Ever heard the one about the rom-com princess who gets swept off her feet by her fake fiancรฉ?
Yeah, thatโs not my story.
Iโm an actress whose reputation is currently circling the drain, thanks to a string of public relationship disasters. All I want is to adopt a baby and leave my tabloid trainwreck days behind me.
When the adoption agency doubts my ability to provide a stable home life, I agree to a fake engagement with a guy who screamed โPR-approved.โ
Easy enoughโuntil Archer Corbett blows it all to pieces.
Heโs a broody, hockey-playing winemaker who makes grumbling an art form. He also hates my fake fiancรฉโpretty sure โdouchebagโ was in there somewhereโand doesnโt care who knows it. But when Archer rescues me on the side of the road and keeps me safe, I discover thereโs more under his scowl than grunts and muscles.
A lot more.
Turns out, Archer has a guarded heart, a fierce loyalty to his family, and a self-sacrificing streak a mile wide. Heโs also infuriatingly hotโand impossible to resist. One stolen kiss turns into carwash-steamy nights and a bond I didnโt see coming. But thereโs a problem: he doesnโt want kids, and I canโt imagine a life without them.
Our lives donโt fit together. Our dreams are miles apart. But what if Archerโs exactly what I need to rewrite my story? And what if Iโm the one to thaw his frozen heart?
If only this were a movie, I might get the happily ever after Iโve always wanted.
Love You Always is a standalone romance with a HEA, and it’s the anticipated final book in the Buttercup Hill series.
Stacy Travis writes spicy small-town romance about bookish, sassy women and the hot heroes who fall for them.
Writing makes her infinitely happy, but that might be the coffee talking.ย
She’s worked as a journalist, camp counselor, TV writer, SAT tutor, corporate finance researcher, education technology editor, and non-fiction author. When she’s not on a deadline, she’s in running shoes complaining that all roads seem to go uphill. Or on the couch with a margarita. Or fangirling at a soccer game.
She’s never met a dog she didn’t want to hug. And if you have no plans for Thanksgiving, she’ll probably invite you to dinner.
Stacy lives in Los Angeles with her two sons and a poorly-trained rescue dog who hoards socks. And she’s serious about the Thanksgiving thing.
Best way to get rid of an evil ex? Snag a gorgeous heartbreaker, plan our wedding, and let the small-town gossip fly. What could possibly go wrong?
Just when Iโm about to inherit my familyโs winery, the one Iโve dreamed of bringing to life, my old-fashioned parents throw a wrench in my plans. Convinced I canโt succeed without a manโs business savvy, they make my ex my partner.
Now thereโs only one way outโฆ get marriedโto anyone but him.
When Dash Corbett rescues me with a pretend kiss in a cowboy bar, we devise a one-year plan that will help us both. Makeover Dashโs reputation and fulfill my parentโs antiquated expectations. Win-win.
Falling for my fake fiancรฉ? Not a chance.
Dash might have a distractingly hot exterior, but heโs a reputed playboyโand Iโm done with men who donโt walk the talk. But then I do something stupid. And dangerous. I get to know him.
Beneath the surface, he has vineyard dreams and a cinnamon roll heart. Heโs the first man to see beyond my social butterfly exterior. And when he touches me, I melt into a puddle of wine, a vintage that forgot it was supposed to be sophisticated.
Soon our pretend relationship feels like forever. Especially with the possessive way he says โmy wife,โ making me believe our lie.
Falling for Dash could ruin more than my wine country dreams. But what if I love him truly?
Love You Truly is a standalone, small-town romance in the Buttercup Hill series, where the wine is chilled and the men are hot.
Stacy Travis writes spicy small-town romance about bookish, sassy women and the hot heroes who fall for them.
Writing makes her infinitely happy, but that might be the coffee talking.
She’s worked as a journalist, camp counselor, TV writer, SAT tutor, corporate finance researcher, education technology editor, and non-fiction author. When she’s not on a deadline, she’s in running shoes complaining that all roads seem to go uphill. Or on the couch with a margarita. Or fangirling at a soccer game.
She’s never met a dog she didn’t want to hug. And if you have no plans for Thanksgiving, she’ll probably invite you to dinner.
Stacy lives in Los Angeles with her two sons and a poorly-trained rescue dog who hoards socks. And she’s serious about the Thanksgiving thing.
Especially when the player is the sinfully handsome, foul-mouthed Holden Sandersโฆ my new library assistant.
The benched bad boy needed an image makeover, I needed to save my job, and his star status was just what the library ordered to raise awareness for our fundraising campaign. The press canโt get enough of Mr. Growly reading to kids.
It’s win-win and completely platonic.
Until I need a shoulder to cry on after drowning my heartbreak in too many margaritas. I only typed that invitation to his brawny biceps and perfect pectorals for funโI never meant to hit send. Holden isnโt the kind of guy to care about tears and feelings, least of all mine. Heโs made it clear good girls arenโt his type.
But he shows upโwith his strapping shoulder, a box of tissues and a supersized bag of Doritos.
Thatโs when I realize thereโs more to him than meets the eye.
One soulful, smoldering mistake of a kiss has me craving more, and the heat between us quickly builds to a blaze neither of us can control.
But Iโm not the only one guarding secrets, and Holdenโs might push us to the breaking point.
Even if Iโm surrounded by books, I know better than to believe in storybook endings.
And yet, I want to believe… Because I know he’s a keeper.
โMare, I had no idea what I was in for when you stormed out of the library that day, looking to kill me for skirting my parental responsibilities.โ
She squints, then her expression turns wry. โIโd never kill a person.โ She tilts her head from side to side, considering. โWell, unless you burned a book.โ
Nodding, I kiss her softly. โI respect that. And I want you to know you can trust me. I know people have left you behind in your past, but I hope you believe me when I tell you Iโm not going anywhere. Iโm here for you.โ As I say the words, I believe theyโre true. If I move to England, I hope she loves me enough to come with me. Even if she hasnโt said the words.
I donโt know what Iโm expecting. Maybe relief or acknowledgment that sheโs not going anywhere either. I want to believe she feels the same way.
I donโt expect her forehead to crease and her eyes to glisten with tears, which swell until they can no longer be contained and roll down her cheeks before she buries her face in my shoulder.
Turning us to the side, I wrap her in my arms, as the flow of tears turns to quiet sobs. I smooth her hair and give her the outlet she needs, even though I feel guilty for making her cry.
With a sniff, she leans her head away and meets my gaze. Her wet eyes glisten above pink cheeks. I wipe a remaining tear away with the pad of my thumb and rub her back gently.
โIโm sorry. I didnโt mean to make you cry.โ
โYou didnโt,โ she whispers, wiping her eyes. A moment later she laughs at the lie. โIt was stuck inside me. You just let it out.โ She exhales, tucking the emotions away.
โYou okay?โ I want to tread carefully until I know where she is in her head.
Nodding, she reaches for my cheek and cups the side of my face. โThank you for saying that. Iโd never ask that of you, but thank you. I love you. So much.โ
Iโve been waiting to hear those words. For a moment, Iโm convinced that everything between us can stay this easy. Weโre both cautious, but we can cross each new line together. It feels powerful to be able to do that with her.
โI know youโd never ask. Thatโs why I said it. I wanted you to know.โ
โIโm not going anywhere either.โ
Iโm struck by a foreign but welcome feeling, a realization that I canโt go backward now. I canโt be okay without her in my world. I need to tell her about the Premier League, but it can wait another day. She likes to live in the present.
She loves me.
Everything between us is still so fragile and new and good. I donโt want anything to change us.
One more day wonโt hurt.
*****
Review:
Either Molly works some magic on him or Holden isn’t as much of a grump as he pretends to be, because he’s pretty awesome, in a gruff and foul-mouthed kinda way. He wooed me just as much as he wooed her, every step of the way. And, though I’m surprised that Molly hadn’t found a way to address her problems up to this point, I’m happy that it brought these two together.
He’s a Keeper is definitely that – the characters are fun, their interactions are adorable (and hot), and it’s an easy read to a feel good ending. And while you can see the drama coming a mile away, I appreciate the way that Travis has them evaluate their feelings and come back together. It’s a satisfying HEA to a satisfying story and I’m definitely looking forward to what is coming up next with this series.
*****
Author Info:
Itโs a rough world out there, and we all sometimes need a good, romantic beach read, even if we canโt make it to the beach. Iโve spent many lazy days walking the streets of Paris and other gorgeous European cities, and if Iโm doing it right, Iโm bringing you a dash of romance and a vacay fantasy.
I canโt sit still, so when Iโm not hiking, biking or running, Iโm playing a very average game of tennis. Background music for writing undoubtedly features some U2, Lizzo, Billy Joel, Pink, Taylor Swift, and Led Zeppelin. Not necessarily in that order. And if I could only eat one food group, it would be cheese. Or wine. Or bread. Are those food groups? Whatever.
โI decided it wasnโt smart for me to gamble my heart on you.โย
No Match for Her, an all-new swoon-worthy slow burn romance from bestselling author Stacy Travis is available now!
No Match for Her
Berkeley Hills, #5
by Stacy Travis
Blurb:
I need a date to my brotherโs wedding in six weeks, and Charlie Walgrove owns a tux. Billionaires are like that.
Heโs also my sisterโs boss, and I agree to let her set me up with the awkward genius, who apparently has even less luck in the dating game than a struggling artist, aka me.
Weโre total opposites, but the date goes okay. We agree to be friends, the kind who wonโt become lovers.
Famous last words.
On a series of โfriend datesโ involving bar snacks, acrylic paint and hedgehogs, I discover that Charlie is nothing like what I expected. Under his hoodie and glasses, heโs handsome and down-to-earth, stuck in a job he hates and afraid to disappoint people by walking away. His heart is as gorgeous as his hidden face.
Iโve always felt like the flaky sister in my family, but Charlie sees me as the artist I want to be. As our friendship deepens, so do my feelings for him. Maybe Iโm even falling in love.
But gambling with my heart feels dangerous when all my relationships end in failureโespecially if heโs only looking for a friend.
Is it only princesses that get a Happy Ever After? Or is there hope for a hot mess like me?
IโM WEARING RED. Itโs a fire engine color that matches my lips and my toenail polish. Itโs tasteful, sleeveless, and fitted. Iโm hoping it says confident artist, which I donโt feel at all. Iโm hoping it doesnโt tell everyone in the room that, on what should be a night of personal victory, my heart still lies in pieces on the gallery floor. I really hope red doesnโt say that.
I still havenโt talked to Charlie. Pulling together the show on relatively short notice has all but consumed me, and I feel like I need to prove to myself that I can take the first step as an artist alone before I investigate what he and I can be together.
Right now, I feel certain the thumping organ in my chest would laugh off the suggestion of anyone getting close to it. Ever again.
With his expression of love, Charlie opened a floodgate that Iโd stubbornly wedged closed. Iโm the one who chose to drown.
Sadly, more than half the paintings on the walls of the gallery are barely dry, some painted in a frenzy of self-loathing anguish that left me emotionally spent but artistically inspired, along with more than a dozen pieces that are oddly uplifting. Everywhere I look, I see evidence of Charlie.
People are starting to filter through the doors of the gallery space. Or maybe theyโve been here for an hour. I donโt know. Iโm looking at them through some sort of fugue state.
If I could, Iโd pick up a brush right now and paint through a new emotion twisting in my chestโlonging. More than anything, I wish Charlie were here to celebrate this moment with me because he inspired it. Or at least he pushed me out of my comfort zone enough to embrace what my heart has been urging me to do for years.
The gallery space sits in the bottom floor of an art deco building on a corner in downtown Palo Alto, several blocks from the Stanford campus. The surrounding streets boast a collection of restaurants, cafรฉs, wine bars, and retail spaces, so even people who havenโt received invitations to my exhibit are likely to stop in on their walk to someplace else. That has to be the explanation for why the three adjoining rooms suddenly feel noisy with voices. I only invited a handful of peopleโthe design group from work, my family, and a couple of people who play mahjongg with Tatum and me.
โThis is amazing!โ Becca and Blake are the first of my family members to arrive, which surprises me because they donโt live nearby, and Becca is reliably late. Theyโre joined a minute later by Isla and Tatum who drove together. โOwen sends his love, and his regrets. Heโs stuck in Napa. Some issue at one of the wine cellars.
โDonovan too. Away game tomorrow, and theyโre en route.โ
โOh, no regrets. Iโm so happy youโre all here. And a little freaked out, honestly, to have this many people looking at my artwork.โ
โBut your paintings are beautiful. Theyโre lucky to see them, Iโm so proud of you,โ Sarah says, hugging me. โBradenโs at the station, so Iโm going to spend all our money and buy a big canvas for our house.โ
โOkay, now youโre gonna make me cry, and you know how long I spent on my mascara.โ
โHa!โ This from Tatum who squeezes in and hugs me. โIf I learned anything from you, itโs that you always wear waterproof mascara in case of unexpected emotion.
โWow, help a person with her makeup, and she throws it back in your face. Fine. Itโs waterproof. I was being melodramatic.โ
โMelodramatic, you?โ Tatum pretends to look baffled. Sarah leans in and drags her away. โCome help me decide which painting to buy. I heard someone say there are crab puffs and Iโm hungry.โ
โThere are crab puffs. Look for waiters. Theyโre supposed to be mingling,โ I call after them, realizing I havenโt eaten anything since breakfast. Nerves.
The others follow them, and the temporary balloon that lifted my spirits starts to sag again. I know itโs ridiculous to miss Charlie at a moment when I should be celebrating, but I canโt help it. I wish he was here.
But we still havenโt spoken since our blowup the night he brought me here, and heโs respected my request for space. A little too well. Heโs stopped texting and calling after a couple check-ins to ask if I was okay. I hoped that not responding would make me clearheaded enough to avoid hurling myself into the next disastrous decision, as Iโm prone to do.
Now I just miss him.
The thinking has settled my mind in that I know I want two things: to paint as much as possible and to be with Charlie as much as possible. I love him and I need him. Itโs as much a certainty as the sun rising every morning.
I also need to apologize to him for making him the scapegoat of my insecurities, and I havenโt figured out what to say about that yet. But I will.
I glance around and see that the number of people has already doubled in the one room where I stand with an untouched glass of champagne dribbling condensation down my arm. On every white wall within my line of sight, work Iโve painted hangs beneath perfect lighting. Tiny signs indicate the titles and prices of the pieces, but I donโt expect any of them to sell. Itโs my first show, and I feel lucky the gallery owner liked the images I emailed her.
Iโm even luckier that one of her clients had to postpone his show, leaving a three-day opening in the schedule. It felt like a sign when she called to ask if I had enough work and felt ready to mount a show.
The past two weeks have been a blur of paint and canvases during every hour I wasnโt at work. I painted feverishly, blocking out every useless emotion I could and letting the fruitful ones past my walls to guide me.
The result is fourteen canvasses, many of them large enough to command a wall on their own, all replete with deep jewel tones, abstract lines, and intense themes of renewal and hope. I have no idea where those feelings came from because I felt a lot of despair. But painting kept me from spending all my waking hours worrying that Iโd destroyed the best friendship Iโve ever had.
Now, when I look at each painting, I canโt help but feel the memory of the headspace I was in when I painted it. They all reflect some aspect of Charlieโkinship, love, and heartbreakโ and those are three things Iโd rather not focus on tonight, so I need to stop looking.
That leaves me staring into my champagne with little enthuโ siasm for it. Sylvia, the gallery owner, sweeps over to me, her navy layered caftan grazing the tops of brown rugged boots. Her gray hair is impeccably styled in its pageboy and her lips are redder than mine.
โSo far, so good, love. Itโs a success. Youโre a success.โ She kisses me on the cheek and moves on to speak to a tall man in a navy suit who beckons her over with a question.
The words echo in her wake as I try to figure out whether sheโs just being nice. What constitutes a success at one of these gallery nights? A big crowd of mostly-strangers? Iโm just proud of myself for taking a step toward feeling like a legitimate artist.
*****
Review:
Cherry is a fun-loving, free-spirited artist who unfortunately doesn’t have a whole lot of faith in herself. She’s working as a designer but her heart yearns to make art, she just doesn’t think it’s good enough to show the world. Charlie feels the weight of his obligations and has lost some of his enjoyment of his work. Smitten from his first glimpse of Cherry, captivated by her vibrancy and joyous laugh, he’s been waiting for a chance to meet her for real.
From a disastrous first date to a lovely HEA, I really enjoyed Charlie & Cherry’s story. Travis does a wonderful job of slowly building their friendship, developing romantic feelings, and working on boosting each other up. Full of humor, heat, and lots of emotion, No Match for Her may be my first from this author but if this is any indication of her work it definitely won’t be my last.
(Part of a series but can stand on its own. May be better enjoyed if you know the other siblings’ stories.)
*****
Author Info:
Itโs a rough world out there, and we all sometimes need a good, romantic beach read, even if we canโt make it to the beach. Iโve spent many lazy days walking the streets of Paris and other gorgeous European cities, and if Iโm doing it right, Iโm bringing you a dash of romance and a vacay fantasy.
I canโt sit still, so when Iโm not hiking, biking or running, Iโm playing a very average game of tennis. Background music for writing undoubtedly features some U2, Lizzo, Billy Joel, Pink, Taylor Swift, and Led Zeppelin. Not necessarily in that order. And if I could only eat one food group, it would be cheese. Or wine. Or bread. Are those food groups? Whatever.
Romantic Reads and Such 