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Monday, November 1, 2021
[New post] Before And After You by Hope Ellis _ Blog Tour & Review
Onceupon_a_bookdream posted: " Before and After You, an all-new heartfelt small town romance from Hope Ellis, is LIVE in Kindle Unlimited! Leigh D'Alessandro is a fighter. She fought to escape her dysfunctional family, to end a soul-killing marriage, and to buil"
Before and After You, an all-new heartfelt small town romance from Hope Ellis, is LIVE in Kindle Unlimited!
Leigh D'Alessandro is a fighter. She fought to escape her dysfunctional family, to end a soul-killing marriage, and to build a new life in a small Tennessee town. When the fate of the community hospital she works for is threatened, she's primed and ready for battle. What she can't fight any longer is her unshakable attraction to her best friend's brother, who has a notorious reputation and triggers all her worst fears about trust and betrayal.
Walker Leffersbee is a lover. At least that's the reputation he's built in his hometown. Scion of a prosperous Tennessee banking family, he's a known ladies' man and a confirmed bachelor. His hands are full as he juggles competing demands from his family's bank and his growing property renovation business. The last thing he needs is to give in to his long-standing craving for his sister's headstrong and hot-tempered best friend. Especially because she's the only one who knows the secret that threatens to upend his life.
When a home renovation project brings them too close for comfort, they both struggle to withstand the growing heat. As they grow closer helping each other navigate family minefields, Walker learns that love is not a four-letter word, and Leigh realizes that some battles are meant to be lost.
But Walker's secret is the one thing that could keep them apart, unless they both decide to fight for the love they never looked for but now can't live without.
'Before and After You' is a contemporary romance and can be read as a standalone. Book #2 in the Leffersbee series, Green Valley Chronicles, Penny Reid Book Universe.
I stopped in my tracks, my breath catching in my throat.
Walker Leffersbee.
Damn it.
Indecision glued my feet to the floor, halting my progress as I stared at his frozen profile. I briefly considered turning the opposite way and retracing the same route I'd used coming down.
It wasn't that I didn't want to see him.
That wasn't the case.
Well, not exactly.
But there were several reasons why his sudden appearance was damned inconvenient.
First, Walker was the older brother of my best friend in the world, Zora Leffersbee. But I didn't consider Walker to be my brother, not by any stretch of the imagination. Through all the years we'd known each other, our relationship had continually evolved. He was as supportive of me as he was of Zora. But we both knew he didn't think of me as a sister.
Which led to the second problem.
Walker Leffersbee was sexy. Sexy as hell. The kind of sexy that always took my brain captive with the grimy bass line of a 90s R&B song and thickened my blood for the heat of inevitable battle. We were always locked in some kind of mental combat, our traded barbs and jabs never quite masking the powerful current of attraction between us. He would have been easy to ignore if my attraction to him were based solely on his physicality. I'd bounced on more than one pretty man in my day and managed to keep my brain cells unscrambled. But he was hot as hell with all those intriguing layers. Damn it. I didn't have brain space to deal with Walker right now.
"Leigh?"
I stiffened, surfacing from my thoughts. Walker straightened and ambled closer. He moved with the lumbering grace exclusive to big men, a very slight bowleggedness lending his walk a kind of deliberate, sexy swagger. Advancing, he squinted slightly as if trying to make me out in the muted lighting of the hospital's basement floor. He stopped only three feet away from me.
I disciplined my eyes, sternly instructed them away from the just-right fit of Walker's huge shoulders in his white broadcloth shirt. I did not allow my eyes to notice how the tip of his conservative navy tie arrowed the path to his tapered waist and the slightest imprint of powerful thighs just visible in his dark slacks. I refused to dwell on how beautifully his perfectly sculpted dark goatee contrasted with the deep mahogany of his skin.
My fingers clenched against the empty wish for a cigarette.
He wasn't nearly as circumspect, making no effort to disguise the frank assessment in the gaze that slowly crawled upwards from my clogs in slow degrees. I didn't miss the banked heat in his eyes when his stare finally met mine.
"Golden Boy," I said, feeling a perverse pleasure at having launched the opening salvo and earning the answering curl at the corner of his lip. He hated that name, I knew. Hated it whenever I reminded of him of who he was. Son of the richest man in the county, heir apparent to a growing banking empire in Tennessee. Why this bothered him, I'd never know. It was hardly a secret, not with him and his father on billboards advertising his family's bank around Knoxville and Nashville. But that didn't make it any less fun to pick at him.
"Umbridge."
I feigned surprise. "What, have you exhausted all the Disney villains? We're into the Harry Potter lexicon now?"
His answering smile was sharp and wicked. "You know, there are just so many names for the devil. I don't think I'll ever come up empty-handed when it comes to you."
"Good to know. What are you doing here?" I flicked a pointed glance at the doorway to Radiology he'd evidently just come through, and I noticed the orange paper had somehow disappeared into his pocket by the time he greeted me.
And … cue the third complication.
Walker Leffersbee and I shared a secret, and seeing him here had just made it much more, well, complicated.
About Hope Ellis
USA Today bestselling author Hope Ellis is a health outcomes researcher by day and writes romances featuring sexy nerds by night. She hopes to one day conquer her habit of compulsively binge-watching The Office.
Before and After You by Hope Ellis is the second Lefferbees book in the Smartypants Universe. Walker Lefferbee lives a happy life filled with family, a job with his family bank, a profitable side hustle with his best friend and the company of different women when it suits him. Where he comes up short is one woman, Leigh D'Alessandro, his sister's best friend and the one woman who doesn't fall for his charm. Leigh has been living in Tennessee after the collapse of her marriage six years prior. She is in love with her job at the small regional hospital but is now afraid that things may be changing for the worse as a large corporation has purchased it. When Walker begins remodeling his sister's side of the duplex she shares with Leigh, he finds himself getting closer to the prickly woman he's known but never understood for so long. The chemistry between them finally explodes and they find themselves wanting so much more than to keep each other's beds warm. But the future is fickle and Leigh and Walker find themselves at more than one crossroad together.
Walker Lefferbee has tried so hard to be the person everyone needed him to be and it's finally wearing him thin. He finds that Leigh just wants him to be himself and be happy in whatever form that takes. He struggles to find a balance between his ever growing affection for Leigh and balancing his wants/needs with the family business. With his health in question he finds himself finally sticking up for his dreams when it comes to work but comes up short with how to handle his promises to Leigh.
"This. Her. Forever didn't seem nearly as frightening anymore."
Leigh D'Alessandro is a bad*ss woman who doesn't back down from a worthwhile fight. She had to put in the work to get back to the strong person she's always been. Her trust in marriage and commitment may be bruised but Walker manages to scale the high walls of her heart. She finds it in herself to trust that he has good intentions and that even though it may be scary and could end up hurting, loving him is worth it. She has her work cut out for her though because between trying to bring down a major hospital purchase and Walker struggling with his new normal, she's got a full plate. She doesn't back down from either when everything seems bleak which has me respecting the heck out of her.
"I knew what I was feeling for him, and I knew there was no escaping it."
Leigh and Walker's story was not just about them finding a way to trust loving each other. It was about the importance of family and the struggles that come with working with them. The small town aspects to both the hospital and the bank are crucial because both Walker and Leigh are fighting to keep businesses controlled and for the community. With all the fun faces showing up to support them you still get the warm feeling you associate with Green Valley, TN but there are underlying themes of race, gender inequality and corporate America that keep the story relevant and important.
4 stars for Leigh and Walker fighting the good fight for the community and for their future.
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