Howdy y'all,

Apparently people have VERY strong opinions on airports... or at least my author circle does. I shared something in a group last week and the comments blew up with opinions. I had no idea people felt as strongly as I do about airports. My least favorite is Chicago O'Hare/ORD - which to my utter astonishment isn't everyone's least favorite airport.

Who knew?

So tell me this, what's your least favorite airport and why?

What's in this week's newsletter?

• Two for Interference is FREE for the month of September
• New preorder: Two for Tacos
• Chapter two of Clare and Elliott's story
• Wicked cool recs in the recommended reads section.

It's a jam-packed newsletter this week, folks. Don't miss out!

September's Sports Romance Monthly Freebie Swap

It's yet another new month (where the hell is this year going? I can't keep up!) which means it's time for our Bookaneers free-sports-romance-of-the-month book. You might recognize this one ;)

This month's freebie is my very own Two for Interference. If you haven't yet read Cleo and Linc, you're going to want to and lucky for you, you can get it for free for the month of September.

Bookish. Bold. Beautiful. And entirely out of his league.

On paper, all-American boy next door, Lincoln Scott, has it all. But behind his slap shots, straight-A report card, and easy going charm, Linc hides a secret only his best friend knows.

When he attempts to return a misplaced bra, a wrong number gets him way more than the hook-up he bargained for. No one has ever looked beyond the star hockey player, until the mysterious woman he can’t stop texting sees him for who he really is.

Does Linc have the skills off the ice to keep up with her? Will he follow in his father’s footsteps? Or will he step out from the shadows and chase his dreams?

Download Two for Interference for FREE!

While I have your attention, I wanted to give you a heads up about a new preorder I put up last week... yup, I am sneaking in another release this year right before 2022 finishes. It's a 99c novella (price will increase in the new year, so if you want it, grab it at this price before it goes up!) and it's a crossover between my current world - our beloved Minnesota Snow Pirates, and my next world, the Cedar Rapids Raccoons.

I LOVE this story, y'all. I think it might be my favorite thing I've ever written. It's a lot of fun and I can't wait to share it with you.

Preorder Two for Tacos for 99c

Before I get to chapter two of Clare and Elliott's story, I wanted to share this sports romance promo on Bookfunnel in case anyone wants to grab some new reads for the weekend.

Are you ready for the next installment of Clare and Elliott, y'all?

We are only weeks away from launch day and I can't wait. I'm excited for you to get a glimpse into Coach Swift's life...

Chapter 2

Clare

Clare’s heart thrashed in her chest the whole way home as she fought the tug of her mind into memories of a long distant—but never forgotten—past. Catriona had given Elliott her number, so what?

If he really wanted it, he could have asked his parents for it. They were still friends with her parents and she’d seen them a handful of times throughout the years. Maybe he even still had it in his own cell phone. It wasn’t like she’d changed it in the decades they’d known each other. Her stomach flipped. What if he’d deleted it? Ugh. The idea made her feel even more pathetic.

Had she kept her cell number in the hopes that he’d come back from becoming a hot-shot-hockey-player and want to talk to her all those years ago? Perhaps.

She’d need to come up with something particularly grueling to punish Cat for overstepping her bounds. She might have had one foot out the door toward college life, but as long as she stayed under Clare’s—albeit falling down in places—roof, she was at Clare’s mercy.

Maybe she’d make her clean the toilets with a toothbrush. Or babysit for her little brother for a few nights without pay. Or—

“Mom?” Mason’s voice startled her from her revenge plotting.

“Yeah, honey?”

“Are you okay?”

“Sure, baby. I’m good. Why do you ask?”

He pointed at the still running faucet. “You’ve been washing that carrot for about four minutes now. I think it’s clean.”

Turning off the water, she smiled and dried off her hands, placing the carrot on the counter next to the rest of the vegetables. “I guess I’m just a little distracted.” She ruffled his hair.

His eyes narrowed, but he shrugged and his stomach growled. “How long till dinner?”

“About twenty minutes.”

Another nod and he took off through the house before she could follow it up, so she yelled.

“Put your laundry away before screens, Masemallow. It’s on your bed.” She slid the knife through the head of broccoli, collected the florets in cupped hands and put them into a bowl. “Mase?” She paused to wait for a reply.

“I got it. I got it. Laundry before games.”

“Distracted by Dishy Elliot?” Catriona crossed the kitchen, reached around Clare, and swiped a piece of carrot.

“Eavesdropping?”

“Always. Tell me how you met him.”

Clare sighed. Elliot was exactly what she was distracted by. Seeing him again had pulled the dusty old cover off the box of long-forgotten feels in her chest. Now that it had been uncovered, it was growing, sucking the air from her body and demanding attention. “I met him on the first day of kindergarten. I told you.”

“Okay? Is that it? You guys…just…went to school together like two strangers?”

No. “Yup.”

“Funny. I didn’t get a strangers vibe. I got scandalous history vibe. You want me to believe you just met on the first day of school and that’s the end of your story?” She narrowed her gaze and folded her arms. Audacious sass filled the kitchen, and Cat wore an incredulous look that Clare herself had perfected over the years. Though Clare’s eyebrows weren’t anywhere near as flawless as her daughters.

“Yup.” Dammit, she popped the ‘p’ too hard, made it too casual, brushed it off too quickly. Cat wasn’t going to buy it. She needed to play it cool, act natural, maybe she wouldn’t—

“Liar.”

Some days she hated how well her oldest child knew her. “If I tell you how we met will you leave me alone to finish dinner?”

Cat waved the half-eaten stick of carrot at her. “We both know I can’t promise that, Mom. But I can promise to help clean up after dinner.”

“You help clean up after dinner every evening.”

Cat bumped her hip against Clare’s. “And I do such a swell job of it, too. You’ll miss me when I’m on campus."

Her stomach soured. Cat was right—she was going to miss having her around. Sure, she’d still be in the same city, only a phone call away and able to see her regularly enough to save Clare from losing her fucking mind, but it stung.

“Spill, Mom. It’s obviously weighing on your mind. Maybe it’ll be good to get it off your chest.”

She put down the knife and wiped her palms on the front of her shirt. Turning to face her daughter, she folded her arms. Maybe if she protected her chest, her duct-taped heart wouldn’t threaten to break all over again.

“The first time I saw Elliott Swift, I walked right up to him and kicked him.”

Catriona’s mouth dropped open. “You’re kidding.”

She laughed. “I’m not. I charged right up to him in the playground, kicked his shin, and announced he was my boyfriend.”

Cat’s eyes widened. “Mom! That’s… Wow. Aggressive much?” She waved a hand. “Continue.”

“Continue what? That’s it. That’s how we met.”

“And did this boy accept your violent and deranged relationship proposal?”

She turned back to the counter and tossed the veggies into the steamer. “He kicked me right back and said ‘fine.’ Of course, because he kicked me, I didn’t want him anymore. And there ended the shortest relationship in the history of the world.”

Catriona laughed so hard tears appeared in the corners of her eyes. “Did you cry?”

“Uh-huh. Squealed like a piggy until he clapped his hand over my mouth because he didn’t want to hear me wailing anymore.”

Cat laughed even harder, turning her back to the charcoal grey granite countertop while gripping the edge with both hands. “They don’t write romance like that anymore.”

“Right? Tale as old as motherfuckin’ time.”

“Were you mortal enemies from that moment on?”

“Best friends.”

Cat shook her head. “You know, psychologists would have a field day with this.” She paused, falling silent for a moment.

It was one of Clare’s earliest memories, a core memory, something that made her warm and gooey inside. The day she’d met Elliott Swift was the day she’d been convinced she’d met her soul mate, even at only five years old. She knew.

She still knew.

And the pain at having lost him was so stifling, so unbearable, she had to find a way to shrink it back into its former space in her heart before it consumed her.

“What went wrong?”

“Oh, y’know…” She shrugged. “We grew up, we grew apart…” He ran off and left me and never looked back.

“You had me.” A severe ‘v’ appeared between Cat’s brows. While Mason was every bit of Clare poured into a little person—blue eyes and mousy brown straight hair—Catriona was a daily reminder of her chicken shit high school love who left her barefoot and pregnant. Not Elliott. Unfortunately for Clare she’d known a multitude of chicken shits in high school, and she’d given her virginity to one of them—Catriona’s father, Ashton.

Sleek dark waves fell over her pale shoulders, and the most stunning bright green eyes she’d ever seen stared accusingly back at her. Like Elliott leaving to play hockey, Ashton had never looked back, either.

There was no mistaking her daughter’s beauty, which mercifully hadn’t yet been an issue as she was more interested in getting into a good college and keeping her grades up than going out to parties or dating. Books, not boys. That had been her motto since she’d discovered a love of astronomy and classic literature at an early age.

It wouldn’t last forever, and Clare was already prepared to do hard time for slaying the first boy who broke her girl’s beautiful heart.

Cupping Cat’s chin with both her hands, she dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Yeah, KitKat. I had you. But that’s not what pulled us apart. Our friendship was already broken by the time I got pregnant with you.”

A wave of bone-deep sadness threatened to drag her under. She gave Cat a watery smile, swallowed down the shards of agony lodged in her throat, and patted her cheek. “Everything happens for a reason, right?”

Cat worked her bottom lip with her teeth. “What did he do to you, Mom?”

She stepped back and gestured to the silverware drawer. “Set the table for dinner, please.”

Cat didn’t move. “Mom?”

She sighed. “He left, baby girl. He went off to play hockey and never looked back. I guess when he returned and found out I had you and was a single mom… Maybe he was hurt, maybe he was angry, maybe…” She dropped her hands to her sides with a frustrated sigh. “I dunno. It would have been too much for any young adult to come home to.”

It had been too much for Cat’s father. He had wanted Clare to get an abortion, and when she had refused, he walked. He was with a new girlfriend less than a month later, and made sure that their entire freakin’ class knew why they were no longer together. Word of her being knocked up had spread like wildfire, and she didn’t even have her best friend by her side to stem the tide of the inherent meanness that came with the teenage years.

“Maybe it was something else.” Cat sprang into action, pulling silverware from the drawer and placing it on the table.

She frowned and tipped her head. “Like what?”

It was Cat’s turn to shrug. “I dunno. But maybe something stopped him from coming back to you. Maybe your meeting in the feminine hygiene aisle of CVS was the universe’s way of telling you to get your head out of your ass and go talk to the man.”

She smacked Clare’s butt. “You deserve to be happy, Mom. Just because he-who-won’t-be-named…okay, two asshats…fine, they-who-won’t-be-named made you feel undeserving, doesn’t mean that you are undeserving.”

“Since when are you so smart?”

“Since I had a great mom who taught me about self-worth from an early age. It’s hard to see you so down on yourself like this, Mom. I saw how Elliott looked at you in the store… How you looked at him… There was something there. And sure, it might not be a forever thing, but isn’t it worth a look? It could be.”

“You’ve been reading romance novels again, haven’t you?”

“Wuthering Heights. Fucking love me some Heathcliff. Cathy needed a slap.” Catriona released a dreamy sigh. “What can I say, Mom? There’s something magical about reading about two people falling in love. I just think there’s a reason you bumped into him in the tampon aisle of all places, and you shouldn’t dismiss it just because you’re upset at him for something he did twenty years ago.”

Another shrug. “Even if it was something shitty. Really shitty. It’s important to forgive, Mom. You taught me that, too.” She flicked her eyes to the ceiling like she had all the answers to the world’s problems and Clare was an idiot. She even said it like Clare would have if the roles were reversed. Ugh. She was getting her own advice back at her from her spirited nineteen-year-old.

While she didn’t want to admit her child was right—she couldn’t stand the smugness or gloating—she was certainly right about one thing: he was in the tampon aisle. Tampons meant a wife, girlfriend, or daughter. Her heart sank. Even if she could get herself past the distress curdling her stomach, there was every chance he was already with someone.

Cat pointed at Clare’s face. “I see what you’re doing, Mom. Christ, your brain is so loud sometimes.”

“Okay, smartass, what am I doing?”

“You’re telling yourself you’re not good enough for him somehow, or that he already has someone. Well, get that out of your head right now. He doesn’t. I checked.”

Her stomach dropped to her feet as a wave of nausea crashed over her. “You asked him if he was married? How much did you talk to the man?” Cat was like Clare in some ways—when she wasn’t stunned into embarrassment and flustered silence anyway, she could certainly talk.

Cat snorted. “More than you managed to. But, no. I didn’t ask him if he was married. He had no ring, no band of white skin around his finger where a ring might have been, and he didn’t pick up any of the products in that aisle.”

“Okay, Sherlock Holmes. Some people never wear their wedding band. No ring doesn’t mean no partner.”

Catriona rolled her eyes. Clare would have to start charging her a buck for every time she did it—she’d be able to cover the cost of her entire college tuition within a month.

“You could just say Sherlock, Mom. I know who he is. You don’t need the Holmes. And I know that.”

The oven timer chimed, and Cat tossed the oven mitts lying next to her at Clare. “I just feel in my bones that he’s single though.”

Oh, to have the confidence of a helpless romantic who hadn’t yet been jaded by the world around her.

“Well, no offense, kiddo. But I don’t really put much stock in your bones when it comes to matters of the heart.” She slipped on an oven mitt and jerked open the oven, stepping to the side to avoid the gust of hot air. She eased the bubbling hotdish out and onto a trivet in the middle of the table.

Cat gasped and clutched her chest. “I’m wounded, Mom. Wounded. But when things work out between you and that dreamboat, I’m not going to be shy about telling you I told you so.”

“Dreamboat?”

Cat had already slipped onto a chair and was scooping a heaped portion of food onto her plate. “I won’t let you deflect by poking fun at my choice of vocabulary. But I also have a date burning the roof of my mouth with molten lava cheese so we’re going to have to circle back.”

She jabbed her fork into the mound of food and blew on the steaming bite. “You probably still have his number, don’t you? You could totally text him first. You are a modern woman after all.” She wiggled her eyebrows before eating the food.

“Mmm! So freakin’ good, Mom.”

“Apparently, in all my years of teaching, I didn’t get around to dinner etiquette. Mason! Come eat before your rude sissy eats it all.”

“I can’t help it. Expecting me not to demolish this deliciousness” —she waved her hand at the casserole dish— “as soon as it comes out of the oven… It’s just cruel and unusual.”

Clare chuckled as she got the veggies out of the steamer and put them into a serving dish.

“Dad wants to know if you can change weekends with him. He’s got something this weekend so he said he can take me next weekend.” Mason tugged open the fridge and grabbed the gallon container of chocolate milk, followed by a glass from the cabinet next to the sink.

From the moment they had separated, Captain Asshole had used Mason as a method of communication. As her grandma used to say, it boiled her piss. Why couldn’t he simply pick up the phone and drop her a text like any normal grown-ass adult instead of using their child to pass messages to her?

To Mason though, his dad hung the moon in the sky and rearranged the stars just for funsies. He probably thought he created the planets, too.

“I’ll text him, Mase. Eat.” She motioned to his empty plate with the dish of veggies in her hand.

She never gave an answer back to Mason, always replied to his dad’s game of telephone through text so there was a record of everything right there in her trusty cell phone chat history. That way, Commander Douche Nozzle couldn’t re-write his own version of the truth and nothing could come back to bite her in the ass. Theoretically, anyway.

Ugh. It had been so long since she’d been bitten anywhere. Clearing her throat, she brushed away lusty thoughts of Elliott biting her ass cheek. Or at least tried to. Once she let it into her mind there was no escaping the fact she’d pretty much let Elliott bite her anywhere.

“Mom?” Cat speared her with a look, fork paused midway between the table and her mouth. “Sit. Eat. Texting him back can wait.”

Schooling her face, Clare took her seat. Cat was too perceptive for her own damn good. Thankfully, she must have her I hate my ex-husband face on again rather than her I wanna do naughty things to my childhood sweetheart face.

What could life have been like if Elliott had come back from hockey instead of staying away?

Nope. She wouldn’t let herself fall down that rabbit hole. Her path had given her two perfect, beautiful children that she never once regretted even if their fathers were both complete jerks. Though Elliott had left her too, ergo—also a jerk.

She needed to put those beautiful eyes and that lopsided smile out of her mind, and panties, forever. Nothing good could come of opening the door to their past. It was behind them.

Despite living in the same city, Mason playing hockey, and Elliott coaching the college kids, she’d managed to avoid bumping into him for almost two decades. With any luck, she wouldn’t see him again for another two.

Preorder Coach Swift's story now!

Until next time,

Have you joined my reader group yet? If not, then head over to: Margaritas, Men and Mischief with Lasairiona. As the name suggests, it's a place for my readers to chat about all things romance - with a healthy dose of sarcasm, sharp wit, conversations comprised entirely of GIFs, sneak peeks, giveaways and a plethora of memes. It's one of my absolute favorite places on the internet and I'm really enjoying getting to know readers that bit better over there. Don't be shy - we don't bite... much! Come on over!

Bookish. Bold. Beautiful. And entirely out of his league.

On paper, all-American boy next door, Lincoln Scott, has it all. But behind his slap shots, straight-A report card, and easy going charm, Linc hides a secret only his best friend knows.

When he attempts to return a misplaced bra, a wrong number gets him way more than the hook-up he bargained for. No one has ever looked beyond the star hockey player, until the mysterious woman he can’t stop texting sees him for who he really is.

Does Linc have the skills off the ice to keep up with her? Will he follow in his father’s footsteps? Or will he step out from the shadows and chase his dreams?

If you’re pucking obsessed with Helena Hunting, Pippa Grant, and Elle Kennedy, you’ll love this hilarious, hot-as-puck, secret identity, opposites attract, curvy girl sports romance. Two for Interference is a full length standalone with no cheating, cliffhangers, and a guaranteed happily ever after.

Welcome to the Minnesota Snow Pirates, where skilled and sexy mother puckers’ lives get turned upside down by strong and badass heroines. Curl up with your next book boyfriend today.