Midnight Oil by Karen Kendall

Peggy Underwood was finally getting her life back on track. After dumping her grade-B hockey player boyfriend and moving to Florida, Peggy, along with her two business partners, opened After Hours - a spa that serves customers until late in the night. As part of this life-changing event, Peggy vowed to spend the next year learning to live without men. Unfortunately, Troy Barrington entered her life.

Troy Barrington, ex-football star, recently inherited the mall where After Hours is located and wants to find a way to break the lease so he can use that space to build his sporting goods store. After being advised that the lease is ironclad, his only option is to find a building code violation that would allow him to break their lease. However, Peggy fascinates him - the way she looks and the way she kisses and the way she acts in bed. Can Troy follow through with his plan or will Peggy decide to punt him out of her life?

The first book in the After Hours series is more of a traditional Blaze, filled with hot sex and interesting characters. There is also some humor in the book that helps to balance things out. But somehow the story didn’t work for me as much as some of the more recent Blazes I’ve read. Still, I did enjoy reading it and I’ll definitely be reading the next two books in the After Hours series.

Details: Blaze #246, April 2006

Bottom line: A pretty good book