"Hot as dynamite"

Becka Landon serves as team trainer for the Lowell Weavers minor league baseball team. Though there are a bunch of young hunks, Becka has sworn off males after the fiasco of her last boyfriend.

Former baseball superstar Mace Duvall provides hitting instruction as the league's roaming batting instructor. His career was cut short by an accident, which leaves Mace with nothing, as baseball was his life. When Mace sees Becka, he knows he has one week to get her in his bed as his personal trainer. However, Becka wants nothing to do with him, believing he is just a womanizer. Becka and Mace bet with him winning the payoff being an evening of sex. After paying off, she sneaks away, but he refuses to leave. They play a game of wagers, but love has become part of the ante if he can overcome his belief that his life is over and she can learn to trust.

This is an engaging sports romance that is at its most amusing best when the protagonists play a game of king/queen of the hill. Neither of these strong individuals will back down, but both struggle to embrace love. The story line gains some unnecessary tension when Becka, who has become Mace's biggest believer as a coach, fails to support him during a controversy, but Kristin Hardy still hits a homer with this take me out to the ball game romance.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted February 22, 2003

She's out to even the score...he's out to score, period.

It's one to nothing and team therapist Becka Landon is in over her head. She's determined not to get distracted by any man, especially a playboy like gorgeous former baseball champ Mace Duvall. But Mace is looking for a new challenge in his life, and the answer might just be Becka.

Summary

Becka has just dumped her louse of a boyfriend and gotten her dream job as the trainer/therapist for a professional sports team. Granted, it's only the Lowell Spinners minor league baseball team, but it's a start. She's finished with settling when it comes to relationships and figures it's time for focus on her career and herself for a while.

Hunky Mace Duvall was gorgeous enough to make the Most Beautiful People list and talented enough to be an All- Star player until an auto accident cut him down in his prime. A year later, when he arrives at Lowell for his first assignment as a batting instructor, he's trying to figure out how to move on with his life. Mace's undeserved reputation as a playboy precedes him, and Becka wants nothing to do with him. But Mace has decided to live for today and earn that playboy reputation, starting with the delectable Becka.