Pia O’Brian finds herself in a complicated situation. Her best friend Crystal recently died and on top of the heartache, Crystal left her three frozen embryos to Pia. Never being one to commit to anyone, Pia finds herself at a cross road with a huge decision. How can she turn her back on her friend’s babies? Just when things get bad, it gets even more complicated when Mr. Right strolls right in her life.Raoul Moreno is an ex-football player, taking residence in the small town of Fool’s Gold. Escaping from the fame and the fast life, he’s looking to make some roots and he is slowly becoming a small town hero, giving local golden boy, Josh (from Chasing Perfect) a run for his money. Raoul re-opens the camp and settles on building it up for the summer but when the local school has a fire, he extends his help and uses the camp as a temporary school for the children. Meanwhile, every time he tries to meet with Pia she’s having a breakdown but once he learns of her dilemma, he steps in to help her through it.Pia comes from a broken background. She was once a popular “mean girl” in high school but when her father committed suicide and her mother left her alone in Fool’s Gold, her fears of commitment heightened. She knows from the past that people leave and she’s not willing to take the chance of getting hurt by Raoul no matter how nice, gorgeous, or how great his butt looks. I was leery about Pia because I loved her in Chasing Perfect and found out she was a mean girl in Almost Perfect, so I didn’t know how I would gage her in her own story. Surprisingly my heart immediately went out to her. She had a complication thrown at her and she was scared and vulnerable. She shown that the mean girl had evolved and she became loveable.Raoul was such a sweet guy that I had a problem with really connecting with him. He kept stepping in to save the day. The hero complex was a bit too much for me. Though it was clearly stated that he was not always the nice guy and he had a rough background, I was tired of his niceness. Finally at the end, when faced with some hard decisions he didn’t rush to be anyone’s hero and I loved it. I saw his character as a human being for the first time. I was just annoyed with the town’s people because they became too involved with the decisions that Pia and Raoul struggled with. I also found myself distracted by the “baby” factor. The story does revolve around Pia’s decision to have or not have the babies. I just found it distracting that there was so much talk of babies. Charity (Chasing Perfect) was pregnant and then there were the school kids and the embryos. I just wanted more romance and not a connection between the main characters because children were involved. For the better part of the story the H/H felt more like friends than lovers. The only time I felt the romantic aspect of the story was while reading the love scenes or towards the end.The love scenes were steamy and passionate. Pia and Raoul’s sexual connection leaped off the pages.“She held in the whimper and gave herself over to the kiss. Everything about this moment felt right. Hunger filled her, burning hard and hot, making her want to get closer, to touch him and be touched.”“Their tongues tangled in an erotic dance. Then he moved to neck, as he had before. The man had skills, she thought dreamily, feeling every part of her heat and melt. When he took her earlobe into his mouth and sucked, she had to bite her lower lip to keep from crying out. When she felt the weight of him as he stretched out next to her, it was all she could do to keep her legs from falling open in a shameless invitation. She wanted him…all of him…on top, inside, pleasuring them both into madness.”Fans of the residents of Fool’s Gold will be ecstatic to read about Pia and Raoul and learn what happens with the town’s people. I can bet that there will be plenty of more stories to come and I can’t wait!
