BLURB
Iris may have home ice advantage, but Mark is the hometown hockey hero.
Mark Klingensmith just played the worst season of his career. He’s got one season left on his contract with the Dallas Comets, and he’s worried that the team won’t re-sign him. Mark doesn’t have time to think about his future, though, because he gets the bad news that his mother is still sick with cancer and is undergoing a second round of chemotherapy.
Iris Olson has been taking care of Mark’s mother, Sandra, while Mark was off playing pro hockey. Sandra had always been like a mother to Iris, and Iris gladly takes on the duty of helping Sandra after her diagnosis.
When Mark returns to Grand Rapids, Minnesota, for the summer to help with his mother, Iris’s life gets much more complicated. They have a history: she and Mark were once engaged. The two former flames team up to help Sandra through her treatment, and working together so closely reminds them of why they were so in love—but they are also reminded of why they couldn’t make it work.
Can they reconcile their love for each other while pursuing their dream careers? Will they try to give their relationship a second chance? And will Sandra beat her cancer?
BOOK LINKS
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REVIEW
Rating: 3.5*
Second chances.
Mark and Iris were together and engaged before their careers took them in different directions. Mark is a professional ice hockey player who moves wherever his contract takes him, while Iris is a social worker who needs to stay in the same place to be able to make a difference. When Mark's mother becomes really sick, Iris steps in to support the woman who took her under her wing and treated her like a daughter. While Mark's mother hides the truth of the extent of her illness from Mark, Iris' compassion shines through.
While I loved the relationship between Mark and his mother, Sandra and Iris and Sandra, I didn't feel the spark between Mark and Iris. It felt a safe relationship between the two of them. It was, though, a fascinating story with lovely characters.
EXCERPT
After five years, she was surprised that she recognized his lips. She remembered every soft contour, and the memories of their hot and heavy, high school make-out sessions flooded back to her.
Mark was acting on pure instinct. He’d had such a shitty day, and he just wanted to feel good. And, despite his head telling him one thing, his body was screaming at him that Iris would make him feel much, much better. He didn’t want to think. He didn’t want to talk about his feelings—hell, he didn’t want to acknowledge that he even had emotions. The feel of the warm body pressed against his and the skin-to-skin contact made him forget about the bad news he’d heard earlier. As long as he kept touching Iris and kissing her, then he didn’t have to think about any of the bad stuff.
So he kept on kissing her.
Mark held onto Iris’s waist as he pulled her down onto the grass with him. His cabin was pretty secluded from the other houses, and the dark night provided excellent cover for them. Iris urged him on, grabbing at him and positioning herself under him. She wrapped her legs around his thighs to hold him in place and to keep their bodies pressed against one another.
He supported most of his weight on his elbows, forearms, and knees as he hovered over Iris. Their bodies still fit together, like they always had, but Mark noticed a few differences. Iris’s body felt softer and a little rounder. He reached under her shirt and cupped her breasts. They were fleshier and squishier, and he liked that cushiony, pillowy feeling. Iris felt like a brand new woman.
His thumb swept over her nipple, and her nipple responded instantly and stiffened. Iris reacted too, arching her back and wordlessly urging him to touch her. She may have felt like a brand new woman, but she moved and behaved in ways he would always remember.
AUTHOR BIO
Jaymee Jacobs is southwestern Pennsylvania born and raised. She graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a BA in English literature and a psychology minor.
Jay has always had an interest in people and their stories. After graduating, she turned that interest into crafting her own stories featuring her own characters. With some encouragement from friends and readers, Jay decided to take the plunge and began to self-publish her novels. Play the Man came first, published in March 2013. Shots on Net followed in October 2013. In 2014, Jay released Game On and began developing her hockey romance series featuring the Dallas Comets. "A Valuable Trade," the first novella of the series, was released as a part of the Seduced by the Game cancer charity anthology in 2014, and Home Ice Advantage will follow suit in 2015.
Hockey plays a major role in these stories because she's a die-hard fan of the sport. Jay faithfully cheers for her hometown team, the Pittsburgh Penguins. She plays fantasy hockey as one of two female owners in a male-dominated league and routinely ranks in the top half of owners. For the 2015-16 season, she was promoted to co-commissioner (Gary Bettman, eat your heart out!)
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