
THE TRADE by Meghan Quinn
Release Date: March 12th
Genre: Contemporary Romance
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Blurb:
Can you pinpoint a time in your life where you realized you are completely and utterly screwed?
I can. I got the dreaded phone call, the one every baseball player hopes and prays never comes.
I was traded. Yeah, that phone call.
Traded from my long time team of over ten years. And not just to any team, but my childhood rivals; the Chicago Rebels.
Completely and utterly screwed, right? Wrong. The trade was the least of my concerns.
I met a girl. Natalie. Man, she’s perfect.
I swore I would never get involved with anyone during the season. Too complicated. But can you believe I have zero restraint when it comes to this girl? I couldn’t get her out of my head and the more I talked to her, the more I realized I needed her in my life.
So what’s the problem? Why am I screwed? Because, Natalie, the girl I can’t stop crushing on, yeah . . . she’s married.
At least, that’s what I was told . . .

CORY
Iām fucked.
Iām sure you hear that all the time, so the term has lost its impact.
I ran out of sugar for my cookie batter . . . Iām fucked.
Forgot my phone in my car . . . Iām fucked.
Saw my neighborās old-man balls . . . Iām fucked for life.
I can guarantee you right now, this is nothing compared to old-man balls and cookies.
This is way worse.
This defines the term, Iām fucked.
What is it you ask?
It happened after one of the worst baseball seasons of my life. Traded halfway through the season to the team Iād hated my entire life, I was drowning in the constant media attention, persecuting me for the pass off for my multi-million-dollar contract.
āWe want to win,ā the Rebels said. āWe can do that with Cory Potter wearing black and red.ā And just like that, the team Iāve been playing for my entire professional career up and traded me to unload my hefty salary to develop new up-and-comers from the farm system.
The Rebels.
Iām a fucking Chicago Rebel. Words I never thought Iād say, especially growing up as a Chicago Bobcats fan, the rival team to the Rebels. Not just rival, but enemies. The teams themselves donāt get along, the fans hate each other, and Chicago is divided for a good portion of the year when the stadium lights are on.
But here I am, my name attached to the biggest trade in sports history.
A ballsy move.
An upset to Baltimore.
A baseball anomaly: All-American turned Rebel.
Iāve heard it all, Iāve seen it all, and no matter whatās splashed across the headlines, it doesnāt deviate from the fact that my long-time team decided to part ways with me midseason.
Mid-fucking-season.
After fourteen years, I packed up everything and moved back to Chicago.
But even thatās not why Iām fucked; itās just the start of it.
The beginning of the end.
Dramatic? Maybe.
But if you were in my shoes, youād be thinking the same thing.
After not even coming close to getting into the playoffs, the season ended, I was booed off the field because thatās how Rebels fans areāyou donāt perform, they hate youāand I sequestered myself to my practically empty and cold apartment.
After a week of binge-eating deep-dish pizza and watching every prison documentary on Netflix, my sister finally dragged me out of my apartment, forcing me to attend a Bobbies playoff game with her so we could cheer on my brother-in-law. Her husband.
Seeing a Rebels player cheering on a Bobbies player plastered all over the news went over just as well as a grandma telling her grandson her favorite pastime is cock-tickling.
Not well.
But still . . . not the reason Iām fucked.
This is beyond worse than that.
During that game, I got the talk. Not the birds and bees, but the talk from a concerned sister about my lack of social life.
You really should get out more.
I know some single moms who are really nice.
Maybe a dating app might be fun. Girls would be ecstatic to match with the one and only Cory Potter.
I donāt want you dying alone.
That last one was a real kicker.
Dying alone. Iām fucking thirty-five and she has me with one toe in my grave.
The way I see it is, if you donāt meet your girl in college or high school, youāre sure as shit not going to meet her while playing professional baseball. Not when the schedule is obscenely busy and long, and not when youāre known for one thing in your city: making a shitload of money for playing a sport.
Itās almost impossible to find genuine relationships when you have this level of fame.
So Iāve resolved to waiting until after I retire to fall in love.
That doesnāt mean Iāve been celibate, Iām a man after allāa man with a shitload of adrenaline pumping through him on a daily basis. Iāve had my fair share of one-night stands with women, and a few on a solid repeat with zero expectations. Every woman Iāve bedded Iāve treated with respect, and Iāve been honest with them, because if anything, Iām a genuinely nice guy who doesnāt ever want to make someone feel bad.
Ask anyone who knows me, Iām the nice guy, the dependable guy, the leader with a heart.
I donāt screw women over, ever.
Are you thinking one of those one-night stands turned into an āaccidentā? Is that the reason Iām fucked? Got a girl I donāt know pregnant?
Nope, not that either.
But the conversation I had with Milly pushed me to a new way of thinking.
I donāt want you dying alone.
She made me fucking paranoid.
Was I really going to die alone?
Were my good years behind me and now Iām old meat on the market?
Should I be trying to find love in the midst of the craziness of my life?
Milly made me think, which then made me open up to the idea of finding someone, of looking at women differently, of allowing the relationship part of my brain to turn on.
So instead of ignoring every woman that has relationship potential Iād possibly look for, I turned off my blinders and started looking for them.
But I didnāt come close to meeting anyone that remotely fit the box of someone Iād consider going out on a date with. That was until I attended a certain charity event.
I saw her from across the room. Her smile was what caught my eye, then it was the way she laughed and held on to her brotherās hand, her brother who had cerebral palsy.
It was the way sheād lean into him, hold him, as if he was the most wonderful human sheād ever met.
The fact that she was absolutely breathtaking with piercing blue eyes had nothing to do with it.
It was her infectious laughter.
Her kind heart.
Her dedication to her family.
In a matter of seconds, I wanted to know her, wanted to find out her name, wanted to be in her orbit. Wanted to be a recipient of her warmth and affection.
I watched her from across the room, how she interacted with every person who came up to her, and when I was finally granted the opportunity to introduce myself, my breath caught in my throat when our hands connected. I felt my heart slam against the cage in my chest. And I knew, in that moment, with our hands mid shake, my life would never be the same.
Her name is Natalie.
Sister to my new teammate Jason Orson and his twin brother Joseph.
Director of Jasonās foundation, The Lineup.
And the reason why Iām utterly fucked.
Because while I started to grow attached to this magnetic and beautiful woman, when I told my sister about her, she informed me there was a ring on Natalieās finger.
A ring that didnāt belong to me.
Hope plummeted in the matter of seconds as I felt the color from my besotted face drain into a puddle of remorse.
She was married.
She is fucking married.
See? Totally fucked.
Iāve been crushing so hard, because even a month later, I still think about her. I can still hear her laugh, see her smile, feel her hand in mine.
I want her.
Fucking bad.
They say time will heal all wounds, well for me, the more time passes, the more my wound is exposed and tormented.
Cory Potter is crushing on a married woman . . .
That is why I am completely and utterly . . . fucked.

Sunny Shelly’s Review: 5 Stars
Oh, Cory Potter! Where have you been? I don’t know how Meghan Quinn does it, but she consistently tops each previous book boyfriend with the next one!
So in The Trade we have Cory and Natalie, both of whom have appeared in previous books. Cory is the older brother and superstar baller of Milly from The Dugout, who has spent his entire pro career playing for Baltimore and then gets traded to (the horror!) The Rebels. While he’s back at home in Chicago with his family, he is now playing for the town’s least-favorite team. But Jason from The Lineup is his new teammate⦠and after meeting Jason’s sister at a charity event for The Lineup, Cory is absolutely smitten with Natalie.
Except she’s married. Well, technically, Natalie is getting divorced. And the string of bad blind dates she goes on is hysterical. By the time Natalie and Cory get to the pre-season vacation that the rest of the couples are headed to, they both are seriously crushing on one another, hard. But Cory still thinks Natalie is married, and she can’t imagine that someone like Cory F’ing Potter would even look her way twice. The entire St. Croix trip is a wonderful build-up of sexual frustration as the two are forced to share a room. There is so much push and pull between them, which is magnified by Cory’s belief that post-divorce Natalie is only looking for a fling while she assumes she is out of Cory’s league.
Things between them really explode once they get back home, and MQ does a great job of writing the change in their relationship as they realize it’s something they both want to explore. How kind and considerate Cory is despite his celebrity, and how understanding Natalie is of his profession since she’s the sister of a pro player herself. (And can we just mention how crazy Jason goes when his idol starts dating his sister? I love it!)
I really didn’t think that there would be a major upheaval to this romance, since they were both so sympatico. But the turn that this book takes is a little darker than some of the others in this series. The bad press Cory’s been getting as a result of his trade is only magnified when he starts dating Natalie, and his trying to protect her from it all is their ultimate demise. And also the reason for some medical issues he begins to have. I loved that part of this book! It was so different than the others in this series.
Of course, there is a wonderful HEA for these two, and in the end, being traded ends up being the best thing that happens to Cory. I really hope that this isn’t the end of this series, because I would love to see what woman brings Maddox to his knees!
I received an advanced copy and voluntarily left a review.

About the Author:
USA Today Bestselling Author, wife, adoptive mother, and peanut butter lover. Author of romantic comedies and contemporary romance, Meghan Quinn brings readers the perfect combination of heart, humor, and heat in every book.

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