Cancer sucks. There was no denying that fundamental truth. Sloan had spent the last year of her life fighting breast cancer and had finally killed those crazy radical cells. She now had her hair back and was trying to get her groove back with a new job in a new city. Things were looking up but men...well men were a problem. Cancer had stripped her of her health and her self-esteem, was she ready to enter the dating arena? Matt Murphy the defensive end for a professional football team presented a large and seriously sexy temptation. Dare she trust her heart with this rough and tumble man who routinely crushes full grown men on the playing field?

Matt Murphy is a simple man and he liked his simple life. Eat, work out, play football and enjoy casual no strings attached sex. He wasn't looking for a complicated woman. Then he saw Sloan standing alongside the road with car troubles looking tall, lean and magnificent with her blond hair blowing in the wind. Sloan was the opposite of simple. She was intelligent, capable, and didn't hold back when she didn't think he was living up to his potential. While she mocked his ability to assemble IKEA furniture, he sensed a vulnerability in her that made him want to earn her trust and protect her from harm. When he suddenly becomes guardian to his six-year niece, Matt leans on Sloan to help him gain his footing with the new role. Becoming father overnight wasn't easy and maybe he shouldn't have hired the sexy nanny but Sloan had sorted that out. Now Matt was looking for a long-term commitment but was Sloan ready to let herself dream of a future?

Excerpt:

"What do you know about bedroom furniture?"

"I'm a superior shopper," Sloan boasted proudly.

Her response brought a smile to Matt's face and a twinkle to his blue eyes. "Perfect, then you, me, and Brenna have a date tonight."

"A threesome, huh? Seriously it's a little early in our relationship, Matt..." Sloan teased.

"Wash your mouth, woman, there's a child involved here, but I'm glad to know that your open to the idea."

Shaking her head at his suggestive tone since she definitely wasn't open to the idea, she said, "I take it Brenna needs furniture?"

"Yep."

"Then we need a trip to IKEA."

Five hundred Allen head screws later, Matt was cursing the name IKEA, the Swedish ethnic group in general, and anyone who thought flat-pack furniture was a good idea. The trip to the store had been successful with Brenna falling in love with a pink and white bunk bed setup that had a desk and dresser built into the bottom of it. Matt had started getting worried when he had to load eighteen flat boxes into the bed of his pickup truck. He now had most of those boxes opened on the spare bedroom floor and was reviewing pages of instructions, which had no written words only cartoon pictures.

He should have known he was in trouble when the helpful IKEA clerk offered an option for expert assembly of his purchase for just a couple hundred dollars more. The words "sign me up" were on Matt's lips when he happened to glance over to Sloan who was shooting him a look that told him she'd think less of him as a man if he couldn't complete the task himself. So here he was sitting on the bedroom floor sorting through lots of boards, thoughtfully numbered, as he heard the girls he was doing this for giggling in the kitchen as they cleaned up the simple dinner they'd thrown together after shopping. Almost like a real family, or rather what Matt imagined a real family would act like, since he'd never experienced much of the real deal.