UP TO THE CHALLENGE

UP TO THE CHALLENGE                           TERRI OSBURN
Posted: Oct. 20, 2013

 Opposites attract in a sexy tale of unexpected love

When the Dempsey patriarch suffers a heart attack, Lucas Dempsey steps up to keep the doors of the family restaurant open. The proverbial prodigal son returns home to Anchor Island—putting family first and his quest to make partner at his high-powered law firm on hold. Sporting a bruised ego after losing his fiancée to his older brother, Lucas would rather walk on glass than spend six weeks within spitting distance of the happy couple. But family duty calls. And that duty includes working side-by-side with a tantalizing spitfire intent on driving him mad.

Tough-as-nails boat mechanic Sid Navarro is happy to trade her tools for an apron to help the Dempseys in their time of need. That is, until she realizes she’ll be working alongside Lucas, the man she’s loved from afar since she first laid eyes on him in high school. Lucas could charm the paint off a schooner, but Sid knows she doesn’t fit his girl-next-door type. To show her true feelings would mean certain heartbreak, but the temptation of Lucas in her bed might be more than she can resist.

After a rocky start punctuated by verbal barbs and exasperating arguments, things heat up between them—big-time—but their steamy affair turns more than casual in a matter of weeks. Sid’s life has become the dream she’s always wanted, and Lucas has fallen hard for the last woman he ever expected to love.

But this affair has an end-date, as Lucas must return to his life and career in the big city, a place where Sid would never fit in. When the end comes earlier than expected, walking away turns out to be a challenge neither of them wants to win.

Up to the Challenge is a sexy, fast-paced, romantic story of family, island life, and finding love in unexpected places.

MY REVIEW:

UP TO THE CHALLENGE I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED THIS STORY!   Is there any other way to say it?  I don’t think so.  I know that I am a sucker for 1. Love stories, 2. Family sagas and 3. Small town life where everybody minds your business and then some.  But they all love each other while they fight with you loudly.  It’s when their quiet you got to watch your back.  This has it all.

     This story is about Sid Navarro who has been in love/crushing on Lucas Dempsey for oh I don’t know 12 years give or take a year.  There is just one small problem he just doesn’t really notice her and when he does he doesn’t like what he sees.  She is a little crude, a matter of fact, unsociable and she has an odd job she is a mechanic.  To say she is a tomboy is an understatement. 

     Lucas on the other had couldn’t wait to get off the island of Anchor that they were raised on.  He left for college and never came home he went on to be a successful lawyer.  He has always been interested in the type of girl those lawyers types like you know the girl next door.  All the things Sid is not.  So, she just stays close with his family they all knew from his high school years that she loved him.  So, they brought her in as one of the family as well as her brother since they had no one but the two of them.  So, she worked for his brother and helped out his parents at times at the restaurant.  Then the unthinkable happens his dad has a heart attack.

     Lucas comes home to help out.  He takes over the running of the restaurant and he parents have him working with guess who?  That’s right, Sid.  After a lot of verbal barbs and heated arguments where feelings start to come at the two of them from out of nowhere when they least expect them.  They decided that they want to be two consenting adults in a sexual relationship that they know will end in 6 weeks when Lucas leaves.  But can these two hearts that have been damaged so badly in the past really be that casual about something so sensual?  You will have to read and see and you will not be sorry you did.  I wasn’t.  I flew through those 350 words like they were nothing.  I know you will too.