* * * *
Hiring the woman who wrecked me to nanny the kid I just found out I have is a dumb idea. Getting naked with her in the back of my truck is even dumber.
But old habits die hard.
Amelia Fox was my high school sweetheart, the girl who broke my heart and nearly ended my football career nine years ago. It was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other, much less make a comeback.
But I did come back. And I’m not about to let go of everything I fought for just because my world is imploding again.
When I find out I’m the father of a two-year-old boy, I’m ready to start my final season in the pros. It’s my last chance to nab the championship I promised my dad I’d win before he died.
Enter Amelia: teacher, toddler whisperer, and—oh yeah—my ex-girlfriend. We haven’t spoken in almost a decade, but I’m desperate, and she’s looking for a job.
I need to focus, which means I need help with this kid. Which means I need her.
The arrangement works until one night of bad decisions and great sex threatens to ruin everything.
Can we make it work this time around?
Or is she just another bad habit I need to break before she breaks me?
Source: ARC provided in exchange for an honest review
The North Carolina Highlands series has become like comfort food because you keep returning to a familiar place with familiar faces. Getting to know each Beauregard sibling has been a blast and I have to say, Rhett Beauregard might just be my favorite right now.
Rhett's still playing football professionally and has only recently started feeling ambivalence towards the sport to which he's devoted his entire life. At his brother's engagement party he sees his first love, Amelia. The reunion goes sort of well i.e. things gets awkward. Though the blast from the past is a little much for his drunken mind to take in, the memories that come back are welcomed. But Rhett's life takes an unexpected turn when he learns that he is the father of a two year-old and that he now has sole custody of the child. Unsure of what to do and how, he reaches out to Amelia for help. As a preschool teacher, she's well equipped to handle a toddler and teach him how to be a father. Since Amelia's job situation kind of blew up in her face, she agrees to become a nanny for his child on the condition that they adhere to strictly professional interactions and nothing more. But we already know that's going to be hard. Mutual attraction aside, Rhett's family has always been kind and welcoming to Amelia. Where her family unit contains only her and her hippie grandmother (she is a character, by the way!), Rhett's family is the large, loud, loving brood has a lot of love to go around. So there's no way they can avoid any overlapping.
This felt like a very mature story with Rhett's impressive response to being a father and taking on the responsibility immediately. This guy was meant to be family man. His existential crisis comes from his conflicting desires to end his football career successfully or extend it for the promise of more lucrative opportunities that would mean financial security for his son. He's been guided by his need to fulfill a promise to his father but now with his son, Liam in the picture, he's begun to adjust his mindset.
I do feel the need to bring up a couple of trigger warnings. One, there is brief mention of Amelia's mother passing away from cancer. Two, there is second brief mention of cancer during a quick conversation between Rhett and his trainer about Rhett's health. It comes about because he's been tired during training lately (duh, he's a dad now and up all night with a kid!) and the trainer gets in to hysterics and assumes it's cancer. When I came across it, I don't know ... it just came off as flippant and unnecessary. Yes, I'm sensitive to it at the moment but that was my honest, immediate reaction to it.
Other than that, Southern Playboy is a sweet, sexy, endearing read about establishing connection, and in Rhett and Amelia's case, re-establishing it. It's also about connecting back to what makes them individually happy in the first place. The story's hard to put down and Rhett just makes my day!
~ Bel
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