“Sometimes love happens when you least expect it.” That was what my husband’s mistress told me the day I found out about their affair.
I didn’t believe it until five minutes later when mouth-watering celebrity chef Tanner Reese walked up, tossed his arm around my shoulders, and told my cheating husband to take a hike.
Tanner and I couldn’t have been more different. He spent his weekends at clubs, rubbing elbows with fellow A-listers. I spent mine in yoga pants with cheese boards and a glass of wine—or six.Our relationship shouldn’t have worked, but it did. That is until Tanner proved to me that even though love happens when you least expect it...
So does heartbreak.
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We first met Tanner and Rita in The Darkest
Sunrise series. Across the Horizon is a spin off series about second chances that swept me away
from the first chapter and kept the pages turning with the unmistakable
chemistry. This is a stand alone read that gives us dual point of views.
Tanner Reese is the arrogant celebrity chef bother/business partner to Porter Reese.
Rita Laughlin is coming out of a seven year marriage from a self absorbed jerk who cheated on her with a nurse in the very office that she managed. All signs point to Tanner being
the ultimate rebound for Rita. Their chemistry is off the charts however trust certainly becomes a huge hurdle for this emotional couple. Your heart aches as they work through what the heart wants yet the head can't help to stomp on the brakes.
Aly really knows how to reel you in and keep
the pace of her stories captivating and exhilarating. Her character always have
an excellent balance of quick-wit with strong emotional tugs. I have read all her books and Across the
Horizon was certainly a stellar addition to her arsenal. Grab it today and buckle up for the sweet torturous
ride?
4.5 stars all the way!!!
I shifted the phone to my other
ear and asked her, “Did you just get in bed?”
“If, by bed, you mean carrying a
glass of wine out back to swing in the hammock, maybe.”
I bit my bottom lip, my head
falling back against the headrest. For most men, this would have been an
innocuous statement. But for a hammock connoisseur like myself, this was the
normal guy equivalent of her saying that she liked to give blowjobs during halftime.
“You have a hammock out back?”
There was a delay in her
response, which was followed by a subtle kiss of her lips on what I assumed was
a wine glass. “Don’t knock it until you try it. It’s one of the most underrated
luxuries in outdoor furniture.”
“Oh, I’m not knocking anything.
Rope or quilted?”
“Mayan, actually.”
“Oh, sweet heavenly baby Jesus,
she’s beautiful and knows her hammocks. I’ve never been so turned on in my
life.”
She giggled, pausing for another
sip. “You know, if you leaked this hammock fetish to the press, you could
probably increase demand by five million percent and singlehandedly lower the
country’s unemployment rate.”
Okay, so at some point during the
day, she’d figured out who I was.
But! Even with this knowledge,
she was trying to avoid a date with
me and was not elbow-deep in planning our televised wedding. This was a
definite plus in my book.
“Yeah, but then, when I talked to
beautiful women like yourself, I’d have no idea if the hammock was your idea or
a ploy to impress me.”
“Jeez, that’s sad, Tanner,” she
said, her sweet Southern accent like a wave rolling over my name.
I’d meant it as a joke, but it
was the absolute truth when it came to dating. Early on in my career, I’d done
a rapid-fire interview about my personal life. One of the questions had been:
What would your ideal woman order on the first date? Truth be told, the only
thing I hoped my ideal woman would order was something she wanted. I didn’t factor into that. But I’d been on my last
question in my last interview of the last day of a month-long press tour. My
face had hurt from fake smiling, I’d been in desperate need of a shower, a
smoke, and sleep, and my mind had been mush, so I’d prattled off the first
thing that had come to mind: shrimp and grits.
That one little answer somehow
made it onto my Wiki page, and after that, every woman I’d taken out ordered
shrimp and grits. One of them even had a shellfish allergy and nearly ended up
in the hospital. And this insanity was not limited to women outside of the spotlight.
I’d once gone on a date with
America’s princess of pop, Levee Williams. We’d hit it off at a charity event.
For one of the most famous women in the world, she was a surprisingly nice
girl, gorgeous, and funny as all get out. But the first time I took her out?
One guess what she ordered.
I was at the end of my rope with
dating and lost my freaking mind before storming out like an asshole. That
night, as I was reporting shrimp and fucking grits as an error to Wiki, I
noticed that her page listed it as her favorite food. I’d never had the balls
to contact her again, and I once hid behind a palm tree on Rodeo Drive when I
heard the clamoring of paparazzi calling her name. But that’s neither here nor
there.
In short, while finding a woman
was all too easy, dating was hard.
But that wasn’t about to stop me
from trying with Rita. 
Originally from Savannah, Georgia, USA Today bestselling author Aly Martinez now lives in South Carolina with her four young children. Never one to take herself too seriously, she enjoys cheap wine, mystery leggings, and baked feta. It should be known, however, that she hates pizza and ice cream, almost as much as writing her bio in the third person. She passes what little free time she has reading anything and everything she can get her hands on, preferably with a super-sized tumbler of wine by her side.
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