Tricia Lynne’s UNLOVEABULLS series is continuing this February with MODEL BEHAVIOR but in the meantime, we’re taking a look at the first book in her standalone series, PROTECTIVE INSTINCT!
Title: Protective Instinct
Author: Tricia Lynne
Genre: Contemporary Romance
About Protective Instinct:
If NFL player Brody Shaw wants to retire from his hometown team, the Dallas Bulldogs, he needs to keep his head down and his nose clean. When the stray dog he rescued bites the pet sitter, it sets off an avalanche of bad publicity, and it’s time to bring in a professional.
Dog-trainer Lily Costello has no intention of training Brody’s dog, CC—football players are bad news, and Brody Shaw is a player if she’s ever met one. Then she sees the brand on CC’s stomach. She came from a puppy mill—the very one Lily is trying to find and shut down.
Brody is all in to help the curvy trainer, and with his clout and connections, Lily finally has a lead. But it’s not long before they attract the wrong kind of attention. When someone makes it clear that they’ll stop at nothing to halt the search, it’ll take everything Brody and Lily have to escape with their lives…
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
My review:
Protective Instinct is the first book in the new The Unlovabulls series. It was fast-paced and had a mystery that kept my attention until the end. Brody Shaw was a football player and was trying to keep himself out of trouble so he could retire from his team, Dallas Bulldogs. When he finds a stray dog and it bites the dog sitter, he knew he needed to find a professional dog trainer to help him. Lily Costello’s father was a famous football player and she knew they were trouble and didn’t date them. Rescuing dogs was her life’s passion and when she goes to help with Brody’s dog, she notices the brand on its stomach. She has been trying to locate the puppy mill that uses that brand and shut it down. Brody and some of their friends help her to investigate but when they start getting closer to locating it Lily starts to get threating notes. There were plenty of twists and turns in the story and it kept the reader wondering until the very end. This was a great book to start the series with and I look forward to the next book.
I received an ARC and am voluntarily leaving a review. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Get Your Copy Today:
About Model Behavior:
Hayes Walker is screwed.
His body is giving out, his family is bleeding him dry, and he never prepared for life after football. When the Dallas Bulldogs offer him a coaching position instead of a returning roster spot, only two things keep him going—staying fit in case another football team picks him up, and spending time with a gray-faced Boxer at the Unlovabulls Dog Rescue.
Olive Russo is a woman who can walk through a kennel in a white pantsuit without getting a spot on her. The always organized PR pro will need her cool control when she’s forced to plan a fundraising gala for the Unlovabulls with the college boyfriend who turned her inside out. A decade ago, Hayes Walker broke her heart and sent Olive into a spiral of bad decisions that she’d rather her clients not know about. Now she is determined to keep the completely lickable Hayes off her to-do list—even if their chemistry is stronger than ever.
Dumping Olive was the worst decision Hayes ever made. When the amazing girl walks back into his life a full-fledged woman, he makes a play for her heart. But when Olive’s secrets are exposed and the NFL knocks on Hayes’s door, they’ll both need to leave their past where it belongs if they’re going to make it work the second time around.
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Exclusive Excerpt:
“Pulling the curtain to the side, I watched as he fired a tennis ball the length of the room. “I thought you played defense. That looked like a quarterback threw it.”
“Huh, played being the operative word. And no, that didn’t look like a quarterback threw it, but you always were kind.”
Sadie dropped the ball at his feet. “Do you miss it?”
He picked it up and threw it again. “Playing? Yes. What playing did to my body? Hell, no.”
I watched after Sadie as I stood next to Hayes. “I bet she’d have made a great Frisbee dog, maybe even fly ball, when she was younger.”
“They always say shit like that about us has-beens, don’t they, girl? Drop it.” He scratched her head, and Sadie spit out the ball. “If only we were younger, if only our knees still had all their cartilage. If only time didn’t march on and forget about us.” He stared at the ball in his hands with a distance in his gaze. Sadie sat patiently, looking up at the man she so obviously loved with soft brown eyes and a face going white with age. These two needed each other.
Gently, I pulled the ball from Hayes’s hand and gave Sadie a scratch. Then I launched it across the room. She looked after it but didn’t go. “Oh, Hayes. This little girl is sweet on you.”
That made the laugh lines appear around his eyes. “Go get it, sweetheart.”
Finally, she darted out after it.
“I’m sorry about football. I just want you to know that you are so much more than the game. I’ve always thought that.” Today couldn’t have been easy on him, at an event with players who used to be his teammates, but now he coached them.
Hayes nodded. “I mean, yeah. I’m a football player. I’ll always be a football player. But it’s the way it got taken away from me, and the reason I even played so long in the first place.” He shook his head. “I loved playing. I wanted to play solely because I loved it, and I wanted to leave on my terms. That didn’t happen. Sometimes I’m a little jealous of Brody for that.”
Sadie brought the ball back to me, but I noticed her starting to limp a little on her right hind leg. “All done, sweetheart.” Breathing heavy, her black coat shined in the light as she circled and lay down next to Hayes’s leg. I studied his face. The lines etched into his forehead. The aching set of his jaw. This man was broken, but weren’t we all a little damaged?
Creating second chances for people was part of my job…”
About the Author:
Tricia Lynne is fluent in both sarcasm and cuss words and has little filter between her brain and mouth––a combination that tends to embarrass her husband at corporate functions. A tomboy at heart, she loves hard rock, Irish whiskey, and her Midwestern roots. She’s drawn to strong, flawed heroines, and believes writing isn’t a decision one makes, but a calling one can’t resist.
Tricia lives in Dallas with her husband and dogs, and is a co-founder of the All The Kissing blog as well as a contributor to The Curvy Fashionista blog. Be on the look out for her newest, Unruly Behavior, Book one of The Unlovabulls series in December, 2020. Her debut, Moonlight & Whiskey, is available now.
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