Reviewed by Suan Wilson
Posted May 15, 2008

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Dean Robillard, star quarterback for the Chicago Stars professional football team, reflects on his career as he speeds down the road. He's not prepared to see a woman stomping along in a headless beaver costume, so curiosity makes him stop and offer assistance. The beaver, Blue Bailey, dressed to promote a lumberyard, has just seen her ex-boyfriend drive by in her car with his new girlfriend. Needing a lift to her boardinghouse, Bailey accepts Dean's offer of a ride, determined to confront her ex about the trouble she's in because of his actions. Dean enjoys watching the beaver take the nerd, so it's with regret that he separates the combatants.

Blue realizes she's in major trouble. Between her boyfriend's duplicities and her do-gooder mother wiping out her savings account, she's jobless, homeless and moneyless, conditions not unfamiliar to her. Refusing to be beaten, Blue convinces Dean that she'll draw his portrait in exchange for a ride to wherever he's headed. Needing to take his mind off his own troubles, Dean accepts her proposition. They head to his newly acquired home in Tennessee, which is being remodeled.

Now the fun really begins. Unbeknownst to Dean, his estranged mother is at the farm overseeing the remodeling. If that's not enough, his 11-year-old stepsister has run away from home and arrived at the farm with Dean's rock- star dad following close behind. Whether he wants it or not, Dean has to deal with a strained family reunion with a feisty Blue at his side interfering and attempting to repair family bonds he thought permanently broken.

Phillips excels in combining madcap comedy and drama. She has the unique ability to make readers care and root for her characters with all of their strengths and flaws. Dean and Blue's love story will stick with readers long after this delightful tale is over.

Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Summary

Chicago Stars quarterback Dean Robillard is the luckiest man in the world: a bona-fide sports superstar and the pride of the NFL with a profitable side career as a buff billboard model for End Zone underwear. But life in the glory lane has started to pale, and Dean has set off on a cross-country trip to figure out what's gone wrong. When he hits a lonely stretch of Colorado highway, he spies something that will shake up his gilded life in ways he can't imagine. A young woman . . . dressed in a beaver suit.

Blue Bailey is on a mission to murder her ex. Or at least inflict serious damage. As for the beaver suit she's wearing . . . Is it her fault that life keeps throwing her curveballs? Witness the expensive black sports car pulling up next to her on the highway and the Greek god stepping out of it.

Blue's career as a portrait painter is the perfect job for someone who refuses to stay in one place for very long. She needs a ride, and America's most famous football player has an imposing set of wheels. Now, all she has to do is keep him entertained, off guard, and fully clothed before he figures out exactly how desperate she is.

But Dean isn't the brainless jock she imagines, and Blue— despite her petite stature—is just about the toughest woman Dean has ever met. They're soon heading for his summer home where their already complicated lives and inconvenient attraction to each other will become entangled with a charismatic but aging rock star; a beautiful fifty-two-year- old woman trying to make peace with her rock and roll past; an eleven-year-old who desperately needs a family; and a bitter old woman who hates them all.

As the summer progresses, the wandering portrait artist and the charming football star play a high-stakes game, fighting themselves and each other for a chance to have it all.