What do women want?
Jonathan Templar and his poker buddies canât figure it out. Take Jonathan, for instance. Heâs been in love with Lissa Castle since they were kids but, geek that he is, sheâs never seen him as her Mr. Perfect. He has one last shotâtheir high school reunion. Kyle Long is equally discouraged. The pretty receptionist at his office keeps passing him over for other guys who may be taller but are definitely not superior. And Adam Edwards might be the most successful of Jonathanâs friends, but he isnât having any success on the home front. His wifeâs kicked him out.
When Jonathan stumbles on a romance novel at the Icicle Falls library sale, he knows heâs found the love expert heâs been seekingâVanessa Valentine, top-selling romance author. At first his buddies laugh at him for reading romance novels, but soon they, too, realize that these stories are the worldâs best textbooks on love. Poker night becomes book club nightâ¦and when all is read and done, theyâre going to be the kind of men women want!
www.sheilasplace.com
âHer characters are warm and engaging and their interactions are full of humour.â
âRT Book Reviews
âAn uplifting, charming, feel-good storyâ
âBooklist
ââ¦will doubtless warm more than a few hearts.â
âPublishers Weekly
âA wonderful story with characters so real and defined I feel like I am personally acquainted with them⦠There is humour and emotion in large quantities in this fantastic book that is next to impossible to put down. Kudos and a large bouquet of flowers to Sheila Roberts for giving us one of the best books of the year.â
âFresh Fiction
SHEILA ROBERTS is married and has three children. She lives on a lake in the Pacific Northwest. When sheâs not hanging out with her girlfriends or hitting the dance floor with her husband, she can be found writing about those things dear to womenâs hearts: family, friends and chocolate.
You can visit Sheila at her website, www.sheilasplace.com. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.
Also by Sheila Roberts
BETTER THAN CHOCOLATE
MERRY EX-MAS
Dear Reader,
Welcome back to Icicle Falls. Iâm so happy youâre taking a break from your busy schedule to spend some time with my characters. In this book you wonât be hanging out with the girls. Itâs the guysâ turn.
Jonathan Templar is my salute to those quiet, average men with super-big hearts who often get overlooked when a better-looking, flashier man enters the room. I think Jonathan is proof that a big heart is better than a big set of pecs any day. His buddy Kyleâ¦well, he finds it very frustrating that heâs height-challenged and he gets irritated when women look right past him to the taller men. But maybe Kyle needs to practise what he preaches and look beyond the packaging when searching for Ms Right. Then thereâs their friend Adam, who is about as clueless as a man can get. If youâve ever had your man take you for granted, Iâm sure youâll be cheering when you see Adamâs wife giving him a painful but welldeserved refresher course on how to be a good husband.
All the men are on a steep learning curve. But theyâre about to discover what we women have known all alongâthere is much wisdom to be found in romance novels.
I had a wonderful time with these three men and their poker pals, Vance and Bernardo. I cried over every setback they encountered and cheered at their every success. These guys stole my heart. I hope theyâll steal yours, too!
I love hanging out with readers, so I hope youâll check out my Like page on Facebook (look for Sheila Roberts, author), follow me on Twitter and visit my website (http://www.sheilasplace.com), where youâre bound to find everything from a new Icicle Falls recipe to a fun contest.
Happy reading!
Sheila
Chapter One
Working in such close quarters with a woman that you could bump knees (thighs, and maybe even other body parts) was probably every manâs dream job. Except Dot Morrisonâs knees were knobby and she was old enough to be Jonathan Templarâs grandmother. And she looked like Maxine of greeting card fame. So there was no knee (or anything else) bumping going on today.
âOkay, youâre good to go,â he said, pushing back from the computer in the office at Breakfast Haus, Dotâs restaurant. âBut remember what I told you. If you want your computer to run more efficiently, youâve got to slick your hard drive once in a while.â
âThere you go talking dirty to me again,â Dot cracked.
A sizzle sneaked onto Jonathanâs cheeks, partly because old ladies didnât say things like that (Jonathanâs grandma sure didnât), and partly because heâd never talked dirty to a woman in his life. Well, not unless you counted a Playboy centerfold. When talking with most real-life women, his tongue had a tendency to tie itself into more knots than a bag of pretzels, especially when a woman was good-looking. This, he told himself, was one reason he was still single at the ripe old age of thirty-three. That and the fact that he wasnât exactly the stuff a womanâs dreams were made of. It was a rare woman who dreamed of a skinny, bespectacled guy in a button-down shirt. Those werenât the only reasons, though. Carrying a torch for someone tended to interfere with a guyâs love life.