I love baseball so it was a lot of fun for me to write some stories revolving around a fictional New Jersey baseball team. Yes, it’s about time that us Jersey Girls had our own baseball team! I loved writing Winning Season because it was a story about a second chance at love between a baseball player facing the end of his career and his ex-wife who is just at the start of her flourishing career as a basketball player. Today I’m teasing you with the cover for the book which I plan on re-releasing in October, just in time for the playoffs. But in the meantime, you can read the first three chapters for free on Kindle Vella at https://amzn.to/3v5nVEl. I hope you’ll drop by and check it out as well as my other baseball romance Rookie of the Year.
Blurb
Eric Mendoza knew that he’d blown it years earlier when he let his desire to play baseball drive a wedge into his marriage to Yvonne Lopez. But when Fate throws Eric and Yvonne together again, Eric’s career is almost over while Yvonne’s dream of a basketball career is only just beginning. Will Eric and Yvonne learn to balance life and their careers to find happiness or will their push for success doom their love once again?
Excerpt
Eric Mendoza passed his fingers over the cold glossy paper of the photo, imagining instead that it was the warm silken feel of Yvonne’s skin. He closed his eyes, pictured the creaminess of it. The pale milky smoothness of her breasts and the taste of her against his lips. The soft sounds of her passion as he brought her to the edge.
He cursed beneath his breath and opened his eyes. He had almost crumpled the paper in his hands with his musings. He smoothed it out on the surface of his table and examined it yet again, almost as if to torture himself.
Yvonne was wearing nothing but the pants of her team’s basketball uniform, riding low on her shapely hips. The curve of her waist was clear, as was her navel and the small beauty mark beside it. The view of her lean, sculpted midsection was interrupted by her arms, which cradled a bright orange basketball that also hid her breasts, but just barely. The full globes of them were visible behind the basketball.
Her hands hung loosely before her. Beautiful hands with long fingers which sported only one ring – the small gold pinky ring given to her by her abuelita for her fifteenth birthday. The only sign of her wedding ring was a barely discernable line on her ring finger, but that would fade with time, or maybe it was only him imagining that he saw some visible remnant of their marriage. After all, they had been divorced for nearly two years now.
In fact, he hadn’t seen Yvonne in over a year, since shortly after their divorce. The last time they had run into one another had only been in passing in the corridor of one of the local television stations. She had been headed out, apparently after doing an interview and he had been on his way in.
Yvonne had given him a curt smile, nodded and kept on walking. He’d had too much pride to chase after her, just like he’d had too much pride to acknowledge that maybe the reason for the end of their marriage had been his mistakes. His failure to keep his promises to his young wife.
Eric sighed heavily and leaned into the hard-backed chair, wondering how something that had started so right could have ended so wrong.
They had been attracted to each other from the moment they had first met. Yvonne had been too young, just eighteen and on her way to college.
He had been twenty-four and a hotshot Rookie of the Year who had been invited back to speak at his old high school’s annual sports award dinner. After giving his speech, he had presented the trophies to the top male and female athletes, never expecting to be immediately intrigued by the attractive young girl who had won.
Yvonne had excelled at a number of sports, but her prowess at basketball had earned her multiple awards as well as a full scholarship to college. As impressive as that was on paper, it had hadn’t been nearly as inspiring as the sight of her and the calm, elegant poise she exhibited as she came up to accept the honor.
Eric had stepped behind her and admired the sleek lines of her strong body. The very feminine voice that wrapped itself around him and drew him in as she gave her acceptance speech.
After the dinner, people mingled in the school gym, and flocked around the various recipients. No one had to tell him where Yvonne was. She’d had the largest crowd gathered around her, including a number of reporters from the local papers and sports shows.
He’d always scoffed at those scenes in the movies where couples spot each other across a crowded room and everything else around them blurred into nothingness. He’d thought them the whimsical stylings of the cinema . . . until it had happened to him with Yvonne.
In that crowded gym, with dozens of people talking and milling about, she’d looked up and caught his eye and the world had dropped away until it was just the two of them.
Eric had walked up to her, excusing himself as he brushed past her many admirers and the well-wishers waiting to congratulate her. Smiling as he realized she had finished with the reporter interviewing her and taken a step toward him.
“Hola,” she had said and with that one word he knew she was the one meant for him.
