Digital List Price: | $8.99 |
Kindle Price: | $6.99 Save $2.00 (22%) |
Sold by: | Amazon.com Services LLC |
Your Memberships & Subscriptions
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
OK
Audible sample Sample
All He Ever Dreamed (The Kowalskis Book 6) Kindle Edition
Josh Kowalski is tired of holding down the fort—better known as the Northern Star Lodge—while his siblings are off living their dreams. Now that his oldest brother has returned to Whitford, Maine for good, Josh is free to chase some dreams of his own.
As the daughter of the lodge’s longtime housekeeper, Katie Davis grew up alongside the Kowalski kids. Though she’s always been “one of the guys”, her feelings for Josh are anything but sisterly. And after a hot late-night encounter in the kitchen, it’s clear Josh finally sees her as the woman she is.
Katie’s been waiting years for Josh to notice her, but now that he has, she’s afraid it’s too late. Giving her heart to a man who can’t wait to leave town is one sure way to have it broken. But Josh keeps coming up with excuses not to leave—could it be that everything he’s ever wanted is closer than he could have imagined?
Praise for the Kowalskis series
“I’m madly in love with the Kowalskis.” —Nalini Singh, author of the Guild Hunter series
“Sexy, sassy and immensely satisfying.” —Fresh Fiction
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCarina Press
- Publication dateJanuary 21, 2013
- File size1183 KB
-
Next 4 for you in this series
$42.96 -
All 9 for you in this series
$80.91
Editorial Reviews
Review
"This is the perfect contemporary romance!"
-RT Book Reviews on Undeniably Yours
"Shannon Stacey's books are a unique celebration of romance: contemporary stories that feature real and honest people, hilarious dialogue, and situations that are emotional and truthful. Drop everything and read Shannon Stacey." ~Sarah Wendell, author of Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels
About the Author
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Shannon Stacey lives with her husband and two sons in New England, where her two favorite activities are writing stories of happily ever after and off-roading with her friends and family. You can contact Shannon through her website, www.shannonstacey.com, as well as sign up for her newsletter.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Josh Kowalski's life could be summed up in just a few wordsthirty years' worth of itches he couldn't quite scratch.
He itched to get out of Whitford, Maine, and away from the Northern Star Lodge. He itched for adventure and travel and a job he'd chosen, rather than one chosen for him before he was even born. He itched to find the woman who'd make him want to forsake all others until death do they part. There was no medicated powder to cure those kinds of itches, either. All he could do was bide his time, and that had gotten harder with every passing year.
This year, though, things were looking up. Josh grabbed a six-pack out of the fridge and bumped the door closed with his hip since he was clutching a bag of stolen baked goods in his other hand. Breaking his leg back in July had sucked. But his brothers coming home to help out at the lodge, giving him the chance to let them know he resented being left holding the bag just because he was the youngest, had been his big break.
"You heading out?"
He almost dropped his beer. In her sheepskin-lined-suede winter slippers, Rosie was almost silent as she moved around the lodge. "Yeah. Half hour until kickoff."
Rose Davis had been the housekeeper at the lodge for as long as he could remember, but when Josh's mother died when he was only five, she'd become much more than that. She was as close to a mother as he could have. That meant, of course, that he was thirty years old and essentially still lived with mom. No wonder he had such a hard time scratching that need-a-woman itch.
"If you" She broke into a coughing fit and Josh frowned. A bad cold had gone around Whitford a while back and Rose had ended up with pneumonia. She'd bounced back pretty well, but he didn't like the sound of that cough. "If you see Katie, tell her I said hi."
"Maybe I should stay home."
She scoffed and waved her hand. "I'm going to curl up with my knitting and the Criminal Minds marathon. The last thing I want to listen to is you screaming and swearing at the television in the other room."
"You had pneumonia, Rosie. If you don't take care of yourself, you'll end up back in bed."
"Is that my banana bread in your bag?"
"You're trying to change the subject."
"You're stealing my banana bread."
"You told me you wanted to lose a few pounds, so really I'm doing this for you." He was busted, but he didn't even break a sweat as she raised an eyebrow at him. "Even though you're perfect the way you are, I just want you to be happy. Eating this banana bread won't make you happy, but it'll make my friendsincluding your daughtervery, very happy."
Rose laughed, but it quickly deteriorated into another bout of coughing. Josh didn't like it, but it passed fairly quickly and she waved away the concern she must have seen on his face. "You think you're a charmer, Joshua Kowalski, but I've had your number since you were four years old and told me you peed on the back of the toilet so I'd always have something to clean and your parents would keep paying me. You were doing that for my sake, too."
"See? I'm always thinking of you, Rosie."
She shook her head and made a shooing motion with her hand. "Go. Take the banana bread. And I bet you put a dent in the cookie jar, too."
Busted again. He'd dumped at least a dozen oatmeal raisin cookies into a baggy to supplement the loaf of banana bread. Usually a guy didn't bring baked goods to watch a game with his buddies, but nobody in Whitford could resist goodies from Rose's kitchen. He preferred chocolate chip cookies himself, but Katie liked oatmeal raisin and, if he was going to steal her mother's cookies for her, at least they would be her favorite.
"You have your cell phone in your pocket?" he asked before he opened the back door.
She nodded, patting the pocket of the thick cardigan she was wearing. "I'll call you if I need you."
"Promise?"
"I'm fine, Josh." She gave him a tender look and his heart squeezed when he thought about how sick she'd been at the beginning of November. It had scared the crap out of him and he didn't want a repeat of that anytime soon. She'd been well enough to celebrate Thanksgiving at the new home of his brother Mitch and his wife, but he was constantly worried she was pushing too hard. It had been ten days since then, which meant almost a month since she'd gotten sick, but he still worried every time she coughed.
"You'll call me if you need anything at all?"
"I promise. Now, go, so I can make my tea and get back to my show."
He went because the sooner he left, the sooner Rosie would curl up with her tea, knitting and her show. But, as he climbed into his truck and fired up the engine, he wondered what was going to happen when the Northern Star opened for the season in a couple of weeks. If Rose hadn't bounced back to her usual self by then, he was in trouble.
The easy answer was to hire one of the teenage girls in town to help out around the place for a while. They'd done that in the past occasionally, but for the past few years they hadn't been able to spare the money. They already had a record number of bookings this year, thanks to the woman who handled all the internet stuff for Mitch's company. She had revamped the lodge's website and gotten them on Facebook and such, but every dollar they paid extra help was a dollar less in the profit column. Profits were the key to Josh's freedom, so he'd wash the bedding and scrub the toilets and make the beds himself if he had to.
But he'd worry about that tomorrow. Weekdays were for work, but today was for football, friends and food. Sometimes he was convinced those few hours each Sunday when he could sneak away from the home and business that had consumed his life for as long as he could rememberalthough when the snow was really good, he couldn't get away even on Sundayswere the only things that had kept him from just saying "screw it" and walking away.
So he'd drink beer, eat stolen banana bread and yell at the television. Katie would give him a hard time and he'd end up making some stupid bet with her. Hopefully, the Patriots would win and the good mood would carry him through Monday.
But when he parked his truck alongside the few that were already in the yard, Josh didn't see Katie's Jeep. She never missed Sunday games at Max's house, and a glance at the clock told him it was almost time for the kickoff, and the Pats were playing the early game.
With all the germs the people of Whitford had been spreading around the past couple of months, maybe she was sick. The thought dampened his enthusiasm a little. He liked hanging with Katie and he'd even risked the wrath of Rosie to steal oatmeal raisin cookies for her.
He told himself he'd give her a call if she didn't show or text by the end of the first quarter, just to see if she was sick. Watching football without Katie wouldn't be quite the same.
Katie Davis wedged her ancient but much-loved Jeep Wrangler between two pickups and grabbed the grocery bag of munchies off the passenger seat. She was running late, but one didn't show up at Max Crawford's house empty-handed, so she'd run into the market for some junk food. Fran had been in the mood to talk, of course, so paying for a couple bags of chips and three tubs of dip had taken almost fifteen minutes.
The big white truck with Northern Star Lodge on the sides was hard to miss, so she knew Josh was already inside. He made it to Max's whenever he could, but it was still nice to have the advance warning. She'd become quite the actress over the years of hiding how she really felt about her best buddy, but she still needed a few seconds to take a deep breath before going onstage.
The stage, in this case, being Max Crawford's living room. He lived alone, loved every sport but golf and tennis, and had the biggest television in Whitford. Nobody was quite sure what he did for a livingsomething to do with the high-tech security system in his basement, which had Rosie convinced he'd be the inspiration for a future episode of her beloved Criminal Minds. But as long as he had the games in HDTV, and three battered leather sofas, nobody asked too many questions.
Max was in the kitchen when she went in the side door. He was a tall, blond, really built, sports-loving hottie who did absolutely nothing for her. And she'd tried. No matter how often she looked at his handsome face and made a mental catalog of all the reasons he'd be so right for her, however, her body refused to cough up so much as a hiccup in her pulse. Nothing.
"Hey, Katie. Wasn't sure you were going to make it."
"Fran was feeling sociable."
"Ah." Max took the bag from her and peeked inside. "Yes! Nobody else brought dip. You saved the chips."
She rolled her eyes and left him with the bag so she could go to his gigantic fridge for a soda. "Bet somebody already stole my corner."
One of the comfy leather sofas was a sectional and Katie's favorite spot was the corner. She could pull Max's Bruins throw blanket off the back and make herself a nest. Even though they all generally sat in the same place, she wouldn't put it past somebody to take advantage of her being late to steal the prime couch real estate.
"Like Josh would let anybody take your spot."
Katie froze in the act of pulling up the tab on her soda. What was that supposed to mean? The can hissed as she finished opening it so she could wet her mouth. "He doesn't care where anybody sits as long as he can see the screen."
"Maybe not 'anybody,' but he cares where you sit."
She snorted, making a show of how stupid she found that observation. No matter how much she wanted it to be true, the last thing she needed was to be a topic of conversation for the guys.
"I don't think he even knows it," Max continued, "but he definitely puts out a vibe."
"What vibe?"
"The Katie sits near me vibe."
"I don't know what you've been smoking, but you might want to cut back." Katie had been waiting for Josh to put out that kind of vibe for most of her lifeand she'd just skipped celebrating her thirtythird birthdayso if there was one, she wouldn't have missed it.
It wasn't as though she'd been sitting in some tower her entire existence, pining away for her oblivious prince. She'd dated. She'd even had a few serious relationships, but, in the end, none of them were Josh. No, if there was a vibe, she would have felt it.
"Everybody in this town knows you're his girl but him." Max didn't seem to notice the heat she could feel lighting up her cheeks like a stoplight. "You should I dunno. Wear some lipstick and put some of that crap on your eyes."
"Makeup? I don't think so."
"Men notice that stuff."
"I have worn makeup before, you know." Not often, but for the occasional funeral or wedding. "He didn't do any kind of cartoon double-take and walk into a wall."
"Maybe you need more."
"I'm not doing my face up like a clown to get him to notice me, Max. This is me and this is always going to be me, so if I don't do it for him like this, then I don't do it for him at all."
"He just needs a nudge."
"I've known him my whole life. The only thing that nudges Josh Kowalski is a softball bat upside the head."
"And yet your soft, nurturing nature hasn't drawn him in yet. I'm shocked." Max dumped the entire bag of chips into a cheap plastic bowl.
"Bite me, Max." She took the bowl and the dip and walked into the huge living room. When he'd moved to town and bought the place, Max had removed some walls and let the space absorb what had been a formal dining room.
She glanced toward the sectional and found that, as Max had predicted, the corner was still empty. And Josh smiled at her when she walked over to claim it, setting the chips and dip on the coffee table. That damn smile had always made her feel like a giddy teenage girl, but she had years of practice hiding that giddy girl from the world.
"Thought maybe that junk of yours finally shit the bed," he said when she'd dropped into the corner.
"Leave my Jeep alone, Kowalski. She's outlasted three of your pickups."
"Because I know when to put a vehicle out to pasture." He leaned forward to grab a slice of what looked like her mother's banana bread off the table and turned his attention to the big screen, where the pregame chatter was wrapping up.
"Hi, guys," she said to the room at large, and she got some hellos and a "Hey, Katie" back. Gavin Crenshaw, who cooked at the Trailside Diner, was there with his dad, Mike. Butch Benoit, whose wife, Fran, had made her late, was sitting in the recliner.
He was the oldest guy, so he got the prime leather real estate. It was a light crowd this week. Usually there were a few more guys, but it was the first weekend of December and she knew the town well enough to know there were a lot of Christmas lights being hung in lieu of watching football.
Since her spot in the corner put Katie just slightly behind Josh, she was able to watch him through the corner of her eye. She was pretty sure Max was wrong about Josh putting out any kind of vibe where she was concerned, but even the possibility was enough to make her heart beat a little faster.
He looked better, she decided. Some of the tension had left his expression over the past several months, and more of his usual charm shone in his blue eyes. Even though her mother never said much, Katie knew Josh well enough to see the strain the past few years had put on him. He'd been unhappy and had started drinking enough that she'd half-jokingly given him a hard time once in a while. But then he'd broken his leg, his brothers had come home to Whitford to help and they'd all devoted themselves to getting the Northern Star back on its feet.
Product details
- ASIN : B0092MPWV4
- Publisher : Carina Press (January 21, 2013)
- Publication date : January 21, 2013
- Language : English
- File size : 1183 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 269 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #617,203 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #2,487 in Small Town Romance (Books)
- #2,887 in Small Town Romance eBooks
- #14,475 in Romantic Comedy (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
The New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over fifty romances, Shannon Stacey lives in New Hampshire. Her favorite activities are writing romance and really random tweets with her dog curled up at her side, especially during the long winter months. She loves books, coffee, Boston sports, watching way too much TV, and she’s never turned down an offering of baked macaroni & cheese.
You can contact Shannon through her website, http://shannonstacey.com, where she has maintains an almost daily blog, or visit her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/shannonstacey, her Facebook page, http://facebook.com/shannonstacey.authorpage, or email her at shannon@shannonstacey.com.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Katie had been so in love with Josh for as long as she could remember, it's just too bad Josh hadn't even had a clue that she was even a female. They had been best buddies, sure. But...he'd never even looked at her as woman before, that is until that faithful night when he'd run into her in the kitchen dressed in only boxer shorts and a tank top....and the lack of a bra. That part of the story had me rolling on the floor with laughter, especially when the only thing he could even think to say to her before he bolted up the stairs, was.... "Go put some clothes on!" After they started an affair of sorts, a very surprising & very generous offer was handed to Mitch to buy their family home.
The only catch was... it wouldn't be a resort any more...the people who'd made the offer wanted to turn it into a private family home. Now Josh was more torn then he'd ever been.
Could he take the offer and leave the only home he ever new? How could he possibly sell the home that had been in his family for four generations? And what about Rosie, she was like a mother to all of them, could he ever throw her out of the place that had been her home for several decades? And last but not least was Katie. Could he really leave her behind? If he did he knew it would break her heart...and his too if he was being honest. Would she consider going away with him? This part made me cry so hard. I could just feel Josh's inner turmoil boiling over with the guilt, that he knew full well would plague him for years to come, if he decided to sell and walk away. His family was very supportive and willing to do whatever Josh wanted in order to make him happy. BUT...as they sat there before him, he could tell that they really didn't want to sell their family home either.
This book is so good you'll find it very hard to put it down. There is a lot of laughs, and a lot of very tender moments between the family. I was also very excited to see Rosie getting a new love in her life. I just loved that woman anyway. She was strict when she had to be, but very loving and understanding, when she needed to be too. She was like everyone's idea of the perfect mother.
Would I recommend this book? Yes! You better believe I would...in a heart beat, in fact! I'd even go so far as to rate this book a ten, if it were possible.
Katie Davis has been Josh's friend since they were kids. While Katie has had a "thing" for Josh since they were teens, Josh sees her as just "one of the guys". But as the holidays approach, things are about to change...
Just as Josh begins to see Katie in a different light, it looks like he might finally get his wish to leave Whitford behind. If he grabs the opportunity to go out and experience the world, will he lose his best- friend- turned- lover in the process?
What I liked about the story was a chance to revisit Whitford and the characters that I've come to know from earlier books in the series. Shannon Stacey writes with a great deal of warmth and affection for her characters, and I enjoy being drawn into their world. The dialog always sounds natural, the characters feel like people you might actually know, and their everyday problems are ones that I can relate to. That being said, boy did the "romance" part of this story just fall flat for me!
I admit I'm a tough sell when it comes to "friend to lovers" romances, and this one just didn't convince me. I felt like Josh had to have been as dense as molasses not to notice that Katie was crushing on him like mad (the rest of the town certainly noticed!), and his "epiphany" felt rather sudden and slightly too convenient. I liked both of these characters but just couldn't feel the connection between them. And after several books hearing about how much Josh longed to escape to experience the larger world, I have to say that portion was seriously anti-climactic.
Bottom Line: Pleasant, fun story though the romance failed to win me over. The familiar setting and supporting characters saved this one for me - 3.5 stars rounded up to 4 for Amazon. While this can be read as a standalone, characters from previous books do play significant roles.
Occasional strong language and sexual content.
Kowalski Family (New Hampshire):
* Exclusively Yours (The Kowalskis)
* Undeniably Yours (Hqn)
* Yours to Keep (Hqn)
Kowalski Family (Maine):
* All He Ever Needed (Hqn)
* All He Ever Desired (Hqn)
* All He Ever Dreamed (Hqn)