J★★★★. 4 Stars. A first-class mystery and . . . a first-class read.”
~ Cindy Himler, RT Book Reviews

5 Cups. Sabrina . . . has strength and tenacity in abundance. With the guns, bad guys, and sexy men, Thirty-Nine Again is a wonderful and exciting read.
~Coffee Time Romance

. . . a contemporary romance full of excitement and suspense. You will be rooting for Sabrina and Evan until the very end.
~Night Owl Romance

5 Ribbons. A Romance Junkies Blue Ribbon Book of the Month.
~RomanceJunkies.com

Review Rating:

Thirty-Nine Again currently has an average Amazon Review Rating of 4.5 stars {32 reviews}. Read the reviews here!

Evan jogged around a corner and stopped beside me. “Hey, I thought maybe you decided not to come!”
I looked up, disappointed to discover his dark eyes were hidden by a pair of those Oakley sunglasses that are big with military guys.
“Ready to go?”
“Yeah, sure!” I felt my face heating up involuntarily and heard the perky little exclamation point in my voice. It made me ill. I charged up the steps next to the Harbor to cover my embarrassment, but I’d never finished with that whole shoelace-tying thing, so I got tangled in my own feet and stumbled. Badly. I stumbled in a way only I could stumble. I started to fall face forward right into Evan’s arms. That threw me into such a huge panic that I windmilled my arms wildly and tried to arch away from him. I flailed backwards, somersaulting down the steps and coming within a millimeter of rolling into the dirty, oily water of the harbor. The only thing that saved me was Evan, who dove down the steps with incredible speed and grabbed me by the arms. I wound up with my legs in the water but my clothes unscathed. He pulled me onto the steps, and I buried my face in my hands.
“Oh, that went way better than the gym,” I muttered.
Evan snorted, blatantly failing to hide his amusement. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I replied. “I am not. I have a bloody knee that’s probably been exposed to all sorts of mutant flesh-eating bacteria. And my pride is utterly in tatters.”
“Not to worry. Be right back.” He left me there and jogged over to the nearby tourist mall. When he returned, he was carrying two cups and a little plastic shopping bag.
“Water, bandages, and lemonade.” He knelt beside me.
“What good will all that do?”
He hooked his sunglasses over the neck of his t-shirt. Then he lifted the lid on the cup of water, put his hand under my knee, and poured the water over the wound. The water was warm, but it stung nonetheless. Still, I was impressed at the effort he’d made to get the water temperature right. I peered at him surreptitiously. His head was down, and the sun’s rays glinted off shoulder-length hair so black it almost seemed blue. He wore it tied back in a ponytail, which looked natural, not phony and pretentious. At my firm a couple of investment bankers with receding hairlines had adopted the mini-ponytail look in some lame effort to compensate. On them, the effect was comical. Not on Evan though.
The hard lines of muscle in his shoulders and back flexed as he leaned forward and blotted at my knee. To my surprise, he used the hem of his olive green t-shirt to clean the wound.
“Oh, Evan, don’t,” I protested.
“It needs cleaning.” He glanced up with a reassuring grin. His almond eyes were so black I couldn’t even see the pupils. But his smile was so open and honest, like none of this was the least bit of trouble, and there was no place he’d rather be.
“This is an old shirt,” he added. “From my Army days. It’s seen worse than this. Anyway, time to let it go.”
We both laughed, because when he laughed, I couldn’t help but join him. His eyes gleamed, and little crinkly lines formed at their corners. How could a woman not want to laugh with him? No wonder Scott had blown a gasket last night when I’d said I was going running with Evan.
Scott and I considered ourselves engaged, even though no ring had ever been proffered. He was an immigration lawyer at Homeland Security, and he came from an uptight, politically well-connected Southern family. They didn’t blow gaskets in Scott’s family, so his display of temper had come across to me as almost flattering. Making Scott a little jealous was one thing, and not a very classy thing. But I knew it was about more than making an indifferent lover jealous. Scott wasn’t even here to bait, yet I continued to sit, immensely enjoying the feel of Evan’s hands all over my leg. Guilt fluttered at the base of my skull, like a moth trapped in a light.
Evan pulled a couple of bandages out of the bag he’d brought with him.
“Where did you find those?” I peered over at the pavilion he’d just left. Baltimore’s big tourist Mecca was full of overpriced chain restaurants and gift shops. No drugstores in a place like that.
“I went to their first aid station. No big deal.”
He shrugged in that mellow way he had. Everything about Evan as my personal trainer was like that—laid-back, low-key. So unlike the other Evan I came to know later. He ripped open a packet of antibiotic cream and dabbed it all over my knee as I winced.
“That’s what this is for.” He handed me the lemonade. “To take your mind off the pain.”
“I’m sorry I’m being such a girl,” I said.
“I’m not.” His voice sounded uncharacteristically husky. When his eyes tried to meet mine again, I looked away.
“I should go.” I half-rose from the step, his hands still wrapped around my leg.
“Come on. First let me bandage this,” he insisted.
I sat back down. He laid a piece of non-stick gauze against my knee before fixing the big square bandage on top. His hands were broad with long, thick fingers, and they moved with swift confidence, like he’d done this a million times.
“Can you walk okay?” He rose with a lithe, animal grace and offered me his hand. As I took it, I realized I’d never remotely believed he was gay or bi. Except in a couple of really weird fantasies involving him and me and Matt Damon. I shook my head hard, trying to knock those embarrassing images out of my head.
“Does your head hurt?” Evan threw his arm around my shoulders, not in a romantic way, but like he was trying to steady me.
My head did hurt now, mostly because I’d shaken it so hard. I’d almost been able to hear marbles rattling around.
“It’s fine.” I squirmed out of his unexpected embrace.
“Where’s your car?”
Normally I wouldn’t even have my car with me. I can walk to my office from my condo at Harborview and usually do. But I’d driven to a client’s that morning and then left my car in the office parking garage. When I told Evan where I’d parked, he said that was a long walk with a sore leg, which it wasn’t. Then he offered to come with me. I don’t know why I said yes. Okay, I do know why I said yes. But at least I had the dignity to hesitate a bit.
We lumbered down the street side by side in silence.
Evan interrupted my private musings, laying a hand on the middle of my back as he guided me into the garage. We came to a halt in front of a bank of elevators.
I turned to face him. “I’m on the top level. Thanks for walking with me.”
And then I kissed him, just like that—a shy little girl kind of kiss, a geeky peck on the cheek. I slapped a hand over my mouth.
He froze, his golden-brown skin darkening slightly. This would be the moment where he would tell me he had a girlfriend in L.A. or wherever he was from. A girlfriend way prettier than me, who didn’t try to drop barbells on him at the gym or trip over her own shoelaces. He stared at me for the longest two seconds of my life.
“Hey, come on,” I joked. “It wasn’t that bad.”
He gave a peculiar little smirk and turned away, planting his hands on his hips as if he were angry or thinking hard about something. I was fourteen the last time I’d tried to kiss a guy first, and it had gone about as well as this seemed to be going. I looked down at the grimy concrete floor and opened my mouth to apologize.
Evan spun around with a fluidity that startled me. He caught me by the elbow and pulled me close. He pressed his other hand against my neck, so that his fingers were tangled up in my hair and his thumb teased at the corner of my lips. Then he ducked his head down and kissed me, long and hard. My hands slipped around his back as if they were used to going there. I staggered a bit as his tongue slipped into my mouth. When we stopped for breath, he pressed his forehead against mine and sighed.
“That was incredibly unprofessional of me,” he murmured.
He surprised me. I had suspected personal trainers were like tennis pros—that a fair percentage of them were in the job for the extracurricular benefits. I thought about Scott and how angry he’d been last night. He’d implied I was trying to bait Evan, and I’d denied it heatedly. Now here I was proving him correct. I’ve always hated women who try to make their boyfriends jealous.
“I should really go. Now,” I said. The elevator doors opened and I felt a childish tear steal its way down my cheek.
“Hey,” Evan protested softly.
He raised a hand again, as if he wanted to touch me. But then he drew it away, balled it into a tight fist, and clamped his other hand on top.
“I’m sorry,” I babbled. “Scott and I had a fight yesterday, and he left for his business trip in a really bad mood. He was so flustered he even took the wrong damned laptop, which is not like him. He never lets me touch his computer. Barely lets it out of his sight. He’s going to be in such a mess at his meeting in Mexico, and then he’ll be in an even crankier mood when he calls later.”
Behind me, the elevator doors whooshed closed again. Evan’s face twisted, a deep line creasing his brow.
“Do you have the laptop with you?”
Talk about a non sequitur.
“What, when I go jogging I should bring someone else’s computer? Not even my own?”
I laughed but he didn’t. His whole demeanor had changed somehow, like a panther sighting a wounded rabbit.
“Do you have it in your car?” He said it with a weird, disconcerting urgency.
“What do you care?” I was baffled and even a little alarmed. The kiss had obviously rattled us both way more than it should have.
“You know, I need to leave.” I thrust out a hand to keep him at bay and backed up a little. What did I know about him, except he looked hot in a muscle shirt and could probably wrestle me into submission with frighteningly little effort? As I stepped away from him, two silver-haired businessmen approached the elevator and pressed the call button. The doors slid open again.
“Sabrina,” Evan said, lunging toward me. “Wait. I need to tell you something.”
“Please don’t,” I said, backing away.
I positioned myself close to the two, fatherly businessmen, who eyed Evan with suspicious sneers. One of them moved to block the center of the elevator doors. He pushed the “close” button before Evan could follow me.