Falling Hard by HelenKay Dimon
Publisher: Avon Books (5/26/2015)
Series: Bad Boys Undercover, book 2
Genre: Military Romance
Source: Tasty Book Tours
Purchase links || amazon | bn | itunes | kobo | publisher || add to goodreads
Rating: ★★★★1/2
After a grueling assignment with the black ops force known as the Alliance, Weston Brown is craving downtime. Instead, he's pulled into his deadliest operation, in the one place he never wanted to see again. No-nonsense and so damn hot, Lexi Turner lied to get him to her mountain clinic in Pakistan. But the threat is terrifyingly real.
Lexi has been asking too many questions, drawing the wrong kind of attention. As soon as she lays eyes on West, she can tell he's quiet—yet tough—and has a rescue complex which will come in handy for going up against the world's most ruthless gunrunners.
Cut off from the rest of the Alliance, Lexi and West navigate the brutal terrain and a primal sexual attraction. Sticking around has never been West's way, but now he'll use every resource to keep Lexi by his side, safe from a killer who leaves no loose ends behind.
about HelenKay || HelenKay Dimon is a former divorce attorney turned full-time romance author. Odd transition, right? She has sold over thirty novels, novellas and shorts to numerous publishers, including Kensington, Harlequin and Penguin, Samhain, Carina Press, and HarperCollins. Her nationally bestselling and award-winning books have been showcased in numerous venues and her books have twice been named "Red-Hot Reads" and excerpted in Cosmopolitan magazine. But the best part of the job is never having to wear pantyhose.
The whole attack probably took less than two minutes, but it dragged in West’s head. He lived every second in slow motion. Always did.
Suddenly he was facing down the barrel of a nasty assault weapon. An AK-103 or something similarly problematic in the hands of someone aiming it at his head. To add to the fun, this one had a grenade launcher attached to it. Which was just fucking fabulous.
West’s gaze traveled over the shaking arms to the white-knuckle grip on the plastic. Then to her face. A brunette of the shockingly hot variety. Not that he cared about that on a job.
He didn’t like shooting women, but he would. He had. An enemy was an enemy, and he waited to see if that’s the tack the victim-turned-potential-attacker took.
“Two roads diverged.” She spit out the not-so-random sentence, and the dark energy spinning around the room eased.
“Well, damn,” West whispered, stunned to hear the code from her.
Josiah lowered his gun as he finished the agreed-upon signal. The one the doctor provided and insisted on, citing faulty short-term memory and a love or Robert Frost. “Sorry I could not travel both.”
She blew out a long breath as the stiffness across her shoulders eased. “Thank God you’re here.”
West tagged her as American but definitely not male, which made little sense under the circumstances. But she wasn’t firing at random, so he considered that a bit of good luck.
Still, a potential novice with a weapon was an invitation to get his nuts blown off, and he sure as hell didn’t agree to that when he signed Alliance’s employment contract. “Ma’am, I need to you put that gun down.”
She blinked a few times before her gaze went to her hands. It was as if she forgot she took it off the dead guy when he dropped it. “Why?”
West chalked the confusion up to the chaos of the last few minutes. Still, shock and bullets rarely mixed well. “I don’t want to be shot.”
Her chin came up as she nodded at him. “That makes two of us, so you lower your weapon first.”
Okay, chaos or not, her attempt to order him around was pretty fucking hot. Kind of brave, too. “No.”
Not dropping his guard, West took a second to study her. Long hair, half in and half out of a ponytail, huge whiskey brown eyes, and the sexiest pouty mouth he’d ever seen. He couldn’t make out her frame under the olive pants and oversized long-sleeve tee but he guessed curvy.
Not just pretty but lose-the-ability-to-spell sexy. Of course that could be the gun. Something about a woman holding a weapon turned him on, sick twist that he was.
“I’m not really giving you a choice,” he said, more to stall than anything else.
Josiah moved in, step by small step, as if not to scare or rattle her. Pretty soon two trained men would almost be on top of her, and then it was just a matter of time until one of them wrestled the weapon away from her.
And that’s how it would end because there was no way West was heading back home after this and listening to the shit he would get from Bravo if he let a hot brunette get the jump on him and take a shot. He had a badass shoot-anything reputation to uphold.
“At this distance I can blow your balls off,” she said, looking ready to do just that.
Then again . . . “Okay, that’s a solid argument.”
{ review } .
HelenKay Dimon has done it again.In the previous book of the series, I loved Ford. Absolutely adored him... which was saying a lot for me, because I detest deception stories and Ford built his relationship with Shay around lies -- and I say 'around' because there was truth to his feelings... he just wasn't completely truthful about who he was.
In PLAYING DIRTY, we had a not so easy mission, and now in FALLING HARD, Ford's friend and Alliance buddy, West, just wants to take a vacation...
...instead, he's on a mission to rescue a doctor in a country he didn't want to step foot in ever again. But instead of a doctor? He encounters the good doc's daughter.
... ... and she can hold a gun like no one's business.
I loved that when West first lays eyes on Lexi, his thought process goes from gun/mission/fierce, to "A brunette of the shockingly hot variety". I'm not sure why, but that made the man 1,000x more human to me. That thought made him a man, and not just some over-zealous romance book hero -- because let's be honest, it's a very male thought process.
After the rescue, West and Lexi spend the next few days getting to know eachother -- and not in the normal type of variety, but the guns blazing and running from rebels kind. Lexi signaled West's team to come to rescue -- something that irks West simply because it wasn't her code to use. When he learns her reasoning, he agrees to her mission -- for reasons as simple as she's in a world of trouble.
What I most appreciated was that West (again, his thoughts were just so on par for me) knew that their relationship had been a fast one; surely after just a few days, Lexi wouldn't want to commit to him forever.
I loved how strong-willed Lexi was; she wasn't a back-down kind of female. She gave as good as she got. Equally, I loved that even though West was very much a man's-man, he had his insecurities -- finding your The One can do that to you.
I certainly enjoy my military romances, and this is one of those series that is very much a must-read for me..!
for more review & tour goodies,
{ previous reviews in series } .
PLAYING DIRTY { review here } .
{ giveaway } .
Thank you so much for hosting FALLING HARD
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