Lexi Hayes

I didn't plan on falling in love-but one smoking-hot English teacher has me completely cooked. Between raising my teenage daughter, driving an eighteen-wheeler, and spending my nights perfecting barbecue recipes, I don't have time for dating. Then Tess nearly crashes into my pit at a charity fundraiser. She's gorgeous, wickedly smart, much too young for me-and the same woman my best friend's wife has been trying to set me up with for months.
But I'm a forty-five-year-old trucker with a soft middle, a serious cookout habit, and enough sense to know I have no business wanting a woman like her. Tess has other ideas. She likes my husky body. She likes watching me work the smoker and lick sauce from my fingers. And when I need a partner for a Labor Day barbecue competition with a prize big enough to change my life, she jumps right in beside me.
Which means long nights practicing in close quarters. And plenty of heat. Not all of it coming from the fire. After one taste of Tess, suddenly winning isn't the only thing I'm hungry for. I thought this competition might give me the future I've been chasing. Now I'm wondering if the real prize is the woman I can't keep my hands off. Smoked is a short, steamy, instalove romance featuring a blue-collar single dad with the dream of becoming a full-time pitmaster, and the passionate, high-school English teacher who shows him he deserves everything he's ever wanted, including her.