NEW RELEASE
Book Title: The Score
Author and Publisher: Beth Bolden
Cover Artist: The Book Brander Boutique
Release Date: October 25, 2023
Genre: Contemporary MM sports romance
Tropes: bad boy reformed, forced proximity, fake boyfriend, roommates to friends to lovers
Themes: found family, trust issues, mental health, love versus lust
Heat Rating: 4 flames
Length: 100 000 words
It is book number three in a spinoff series.
Buy Links - Available in Kindle Unlimited
Universal Link | Amazon US | Amazon UK
Blurb
Carter Maxwell knows he’s a screwup. Four teams in three seasons tells the story, as much as he wishes it didn’t.
But finally, he’s landed in a good place, where he likes the team and the team actually likes him. Even the Condors' current rebuilding mode suits him. There’s a new owner. New coach. New players. New rules.
But one rule hasn’t changed: don’t seduce your agent-appointed c*ckblocker.
Ian Parker agrees to live with Carter and keep him on the straight and narrow for one simple reason: Alec, the agent in charge of cleaning up Carter’s reputation, has promised him something Ian wants very, very badly.
Even more badly than Carter naked above him and below him and next to him.
A chance for Ian to become an agent.
But Ian didn’t take into account just how persuasive Carter is—or just how desperately he desires to be persuaded. Or how, while spending time with Carter, they’ll somehow stumble into a fake relationship that begins to feel all too real.
It doesn’t matter that Carter’s never fallen in love or that he’s never been in a real relationship. It doesn’t matter that Ian’s risking his future as an agent.
He’s determined to score the impossible and reform the bad boy—only after encouraging Carter to misbehave one last time. But this time, only with him.
Excerpt
“Wait a sec,” Ian said, standing too, but reaching out and casually catching Carter’s arm. “I know this is going to be awkward, me being around all the time. I just wanted to acknowledge that, first off.”
“Is it?” Carter really hadn’t thought much about it; honestly, he’d been too busy trying to figure out how to get around rule number one.
“Well, yeah, in my experience it is. Most people who run into us together are going to want an explanation. Your friends. The players here. The coaches. The staff. Anyone you meet.”
“And what? I shouldn’t tell them why you’re really around?”
“I’m…” Ian hesitated again. “I know what my previous clients and I would do. We’d discuss ahead of time what role I’d be playing. Often, since I was in LA, they were well known, so it was easy to pass me off as a personal assistant or a friend. But here—”
“Nobody’s gonna have a personal assistant around them all the time,” Carter said. “Especially not me.”
Ian looked surprised again.
“What,” Carter retorted, “I’m not an idiot, okay.”
The frost in Ian’s expression melted a little more. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you were.”
“You wouldn’t be the first,” Carter said wryly. “Why can’t we just tell people what you really are?”
“You’d be okay with that?”
Carter realized with a jolt that the person who was really worried about this wasn’t him, the way Ian was concerned about, but Ian himself.
Wasn’t that interesting?
“It’s hardly like people don’t know my reputation,” Carter said.
“Oh. Alright. Well, that’s your choice.”
“We can just say you’re my what…companion?”
“If that’s the word you want to use,” Ian said.
But as they walked out of the conference room, Carter couldn’t shake the feeling that Ian was the one who was preoccupied with not only what to call himself, but maybe even what kind of position he’d be occupying in Carter’s life.
As they walked down the hall, and Carter pushed the down elevator button, to take it to the lower level and the team cafeteria, Ian turned to him and said, “Well, you getting shut down by half the team is pretty good news for rule number one.”
Carter rolled his eyes. “Not when I could go to the Pirate’s Booty or any other bar or restaurant or coffee shop in the city and find someone to pick up in point five seconds.”
“Modest, much?”
“Listen, you wanted honesty, that’s the honest truth right there.” Carter had sex because it was easy, yes, and it also helped stem the tide of his temper. Maybe if sex had been harder for him to come by, he’d have found something else to use.
But sex was easy, for him, so sex it was.
Or at least it had been sex.
Carter mournfully poured one out for all the great sex he wasn’t going to be having in the next few months.
About the Author
A lifelong Pacific Northwester, Beth Bolden has just recently moved to North Carolina with her supportive husband. Beth still believes in Keeping Portland Weird, and intends to be just as weird in Raleigh.
Beth has been writing practically since she learned the alphabet. Unfortunately, her first foray into novel writing, titled Big Bear with Sparkly Earrings, wasn’t a bestseller, but hope springs eternal. She has published over forty novels and novellas.
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