Review: Red Zone by Sherri Hayes

Red Zone
(Daniels Brothers, #2)
By: Sherri Hayes
Publisher: Smith Publicity
Published: Jan 4, 2013
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Rating:

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After a case ended badly for Rebecca Carson, she’s losing her mind sitting around her apartment waiting on her superiors to allow her to return to work. Since she was a teenager, the only thing she’d ever wanted was to join the FBI. Now that dream was in danger.

Gage Daniels has made a pretty good life for himself. A nice house. A career he loves. As a professional football player, he’s used to getting almost everything he’d ever want with just the snap of his fingers. This includes women. A well-timed smile is usually all it takes to attract the opposite sex, especially in Nashville.

When a stalker threatens Gage, the team owner calls an old friend, Rebecca’s ex-partner Travis Hansen, to help protect his star quarterback and find the person responsible. Hansen offers Rebecca the job, and she jumps at the chance. It’s work, and it will get her out of her apartment. How bad can it be?

Posing as Gage’s girlfriend, however, isn’t as easy as it seems. The man is relentless. Rebecca must work to protect Gage while staving off his advances. She’s there to do a job, nothing more. The last thing she wants is to be another notch on a hotshot athlete’s belt.

As the stalker continues to up the ante, Rebecca finds it harder and harder to keep her distance from Nashville’s star quarterback. He isn’t what she expected in one of the city’s most notorious playboys. Now all she has to do is keep him safe until they can find his stalker, and hope she doesn’t lose her heart in the process.

This was a fun read. You have a hunky football superstar and an attractive FBI agent who’s sent in to be his bodyguard when he gains a stalker. Only, she’s under the guise of being his girlfriend and after a little while living together, the lines sort of get blurred.

Gage was a carefree character. He see’s what he wants and he goes for it. So when hard-ass Rebecca gets thrown on his lap, he isn’t thrilled with having a babysitter but it doesn’t take him long to realize that having a sexy FBI agent living with you may not be a bad thing after all. Pretty soon he sets his sights on Rebecca and it isn’t until about halfway through that she decides to throw caution to the win and have a little fun.

Even though I enjoyed the story I didn’t connect with it as much as I would have liked. I thought for sure I’d fall in love with this story considering I seem to be a sucker for athletic romances but that just didn’t happen for me. However, even with the suspense of the stalker targeting not only Gage but Rebecca as well, I found myself bored in certain parts. There were parts where there wasn’t a lot going on and Rebecca had a lot of inner dialog over her job and feelings for Gage.

My interest was however really peaked when Gage brings Rebecca and her sister to his parent’s house for Thanksgiving. We get to meet his whole family but what really grabbed my attention was Megan and Gage’s older brother, Paul. Paul’s wife passed away leaving him with a little one to take care of. The little girl takes immediately to Rebecca’s sister. So when the ball is dropped that Gage’s older brother is in desperate need of a nanny, Rebecca’s sister steps in a before you know it, she’s taking off to be a live in nanny. I don’t know why I was so gravitated by their story but I was. I think if the author does a story based off of them I may read it.

It’s no surprise but the trip home was my favorite part.