Counter To My Intelligence

Kettle had it all. Until he didn't. He lost it all in a moment. One heart stopping, soul shattering moment, and there wasn't a single thing he could do about it. From that day forward, he stayed away from relationships. Then he responded to a possible fire and there she was, rocking his world when he didn't want it to be rocked. Adeline was just a schoolteacher. She lived a boring life. Until she stole something. And it didn't have anything to do with the sexy firefighter's heart. Oh, she stole that, too, even if he didn't want it to be stolen.

Baseball is life - the rest is just details. Everyone who's played the game has heard those words a time or two. But Hancock has heard them his entire life from his parents. His family has lived and breathed baseball even before he started little league. Hancock "Parts" Peters has a name that inspires grins across many faces, but the moment those faces get their first look at him, those grins slide away. Hancock is gruff, filterless, and doesn't give a crap who he offends. He is the only man in baseball who doesn't care if he gets an endorsement or not. He's there to play the game.

You know when you see that big red flag, and you think to yourself, I should probably not go anywhere near there? Yeah, Quincy Carter ignored that big red flag. He walked right up to that red flag, waving blatantly in the wind, and kissed the holy hell out of her. Sure, he probably should've arrested her for breaking a restraining order. He probably also should've stopped her from continuing to break that restraining order. Yet he can't.

The first day that she walked onto the surgical floor that Chevy Clayborne spent most of his time on, he knew that he’d do anything to make her his. For two years, he played the long game. He slowly insinuated himself into her life, and the moment that she needed him, he swooped in like the knight in shining armor that he only pretended to be but most assuredly wasn’t. He’s no real knight. In fact, he’s the villain in everyone’s story but his own.

All Birdee Calvert wanted was to be normal. She wanted the parents who didn’t divorce when she was a kid and make her life a living nightmare. She wanted the sisters who actually liked her. She wanted to live in a town where everyone loved her and didn’t have a single bad thing to say about her. That was not the life Birdee was given. She had the exact opposite life. The kind of life where she slunk through the grocery store with a hoodie on so no one would recognize her. The kind of life where men like Creed Daugherty didn’t give her a second look.