Strike the Fire

by Lacey Dancer

Lydia North turned visions into homes and businesses. Her company, North Enterprises, built to last, to be kind to the environment and to lift an area into the future while still paying homage to the past. Archer Channing and Alex Weston had a vision for the agricultural community of Live Oak. Now it was her vision too. This time she wasn’t just building, but investing financially in the future. Along comes Max Greene, ready and willing to buy into the concept that Archer and Alex have for Live Oak’s step into the twenty-first century. He’s in the mood for a change and decides he wants to be more than a behind the scenes money man. He wants to get his hands dirty. It has been years since he had done manual labor but a man doesn’t forget his roots.But first, he has to convince a tiny female dynamo with inky black hair and a body to send even a dead man’s blood pressure skyrocketing that he could get the job done. He solves the first problem but the second is a bit more difficult. How did he convince a woman who needed no man to protect and support her that he wanted to walk beside her, not have her walk behind him? Lydia recognized a challenge when Max stared her in the face. She had cut her teeth on the males of the species and thought she knew all the moves. Max showed her more about herself than she thought existed. From the first, he accepted the woman she was, the woman who rode a motorcycle to unwind, who lived in a motorhome instead of a house and climbed onto heavy construction equipment as though she had been born an excavator. When Lydia set a goal, a hurricane couldn’t stop her. When Max built his success, a bomb didn’t destroy him. Are their differences greater than their strengths?

443 pages, Paperback

Published October 8, 2018

About the author

Sydney Ann Cook born in 1948, Her pen names include Sara Chance, Sherry Carr, Lacey Dancer and Sydney Ann Clary. She started to publish novels in 1983, and continued through the late nineties when family demands took center stage in her life. As Sara Chance & Lacey Dancer, she won the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award in 1991-1992 for Series Romance Love and Laughter, and a second Romantic Times Career Achievement Award in 1996 for Series Romantic Adventure. She was also awarded two Woman of the Year, 1991 & 1993. She has a number of Certificates of Excellence from Romantic Times under both Sara Chance and Lacey Dancer.
Sydney has ridden a bucking horse, driven racing boats and cars just because she was offered the chance. She collects salt cellars, rescues dogs and donkeys.
Currently, she resides in a house she designed and had built. She has taken up farming, raising pecans, pine trees and peaches. Just a little of each to start. Her current at home mode of transport are John Deere tractors.

Reviews

[Jennifer K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok, these books just keep getting better and better! Lydia and Max are such an awesome couple. Lydia is a strong independent woman that never thought of settling down and in walks Max and everything changes. Max is such a sweet romantic man you just can't resist. I love the fact that in all the books in the series your still getting involved in the past character's lives and are kept up to date with them. They have all developed a great friendship and respect for each other. And just let me tell you, Max and Lydia are smoking hot under the covers (wink wink). I have already started book 4 and it is gooood!!

[Shirley Nott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read this book and absolutely loved it. It is the third in a series and I have read the other two also. This whole series is about a small town and community which is facing growth and progress. The characters are like meeting the neighbors next door. Some are fun, some are serious but all of them make the reader want to know more about them.
Some new people come into the story and they become part of the neighborhood. I'm waiting ( impatiently) for the next book by Lacey because I know I wont be disappointed.

[Jolene MacFadden · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading a romance type story that involved older people. There are more of us out there now-a-days who grew up reading romance novels just about those in their early twenties or early thirties and we really need more stories for our generation in their forties and fifties. Just because we are older doesn't mean we don't all look for a companion if we no longer have one. This is the next installment in the Life Oak series and continues with the same characters in the first two books and adds a few more that we hope to see in future editions. Now the project is getting underway but there are still tense situations to deal with. This time it's mother nature.

Some quotes from the book that we liked in particular:

As big as he was, he didn't want to feel like he was going to lose his lover in the sheets. He grinned to himself at the image.

"Her black hair reminded him of a panther he had seen roaming a habitat in Africa. She was all fluid grace and power. "

"Black hair and Elizabeth Taylor eyes had a way of creating sexual tension before she even opened her mouth. When she added a slender body and her lack of height, she generally got more hot looks and interesting propositions than the average female."

"She glared at the moon washed square of the sky she could see in the skylight above her bed. She did not get involved with business associates."

"Maxwell Greene was not going to be her lover. She controlled her body. Her body did not control her."