the bleachers by a basketball court.
Elizabeth resides with her husband, girls, and two cats who’ve
spelled everyone into believing they’re really dogs.
Elizabeth
has traveled extensively, but still says there’s no town like Chi
Town.
Find
the Author:
Giveaway:
Thanks for being the first stop on my tour. Let me know if you'd like some BA bookmarks via my FB author page. Have a great day and happy reading & reviewing!
ReplyDeleteElizabeth Marx
I'm glad to be of help! And one can never have enough bookmarks. :)
DeleteNatasha,
DeletePM me you address via FB and I'll get some bookmarks to you. Hope you have a great rest of the week!
E
Thanks. :)
DeleteGood luck! I hope you win. :)
ReplyDeleteI want a paperback!!!!!
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DeleteI don't care I just want one.
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