Lee Harris’s life of championship wrestling, gorgeous women and trekking all over the world to manage his chain of gourmet restaurants is over. A spinal injury puts him in a wheelchair. Despite a will of steel that has seen him through numerous injuries, there is no getting up and walking away from this one. Confused, bitter and angry, Lee resists all efforts of rehabilitation to help him adjust to his new life. Frustration is added to the mix when he meets Cassie, the first woman he wants since his accident. Wants and can’t have.
Cassie Sheppard has never gotten over her crush for the green-eyed, charismatic wrestler, Lee Harris. Now fate puts him within her reach. She is assigned to be his live-in physiotherapist. Despite his coldness toward her she finds herself falling for him more each day. She is determined to break through his stubbornness to help him regain his mobility, sexuality and self-esteem. Even if it costs her a broken heart.
Excerpt:
The wrestling crowd exploded in a deafening, reverberating chant, “Wild Man Harris” as Raymond Lee Harris sauntered toward the ring. Harris” as Raymond Lee Harris sauntered toward the ring.
His red, white, and blue cape swung backwards, caught in the draft of wind generated by two huge, rafter-mounted fans, turned on per his instruction. He stood with a slight smile, eying the crowd from lowered lids, his green eyes made more noticeable by the dark eyeliner he’d applied. It was all part of his signature presentation, hyping his motto of “Wild Man Harris, always ready to fly into action.”
His skin-tight purple trunks hugged his six-foot-four frame, leaving little to the imagination, emphasizing the obvious—Lee “Wild Man” Harris was definitely well endowed.
He lifted a hand in a wave. The gesture exposed the perfection of his muscled upper torso, his broad chest, ripped abs, and perfectly tapered body. He flashed his famous, white-toothed smile to the ladies in the front row, pausing briefly to tease them by flexing his pectorals before blowing them a kiss.
One, a pretty, blonde girl he guessed to be in her late teens, struggled to unhook and wiggle out of her bra. She surprised him by tossing it to him as he drew near her. Laughing, he caught it mid-air, kissed it, and gave her a sexy wink before tossing it back to her.
This kind of over-the-top accolade still astonished him. Ever since he’d won the championship title the year before, it had been this way. Drinking in the adulation, he wondered what his rabid fans would say if they knew this on-stage persona, which he’d worked hard to perpetuate over the years, was contrary to his true personality.
He was actually shy in his everyday world. He preferred reading a good book and cooking a gourmet meal to enjoy at home with his family—his three best friends, or “co-husbands” as he liked to refer to them, and the one lady they all loved and shared in their polyandry nirvana, Kayla.
Yet here, in the midst of this adoring crowd of strangers, his shyness disappeared. He preened as was expected of him, donning that unrestrained personality as easily as he had his cape, to give his fans the show they anticipated. The show he knew they had paid to see. And tonight, he wanted the show to be the best ever, because after this performance, he was retiring from the ring.
He executed his usual agile and flamboyant flip over the ropes to enter the ring. He smoothed his long, chestnut-colored hair back from his face, unhooked his cape, and tossed it to his designated corner before bowing low to the audience.
With his second glance at the upturned faces, he frowned as he spotted Kayla and her other “husbands”—Harm, Luke, and J.J. He wasn’t surprised to see Luke and Harm because he knew they enjoyed wrestling, but Kayla and J.J.? This didn’t make sense. He knew that J.J., the youngest to have been invited into Kayla’s home as part of their alternate lifestyle, preferred ice hockey or boxing or any other sport to wrestling. And Kayla had said more than once she considered wrestling to be barbaric.
Something was wrong—very wrong! He knew it as the bell rang. He stood confused, not moving as the bell rang again.
This time, the ringing was followed by a jarring rendition of his adopted theme song, Hail to the Chief. Everything began to waver as that pulsating, persistent ringing morphed into a sharp pain.
Shaking his head, he glanced down at his friends again, only to discover they had all vanished. Even the crowd was gone. Nothing was left but that damnable ringing and the pain that throbbed behind his eyes.
Lee awoke from the dream with a start, his heart rate accelerating with anxiety. Struggling back to the present, reality hit him with brutal force.
His glory days in the wrestling ring were far behind him. As was his life with Kayla, the woman he had loved. And he no longer was even in contact with the men who had once been not only his co-husbands with Kayla, but his best friends.
The final kicker, the hardest blow of all in this stark, awake reality was that he was now living in the aftermath of a plane crash he had miraculously survived. But that survival had carried a high price.
Author Bio and Links:
Bobbi Cole Meyer is the pen name for Barbara Meyer, who relocated from her hometown of Jackson, Mississippi, to Nashville, Tennessee to pursue a career as a lyricist. Over the years Barbara has had numerous songs she co-wrote cut by major artists such as Tom Jones, Loretta Lynn, Barbara Mandrell, Barbi Benton, Stella Parton, The Soul Shakers, the Poppies, Bandana, Mason Dixon, the Wright Brothers and several others. She also co-wrote the theme song for the Italian movie, Summer Affair, with well-known guitarist and composer, Bucky Barrett.
Now residing in a small town outside Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband, Hank, Barbara is busy pursuing a second career, writing fiction, which she claims is her first love.
Barbara’s slogan is, “grab them with the first paragraph and don’t turn loose until the last period.”
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ReplyDeleteLOVE the excerpt 8D Great blurb, the excerpt of paralysis playing out in Lee's mind is AWESOME. Thanks for the chance to win :)
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