Book picks similar to
Dirty Tactics by Emma Salah


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The Write Escape


Charish Reid - 2019
    That was then. Now Antonia is jobless, alone and at a crossroads. What better time to travel the world? A solo honeymoon on the Emerald Isle will be like hitting the reset button. No distractions, no drama.Add some luck o’ the IrishAiden Byrnes may be a literature professor, but words fail him when he meets the woman staying in the cottage next door. Tully Cross is meant to be a sleepy little village, and he’s meant to be on a working holiday—not a vacation, and most definitely not with his beautiful neighbor.And you get some mighty good craicThey say laughter is the best medicine—and as it turns out, superhot sex isn’t so bad either. Antonia and Aiden’s spark quickly grows into what could be something special, if they’re willing to take the leap. Ending up an ocean apart is unthinkable, and when real life comes calling, there’s no ignoring that leap anymore…

Mine


Kenya Wright - 2018
     He would do anything to protect her. For Hunter, guarding celebrities and moguls has always been easy, but watching over Zola could be the one job that ruins him. She’s a different type of danger—the sort that could break his heart. Although they grew up together, in their adult years, they lost contact. Now, Zola is an up-and-coming runway model and has a psychotic stalker who's been ransacking her apartment and sending threatening letters. Hunter rushes to New York to protect her. He’s the best in the business, but one couldn’t tell as his desires for Zola get in the way of him doing his job. What happens between them is scorching hot and could set the entire operation up in flames. With every hungry glance, every accidental caress, Hunter begins breaking rules. But the threat is going nowhere, and the days get more and more dangerous. As Hunter gets closer to finding Zola's psycho stalker, he’s wondering if falling in love could be the greatest risk of all.

Intercepted


Alexa Martin - 2018
    But there's a new player on the horizon, and he's in a league of his own...Marlee Harper is the perfect girlfriend. She's definitely had enough practice by dating her NFL-star boyfriend for the last ten years. But when she discovers he has been tackling other women on the sly, she vows to never date an athlete again. There's just one problem: Gavin Pope, the new hotshot quarterback and a fling from the past, has Marlee in his sights.Gavin fights to show Marlee he's nothing like her ex. Unfortunately, not everyone is ready to let her escape her past. The team's wives, who never led the welcome wagon, are not happy with Marlee's return. They have only one thing on their minds: taking her down. But when the gossip makes Marlee public enemy number one, she worries about more than just her reputation.Between their own fumbles and the wicked wives, it will take a Hail Mary for Marlee and Gavin's relationship to survive the season.

Breaking His Rules


Aliza Mann - 2019
    Ashton Lyle is a man in control. His rules are simple:Discipline.Hard work.No deviation.And lucky for him no one is able to resist his mega-watt smile, dazzling wit, sexy British accent, and ability to manipulate any situation in business . . . and in bed.That is, until he meets a woman with rules of her own. Terra Ellis is a self-made woman who knows what she wants.A successful entrepreneur, she has worked hard to cultivate an impeccable image.A tumultuous relationship with her ex-husband has reinforced her drive but it has also made her question serious relationships.After all, a busy woman has no time for romance.That is, until Terra meets a man who sees through her façade. Ashton and Terra are about to discover that some rules were made to be broken. . . . This ebook includes an excerpt from another Loveswept title.

The Fastest Way to Fall


Denise Williams - 2021
    Plans change and it’s unclear if love, career, or both will meet them at the finish line. Britta Colby works for a lifestyle website, and when tasked to write about her experience with a hot new body-positive fitness app that includes personal coaching, she knows it’s a major opportunity to prove she should write for the site full-time. As CEO of the FitMe app, Wes Lawson finally has the financial security he grew up without, but despite his success, his floundering love life and complicated family situation leaves him feeling isolated and unfulfilled. He decides to get back to what he loves—coaching. Britta’s his first new client and they click immediately.As weeks pass, she’s surprised at how much she enjoys experimenting with her exercise routine. He’s surprised at how much he looks forward to talking to her every day. They convince themselves their attraction is harmless, but when they start working out in person, Wes and Britta find it increasingly challenging to deny their chemistry and maintain a professional distance.Wes isn’t supposed to be training clients, much less meeting with them, and Britta’s credibility will be sunk if the lifestyle site finds out she’s practically dating the fitness coach she’s reviewing. Walking away from each other is the smartest thing to do, but running side by side feels like the start of something big.

The Love Con


Seressia Glass - 2021
    She finally has a chance to make it big when she joins the reality show competition Cosplay or No Way.There's just one catch: the challenge for the final round is all about iconic pairs, and the judges want the contestants' significant others to participate. Unfortunately, Kenya is as single as can be at the moment. Luckily her best friend, Cameron Lassiter, agrees to be her fake boyfriend for the show. Roleplaying a couple in love will force them to explore what they're hiding under the mask of friendship. Can Kenya and Cam fake it until she makes it, or will she be real about her feelings, knowing it could cost her the best friend she's ever had?

Here to Stay


Adriana Herrera - 2020
    Left with a massive—by NYC standards, anyway—apartment and a car lease in the scorching Texas heat, Julia is struggling…except that’s not completely true. Running the charitable foundation of one of the most iconic high fashion department stores in the world is serious #lifegoals.It’s more than enough to make her want to stick it out down South.The only monkey wrench in Julia’s plans is the blue-eyed, smart-mouthed consultant the store hired to take them public. Fellow New Yorker Rocco Quinn’s first order of business? Putting Julia’s job on the chopping block.When Julia is tasked with making sure Rocco sees how valuable the programs she runs are, she’s caught between a rock and a very hard set of abs. Because Rocco Quinn is almost impossible to hate—and even harder to resist.

The Roommate Risk


Talia Hibbert - 2018
    What she doesn’t believe in is love. Her life is perfect without all that romance rubbish—until a plumbing disaster screws everything up and leaves Jas homeless. Luckily, she has someone to turn to: her best friend Rahul.For seven years, Rahul Khan has followed three simple rules.* Don’t touch Jasmine if you can help it.* Don’t look at her arse in that skirt.* And don’t ever—ever—tell her you love her.He should’ve added another rule: Do not, under any circumstances, let Jas move into your house. Now Rahul is living with the friend he can’t have, and it’s decimating his control. He knows their shared dinners aren’t dates, their late-night kisses are a mistake, and the tenderness in Jasmine’s gaze is only temporary. One wrong word could send his skittish best friend running.So why is he tempted to risk it all?This book was previously published as Wanna Bet?. The Roommate Risk is a steamy, standalone, diverse romance. This book is 75,000 words of fluff, angst, and extreme pleasure, with NO cliffhangers, NO cheating, and a guaranteed HEA. Please be aware: this story contains themes of parental neglect and abandonment, parental death, and alcohol dependence that could trigger certain audiences.

Rafe: A Buff Male Nanny


Rebekah Weatherspoon - 2018
    Sloan Copeland needed was someone to watch her kids. What she found was the man of her dreams…After a nasty divorce and a thousand mile move, Dr. Sloan Copeland and her twin daughters are finally getting the hang of their new life in Los Angeles. When their live-in nanny bails with no warning, Sloan is left scrambling to find a competent caretaker to wrangle her smart, sensitive girls. Nothing less will do.Enter Rafe Whitcomb. He's all of those things, not to mention good-natured and one heck of a whiz in the kitchen. He's also tall, and handsome, and bearded, and ripped, and tatted, wrist to neck. It doesn't take long for the Copelands to invite Rafe into their home. Just as quickly, both Sloan and Rafe find themselves succumbing to a heady mutual attraction, neither of them wants to deny. With every minute they spend under the same roof, this working mom can't help but wonder if Rafe can handle all her needs...

Getting His Game Back


Gia de Cadenet - 2022
    I loved it!"--Chantel Guertin, author of InstamomKhalil Sarda went through a rough patch last year, but now he's nearly back to his old self. All he has to do is keep his "stuff" in the past. Real men don't have depression and go to therapy--or, at least they don't admit it. He's ready to focus on his growing chain of barbershops, take care of his beloved Detroit community, and get back to being the ladies' man his family and friends tease him for being. It'll be easy . . . until Vanessa throws him completely off his game.Vanessa Noble is too busy building a multimillion-dollar tech career as a Black woman before age thirty to be distracted by a relationship. Not to mention, she's been burned before, still dealing with the lingering hurt of a past breakup. Besides, as her friends often remind her, she'll never find a man who checks all the boxes on her famous List. Yet when she desperately needs a shape-up and happens upon one of Khalil's barbershops, the Fade, he makes her reconsider everything. Khalil is charming, intelligent, sexy, and definitely seems like he'd treat a woman right . . . but he's not Black.Vanessa may be willing to take a chance on Khalil, but a part of him is frustratingly closed off, just out of her reach. Will old patterns emerge to keep them apart? Or have they both finally found a connection worth throwing away the playbook for?

Hike, Hike, Baby


Xavier Neal - 2019
     Yasmine Pause, take a breath, and glisten... That's the better way to phrase Yasmine Brown sweating to death on her first hike, which is, obviously her punishment for being too cheap or too stubborn to buy the outdoor-loving woman she calls her best friend a stupid gift. Most people are willing to accept her famous baked desserts as the perfect present. After all, she is an internationally renowned pastry chef. Unfortunately, that trick doesn't work when your best friend is also your employee. One little trek to make the birthday brat happy won't kill her, right? Sutton Halt, take a sip, oh no, she's slippin'... One minute Sutton Thisleton is having a drink, and the next he's helping the most gorgeous woman he's ever crossed paths with out of the small hole she fell into. Most people wouldn't see this as the right opportunity to grab a date. They also wouldn't wander from city to city because the wind seemed to shift them another direction one random afternoon. Good thing he's never been most people. One assisted hop back to the vixen's vehicle won't completely change his life, right? What will happen when these two opposite worlds continuously collide? Will they find a way to create a sweet, long lasting treat together, or will it end with one of them being told to take a permanent hike?

Been There Done That


Hope Ellis - 2020
    Her tenure at the University is in question, funding for her employees uncertain, and her faux-fiancé, Jackson James’s unpredictability is wearing on her last nerve. Just when Zora is convinced things can’t get more complicated, life proves her wrong.What the heck is he doing here?NICK ROSSI’s complicated life is still extremely complicated. He’s used to fighting for everything he has, but he’s also used to winning. Now a man of power and influence, his return to Green Valley after so many years hasn’t gone according to plan, especially with the woman he’s always wanted.She can’t know why I left, or why I’m back.A powerful woman intent on righting the wrongs of the world, Zora doesn’t have time or energy to deal with the man who broke her young heart.A powerful man intent on righting the wrongs of the past, Nick can’t help wanting to protect Zora, even if his devotion is unrequited.Been There Done That is a full-length contemporary romance, can be read as a standalone, and is book #1 in the Leffersbee series, Green Valley World, Penny Reid Book Universe.

The Worst Best Man


Mia Sosa - 2020
    Yeah, the irony isn’t lost on Carolina Santos, either. But despite that embarrassing blip from her past, Lina’s managed to make other people’s dreams come true as a top-tier wedding coordinator in DC. After impressing an influential guest, she’s offered an opportunity that could change her life. There’s just one hitch… she has to collaborate with the best (make that worst) man from her own failed nuptials. Tired of living in his older brother’s shadow, marketing expert Max Hartley is determined to make his mark with a coveted hotel client looking to expand its brand. Then he learns he’ll be working with his brother’s whip-smart, stunning —absolutely off-limits — ex-fiancée. And she loathes him. If they can survive the next few weeks and nail their presentation without killing each other, they’ll both come out ahead. Except Max has been public enemy number one ever since he encouraged his brother to jilt the bride, and Lina’s ready to dish out a little payback of her own. But even the best laid plans can go awry, and soon Lina and Max discover animosity may not be the only emotion creating sparks between them. Still, this star-crossed couple can never be more than temporary playmates because Lina isn’t interested in falling in love and Max refuses to play runner-up to his brother ever again...

Grumpy Jake


Melissa Blue - 2019
    She blames the rumor mill at her school...and, okay, him. His adorable son has only been in preschool, but Jake has already made an impressive dent in dating the unmarried faculty. She's had to hear of his every exploit from the broken hearts he's left behind. She was fine to loathe him from afar, but now his son has entered kindergarten--and she's the teacher. It's going to be a very long school year. Jake Polaski was more than fine to avoid Ms. Thorne after it became clear she was not amused by his very existence. But then they get stuck in an elevator for an evening. He finds out that underneath that baleful glare she always gives him, lies a warm, funny and sexy as hell woman. He does his best to not be smitten after every exchange afterward. His son needs him rational, steadfast...and love is the most uncertain thing. It was the elevator's fault. Had it worked like it should, Bailey would have gone on with her life without seeing why so many of her co-workers had fallen for the grumpy single dad. (It's his dry wit, his playful teasing and the drool-worthy cut of his jawline.) And now she's caught in the way he doles out smiles and the dark depths of his secrets. If nothing else, she knows from rumor there's a clock ticking on their affair before it implodes because things always do with Jake the Rake, but she can't seem to walk away first.

Calling on Quinn


Blue Saffire - 2020
    He likes to check all the boxes, and his niece's gorgeous driving instructor just earned a place at the top of his to-do list.Alicia Rhodes has had a tough, chaotic year, and she's ready to put the past behind her and find happiness in the present. When handsome Quinn Blackhart shows up at a driving lesson, she can see he's the very best kind of trouble—but is she game? Now isn't a great time to get involved with a man—even if he's the most romantic, supportive, understanding, magnificent man she's ever met.So between unfinished business of Alicia's, and a dangerous case threatening the Blackhart family, Quinn is determined to both woo Alicia and keep her safe—which is going to make for one wild, sexy ride.First in a hot new interracial contemporary romance series from bestselling author Blue Saffire!