Eye of the Tiger

Summary:

Their matchmaker folks think it’d be great
If Natalie and Evan would date
Watch them say, “No thanks,”
But plow into the banks
Of the slippery slope where they skate

Natalie East and Evan Lee are determined to stay single. Their parents, recent friends, are just as determined to get them together.

Natalie, still reeling from the abrupt end of a three-year relationship, needs to prove to her mother that they are both capable of leading successful, independent lives. But her mother clings to convention, no matter how often Natalie exposes her to kickboxing classes and online car maintenance tutorials. In fact, she increases the pressure to match her daughter to her friend’s self-indulgent and status-obsessed son. The interference is driving Natalie wild.

Evan spent his twenties scaling educational and corporate ladders, working hundred-hour weeks, and doing everything necessary to land him in a window office on the nineteenth floor. Now he’s ready to play. He can’t wait to begin the casual, consensual fun he promised himself. While he was busy achieving success, his parents were busy planning the rest of his life: they can’t stop gushing about Natalie’s sweet, steady, settled-down stance. Their insistence and his siblings’ teasing about it challenges his ability to maintain his joking, easy-going façade.

When Natalie and Evan involuntarily connect over coffee, neither is what the other expected. As their friendship grows and passions emerge, will they risk losing their independent lives? Will they discover that their long-time goals aren’t as essential as they’d thought? Lighthearted friends to steamy lovers is a journey they aren’t sure they are ready to take.