Seattle Lumberjacks””The Rookies
Christmas Break is a 12,000-word short story that introduces Jami Davenport’s Seattle Lumberjacks spin-off new adult series, The Rookies. The Rookies series will feature the rookies on the Seattle Lumberjacks team starting with their draft day to their first year as an professional football player and all the challenges that go with newly found fame and fortune. The second book, Rookie Mistakes, is planned for spring 2014 and continues the story of Brax and Aubrey.
BLURB:
As a college football star and a waitress stave off cold loneliness through one hot holiday break, a passion begins that will carry them both all the way into the NFL.
Striving to escape her past, reformed party girl and biker chick Aubrey Harper finds herself tending bar over Christmas break. Then her secret crush walks into the pub.
Star football player Braxton Davis has his own reasons for not going home, and when loneliness drives him to a bar near campus he finds tough-girl Aubrey mixing drinks and serving smartass comments. After one look, the two know they won’t be spending their Christmas alone. After a mysterious and devastating text message and a burnt hamburger lead to dinner out, the rest of their lives look more promising as well. This relationship is going all the way to the bigs.
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BUY LINKS:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FV9E12S
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/366965
All Romance: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-christmasbreak-1317893-149.html
iBookstore: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/christmas-break-seattle-lumberjacks/id731144168?mt=11
Barnes and Noble: Coming Soon
Kobo: Coming Soon
EXCERPT:
Chapter 1″”Game Plan
(Braxton)
First and foremost, I am a football player. Football has defined me since I first held a ball in my chubby toddler hands. It defines me today, and it’ll define me tomorrow. Life without football is simply not possible.
My dad says my game plan is shortsighted, that the average length of an NFL career is three and a half years””if I make it to the NFL. But I’m making it. Not only am I making it; I’m going to do better than make it. I don’t believe in aiming low. Mom and Dad should know that. After all, they’ve drummed those very words into my head all of my life. Aim high.
On the outside looking in, you’d think my family is too perfect. There has to be a fatal flaw, some big hole in our Brady Bunch lifestyle. I can tell you right now: There isn’t. Truly. As the baby of the clan, I’m following behind a sister who’s in med school and a brother who does cancer research at Fred Hutchinson, and regardless of my choice of a less daunting academic path””I’m a communications major””my parents have always supported me, even in sports, though it isn’t their thing. Did I mention that my dad is a cardiologist at the University of Washington hospital? And my mom is a family practitioner for a GMO. You can see where I might have a little issue with not being viewed as being as smart as the rest of them.
My problem, not theirs. I chose my path.
That’s why I wasn’t going home for Christmas this year, though. I couldn’t take listening to them talk about medicine ad nauseam with me as the odd man out. I was staying here in this small college town in Eastern Washington near the Idaho border. I had a good reason, sorta. My team was playing in a bowl game that weekend and we had practices all week. Coach gave us Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off with our next practice starting about two p.m. on the twenty-sixth. Plenty of time for me to make it home, but my parents didn’t know that.
When I walked out of practice on the evening of the twenty-third after saying goodbye to my teammates, an odd melancholy mood descended over me. My frat was deserted except for me, and no food service was available. I had the munchies worse than a pot-smoker at two a.m. I don’t smoke the stuff, by the way, my body being a temple and all that crap, even though it’s legal now in the state of Washington.
Maybe I should’ve accepted Mike’s offer to go home to Spokane with him, but I just didn’t feel like hanging with any family, even my own. I’d broken up with my cheerleader girlfriend around Thanksgiving, and I was still getting over her. We’d been together since last year. I’d had a few one-nighters but not much since, and I was lonely for company that didn’t reek of testosterone and beer.
My feet carried me to the Grizzly Den, a local watering hole I’d been to a couple times since I turned twenty-one a few months ago. I sat down at the counter in the nearly deserted bar and opened a menu, scanning the hamburger choices. A curvy waitress with tattoos peeking out from the long sleeves of her black shirt sauntered over. My eyes travelled the tourist route to get to her face, starting at a pair of short biker boots with wicked heels, moving up a nice pair of thighs, rounded hips, and a bit of tattooed skin with a navel ring exposed between her low-slung jeans and her tight black, long-sleeved shirt.
My gaze stalled at her tits. They were incredible. I’ve always been a tits man. She wasn’t the tall, willowy type I usually go for, but her compact little body packed a lot of feminine muscle and plenty of curves, which I definitely liked. Maybe a change of pace was in order.
She cleared her throat and tapped her pencil on my arm. Embarrassed but scrambling to hide it, I shot her my signature babe-melting grin.
She didn’t melt, swoon, or even crack a smile. Tough, this one. She was going to make me work for it. I liked that.
Damn, but she was beautiful””in a street-smart sort of way. Thick, gorgeous reddish-brown hair tied in a ponytail tumbled down her back in sexy disarray. I itched to loosen the band and feel her hair slide across my body as she rode me into oblivion. Hey, I’m a young, athletic, horny guy, and she was one hot woman. Even better, she didn’t fall at my feet and worship the turf my cleats trod on. Instead she glared at me with disdain and suspicion.
Her sweet face contradicted her sinner’s body. She had this flawlessly pale skin and huge, expressive green eyes. Right now those eyes were expressing a lot, most of it not good, at least not as far as her opinion of me.
She tapped her pencil on the Formica table, and a yellow butterfly perched on a pink flower peeked out from beneath her shirt sleeve. I wanted to see more. A lot more. I wondered if those tattoos went up her arm, across her chest, and down to her crotch. Had her entire body been a canvas for a tattoo artist? Oh, yeah, I wondered. The women I’d dated might have a subtle tattoo here or there, but nothing like what I suspected hid under those clothes.
“What can I get you?” Her voice vibrated with a husky sexuality, like she’d smoked too many packs of cigarettes.
I pried my tongue from the roof of my mouth and attempted casual conversation. “I’ll have a beer and a bacon cheeseburger with fries. Everything on it.”
“ID.” She held out her hand, sounding all bored and sexy and floating in attitude.
I whipped out my wallet and flipped it open. She eyed it, eyed me, eyed it again. I waited for recognition to cross her beautiful face. You’d have to be dead or a hermit not to know my name around this place, even if you aren’t a football fan.
Nothing. Without comment, she scribbled my order on a worn pad and sashayed toward a table of customers who were getting ready to leave, her hips swinging and her cute butt beckoning me to follow.
Not that she actually wanted me to follow her butt or her, which both intrigued me and turned me on. Women fall at my feet, strip off their clothes and give me whatever I want in any position I want it. But not this girl. Her disinterest challenged me, and as a competitive guy, I rarely back down from a challenge.
I wasn’t about to start.
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