Guest Jami Davenport!

On select days I feature books by some great authors. Today, Jami Davenport is here to talk about her new Seattle Lumberjacks Football series with Loose Id. Welcome, Jami! Tell us about the first book in the series, FOURTH AND GOAL!

I’m very happy to announce that my football hero romance, Fourth and Goal, is now available. If I have a book of my heart, this book is it. I started writing this book close to a dozen years ago. When I become more serious about getting published, everyone told me “sports romances don’t sell” so I abandoned this book. Yet, I always knew I’d return to it some day.

If you know me personally, you know I love football.

Over the past few years I became frustrated with the football hero romances currently being published. In the vast majority of them, the heroine did not like or understand football, the hero often gave up the game for the heroine, and/or football was merely an afterthought. You could have changed the hero’s career and nothing in the story would change.

So I asked myself: What if? What if the heroine is not only a fan, but she wants a career in football? What if she’s more knowledgeable about the game than most men? What if the hero isn’t a big star but a struggling third stringer attempting to resurrect his career? What if I write this book for women who truly love and understand football?

So I dusted off my old football hero romance, rewrote the entire book, and here it is years and years later. I think the wait was well worth it, and I hope you do, too.

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Fourth and Goal
Book 1 in the Seattle Lumberjacks Football Series
By Jami Davenport
Available from Loose Id
BUY LINK: http://www.loose-id.com/Fourth-and-Goal.aspx

Author Info:
Website: http://www.jamidavenport.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jamidavenport

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jamidavenport


Blurb:

In a game played on and off the field, only one of them will emerge the winner.

Armed with an uncanny ability for evaluating football talent, a dogged determination to succeed in a man’s world, and an empty bank account, Rachel McCormick agrees to help struggling wide receiver Derek Ramsey get his game back. Rachel believes Derek, her former best friend and lover, knows the truth behind a points-shaving scandal which ruined her father. She vows to expose the secret even if it destroys Derek in the process.

When Derek’s coach suggests sex as an excellent tension reliever the night before a game, Rachel takes one for the team. The next day, Derek has the best performance of his not-so lustrous pro football career. As Derek and Rachel rack up nights in bed and other places, the team racks up wins on the field. Rachel is torn between her loyalty to her father and her growing affection for Derek. Now it’s fourth and goal, one second left on the clock. Their hearts are on the line. Do they trust each other enough to go for the long bomb or do they get dropped for a loss?


Chapter One -- The Kickoff

Hiring the one woman he could never forget was a dumb-assed idea and the wrong play to run, but Derek Ramsey took the ball and ran with it anyway. Five years ago, his one-weekend affair with Rachel McCormick had tackled him for an emotional loss. She’d been his best female buddy, and he’d fucked up a good thing by following his dick instead of his brain. After battling a half decade of guilt and coulda-shouldas, he dreaded and anticipated this reunion.

She’d been employed as his caretaker and living in the little house next to his barn for a few days. He’d managed to avoid contact by taking an impromptu weekend visit to his dad and stepmom a few hundred miles away. But he couldn’t stay away forever.

Weary of postponing the inevitable, Derek walked down the driveway from his ranch house to the barn and small caretaker’s house. Pausing halfway down the hill, he whistled for backup. Consider him a coward, but his chocolate Lab would serve as a diversion if this reunion didn’t go well. Oddly, Simon didn’t come running. Derek shrugged. He must be chasing rabbits in the woods or something.

He’d have to go it alone. As he rounded the last bend in his driveway, Rachel McCormick stomped up the hill toward him.

Oh f***. He knew females. He’d endured growing up with an older sister. Rachel had that close-fisted, furious carriage to her stride that meant only one thing: someone was going to die. Please, God, don’t let it be him.

Even as he planned possible escape routes, his male head perused her body and responded with a resounding thumbs-up, though it wasn’t really his thumb that was up.
The woman marching toward him with murder in her eyes barely resembled his tomboy buddy from his high school and college days. This Rachel wore a navy blue blazer with matching skirt and shoes, complete with manicured nails and makeup. The suit hugged her tall, lean body and accentuated her curves and straight-to-heaven legs. Long reddish brown hair was pulled back into a tidy ponytail. While he preferred the blue jeans and T-shirt version, this one was just as gorgeous and way more unapproachable. Don’t mess with me radiated from every pore in her body. Not a glimpse of the shy, sweet Rachel he had once known.

“Rachel, good to see you again.” Derek spoke calmly -- hoping to defuse the bomb -- and halted a few steps from her.

She didn’t return his small talk. Green eyes blazing, she scowled, as dangerous as a hand grenade with the pin pulled in the hands of a chimpanzee.

“Problem?” he asked conversationally and forced a pleasant smile on his face.
“Do you own a demon chocolate Lab?”

Derek barked a laugh and sealed his death sentence. Her expression went beyond homicidal. “I have a Lab named Simon. He’s opinionated and untrainable. It sounds like you’ve met him.”

“How long has he engaged in a life of crime?”

“Oh shit. What did he steal now?”



Read the entire first chapter here:
http://www.jamidavenport.com/FourthGoal.htm