Judith’s review of Getting Rowdy (Love Undercover #3) by Lori Foster

  An alpha hero’s attraction to the one woman he can’t have   could draw him into a killer’s snare in the sizzling new    novel from New York Times bestselling author Lori Foster

 Charismatic bar owner Rowdy Yates isn’t the kind of man women say  no to. So when he approaches waitress Avery Mullins, he fully expects  to get her number. However, the elusive beauty has her reasons for  keeping her distance&;including a past that might come back to haunt  them both.

 Avery spends her nights working for tips&and trying to forget the  secret Rowdy is determined to unearth. But when history threatens to  repeat itself, Avery grows to rely on Rowdy’s protective presence. As  the sparks between them ignite, she will be forced to choose between  the security she’s finally found& and the passion she’s always wanted.

Rowdy Yates showed up and was an important character in Book One of this series as the Bad Boy Street Fighter brother of Pepper Yates, a woman who had witnessed a mob murder and together with her brother were doing their level best to stay off the mob radar for fear of their lives.   Pepper eventually marries Detective Logan Riske, hero of Book One, and now this third novel is Rowdy’s story.

This is a man who has scars all over his body but more importantly, has scars all over his life.  He’s a man who has done all he could to protect his younger sister, beginning when he was only 10 or 12 years old.   And he has the scars to prove it–scars that even Pepper knows nothing about.  Now Rowdy, who has never envisioned himself as “settling down,” has bought a run-down bar (that part of his story is included in Book Two), cleaned out the human traffikers and druggies, invested sizable sums in renovation and making “Getting Rowdy” into the kind of bar good people aren’t afraid to visit.  Even though it isn’t in the very best part of town, its reputation for being a good place to socialize is growing.  Avery is now the head bartender and is Rowdy’s major “person of interest.”  Yet Rowdy has always used sex as his tranquilizer, the stress reliever that is the only thing that keeps the inner darkness at bay.

Avery knows that Rowdy is King of the One-Night-Stands.  He rarely spends more than one night with a woman, and even when propositioning her, finds another “companion” for the evening, telling her it was a second choice but a choice nevertheless.  It is perhaps this habit that prevents Avery from letting her attraction and “almost love” for Rowdy have sway with her.  She just can’t accept herself as one more woman in a long line.  Yet Rowdy keeps on coming back to her as he knows that in so many ways he doesn’t understand Avery is his ultimate calming drug, the one constant in his life that makes it possible to get through each succeeding day.  Rowdy is one of those people who has lived and survived on the streets so long that his instincts, his hunches are rarely wrong.  And he instinctively knows that Avery is hiding something no matter how he tries, and even though she trusts him in so many ways, she won’t let him in on her secrets.

This is a novel about two people who have had to deal with darkness, with the kind of deep fear that changes a person almost instantaneously.  For Rowdy it was the fear he carried for Pepper’s safety.  He keep on fearing for the safety of many who are weak, like the little boy whose father brought him along when he tried to shake Rowdy down.  He feels that same fear for Avery but doesn’t know why.  Avery, on the other hand, has lived the “good life” throughout her early years but when the marriage prospect chosen for her by her mother and stepfather attempted to rape her and when her family chose to believe the “lying sack of $%^& instead of her, she left her “good life” behind and found a new family at Rowdy’s bar.  Yes, she’s poor and she must support herself now, but she feels safe–that is, as long as her family and her attacker don’t find her.

I can state categorically that I have loved all of Lori Foster’s books.  I have read all the books in a previous series and all three of these novels and I have yet to be disappointed.  All are crafted to lay out the realities of life, especially in this series where the darker underbelly of society is more often than not the context of the stories.  Now readers get to see Pepper and her detective making their marriage work and rejoice that they are very much involved with the real people in their lives.  Alice and Reese (Book Two) have found renewed strength in each other and Alice continues to demonstrate that she has an uncanny knack of connecting with those who need her particular kind of encouragement and friendship.  She is one person who has always understood Rowdy in ways few ever have.  Her open heart is again the source of healing for Marcus, that little boy whose dad failed him so horribly and who mother subsequently dies of a drug overdose.

There is an energy in this story that has a great deal to do with the tension that is part and parcel to Rowdy’s “take” on living, a perception that has grown out of his survivor years.  This story I think is more about Rowdy’s deep longing to leave that kind of worrisome life behind but he’s not really sure how to do that and knows somehow that Avery can help him learn how to do that.  This is also the story of Avery’s coming of age in so many ways, as she learns how to be her own person, learns how to claim what she really wants (Rowdy) and how to stand up for her own goals and values in the face of the strong and persistent pressure from her family.  She is also a woman who, in the face of deadly danger, is willing to stand in the gap for the people who have become the critical mass of her life.  It’s a novel that won’t leave you alone and will drag you from page to page whether you like it or not.  Somehow as a reader we know that there is deep and nourishing love here and we’re going to find it, no matter what.

This is a wonderful novel and is a credit to Ms Foster’s reputation and a true gift to her fans and her new readers.  It is a book that is well worth the time needed to read and I think contemporary romance fans, especially those who like a little suspense thrown in, will be truly entertained by this book.  I am delighted to give it a rating of 4.25 out of 5.

The Series:

You can read more from Judith at Dr J’s Book Place.

This book is available from Harlequin HQN.  You can buy it here or here in e-format. This title was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.