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Enemies become lovers in this sizzling sports romance about taking a chance on love when life’s taught you it’s a losing game. Oliver Bergman is a beloved rising soccer star, all sunshine smiles and the heart of their team’s spirit. To make matters worse, he’s obscenely attractive. In short: he’s genetically designed to get under misanthropic, miserable Gavin’s aggravated skin. Ten years older than Oliver and a legendary player at the end of his career, Gavin Hayes is the team’s demanding captain. He’s also a giant–albeit gorgeous–grump who lives to rain on Oliver’s parade. Especially when Oliver and Gavin are named co-captains of the team. Sick of their hostility, Coach gives them an ultimatum: put an end to their enmity or say goodbye to being captains. Forced to finally to lower their guards, Gavin and Oliver realize that they also have chemistry off the field and it’s fueled by something much more powerful than competition—an explosive attraction.
Enemies become lovers in this sizzling sports romance about taking a chance on love when life’s taught you it’s a losing game. Oliver Bergman is a beloved rising soccer star, all sunshine smiles and the heart of their team’s spirit. To make matters worse, he’s obscenely attractive. In short: he’s genetically designed to get under misanthropic, miserable Gavin’s aggravated skin. Ten years older than Oliver and a legendary player at the end of his career, Gavin Hayes is the team’s demanding captain. He’s also a giant–albeit gorgeous–grump who lives to rain on Oliver’s parade. Especially when Oliver and Gavin are named co-captains of the team. Sick of their hostility, Coach gives them an ultimatum: put an end to their enmity or say goodbye to being captains. Forced to finally to lower their guards, Gavin and Oliver realize that they also have chemistry off the field and it’s fueled by something much more powerful than competition—an explosive attraction.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the cover
One
Oliver
Playlist: "Capsized," Andrew Bird
I will be the first to admit that I am not my best self when intoxicated. A generally upbeat, sociable guy, I don't seek alcohol for its loose-limbed, easygoing buzz, and after throwing back a few, I don't get it. I simply turn, for lack of better words, into a highly unfiltered emotional mess.
Which is why I will not be drinking this weekend. Nope, not a drop. Not when I've just started to feel like myself again, months after getting my heart crushed. Not when I'm about to spend spring break celebrating my brother's marriage alongside my still-very-much-in-love parents and my six siblings, four of whom are also happily partnered.
Drinking would be a bad choice. Not only because, as I've said, I'm no peach when drunk, but because it won't take much to send me spiraling into the bleak thoughts that have plagued me since my breakup.
"Oliver."
My brother Viggo, so close to me in age and looks that we operate like twins, turns off the rental car's stereo, bathing us in silence.
I glance his way from where I've been staring out the window. "What?"
"I'm talking to you."
"So keep talking."
Viggo sighs and rakes a hand through his unkempt brown hair, our only discernible difference, compared to my dark blond. Same angular jaw and faint cleft chin as our dad, same high cheekbones and pale blue-gray eyes that we inherited from Mom. Same tall, lean bodies, except I've started putting on more muscle, thanks to weight training so I can hold my own on a D-I soccer field.
"I could keep talking." Viggo throws a concerned glance my way, eyes on me much longer than they should be for how fast he's driving. "But I don't think you've been listening."
"I'm listening," I tell him so he'll keep his eyes on the road and not get us killed before we even make it to the party.
"Uh-huh." Thankfully, he trains his gaze ahead even as he leans my way, wrinkling his nose.
"What are you doing?" A smile I can't help tugs at my mouth. Viggo drives me up the wall, but he's just about the only person who both indulges my rare foul moods and can pull me out of them.
"I'm sniffing you," he says, throwing on his turn signal and passing a slowpoke in front of us.
"Sniffing me."
"Mm-hmm. I smell the angst wafting off of you."
"Shut up." I punch his thigh. He twists my nipple. I yelp in pain. "Dammit, Viggo! That hurt!"
"Serves you right," he says. "That's my gas leg you hit. I could have caused an accident."
I slouch down moodily in my seat and stare out the window. Sharp lemon-yellow sunlight slices through the slate-blue sky marbled with clouds. It's early spring, and-unlike our family's current home base of Los Angeles-Washington State, where Mom and Dad first lived and started their brood of seven Bergman kids, feels like it fights for every fragile blossom and green shoot that muscles its way through the cold, hard earth. In the Pacific Northwest, there are edges and effort. Here, hope feels hard-won.
That's how hope feels inside me, too.
Lowering the window, I suck in a gulp of midfifties, wet air-petrichor and the promise of full-blown spring just around the corner. God, I love this place.
"So . . ." Viggo clears his throat, yanking me from my thoughts. "I know you're dreading seeing everyone in their coupled bliss."
"Coupled bliss?" I snort a laugh, trying to deflect how on the mark Viggo is. Annoyingly, this is typical, his confident and freakishly accurate emotional intuition. After reading hundreds of historical romance novels, my brother considers himself an expert on the human...
Reviews-
July 1, 2022
The fifth book--and first m/m romance--in Liese's "Bergman Brothers" series (following With You Forever) focuses on Oliver Bergman, a young professional soccer player who has been named co-captain alongside veteran athlete Gavin Hayes. Gavin was Oliver's adolescent crush, but playing together has soured Oliver's attitude toward Gavin, whose gruff attitude was loosely inspired by Ted Lasso's Roy Kent. Gavin's levelheadedness during Oliver's anxiety attacks, as well as a series of neighborly run-ins and pranks, start to bring them closer together, but a road game with an "only one bed" situation kickstarts some more serious exploration. The exposition and narration are sometimes clunky and romance-reading brother Viggo's interventions get a little meta, but Gavin and Oliver have consistent, compelling voices in their dialogue. Bergman siblings from previous books make background appearances, but readers interested in the soccer or m/m aspects could easily start here. VERDICT Carefully deployed tropes abound in this warm-hearted grumpy/sunshine age-gap romance between a cynical, orphaned soccer player at the end of his career and a fit young upstart with a big happy family.--Katelyn Browne
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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