title: Chasing Perfect (Fool's Gold, Book 1)
author:  Susan Mallery 
description: For her first Fool's Gold romance, Mallery (<i>Hot on Her Heels</i>) eschews her tried-and-true formula of a passionate heroine and arrogant alpha male hero linked by a tumultuous past, setting up two wary strangers instead. The mayor of Fool's Gold, Calif., is determined to match-make between Charity Jones, a city planner hired to create jobs that will keep the town's men from moving away, and Josh Golden, a professional cyclist and reputed womanizer. Charity, a veteran of romantic disaster, is skeptical of Josh, who's always surrounded by cute female fans. Josh, traumatized by a teammate's death and no longer able to race, feels too broken to maintain a relationship. The book brims with quick-witted, good-natured characters, and though Charity and Josh occasionally verge on blandness, their romance grows poignantly and with chemistry to spare. <i>(May)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: 
  
  
  
  
  
  ## Also available from Susan Mallery and HQN Books
  
  
  Chasing Perfect
  
  
  Under Her Skin
  
  
  Lip Service
  
  
  Straight from the Hip
  
  
  Hot on Her Heels
  
  
  Sweet Trouble
  
  
  Sweet Spot
  
  
  Sweet Talk
  
  
  Accidentally Yours
  
  
  Tempting
  
  
  Sizzling
  
  
  Irresistible
  
  
  Delicious
  
  
  Someone Like You
  
  
  Falling for Gracie
  
  
  And don’t miss the third Fool’s Gold adventure!
  
  
  Finding Perfect
  
  
  (Available September 2010)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## CHAPTER ONE
  
  
  
  
  
  LIZ SUTTON HAD ALWAYS KNOWN the past would come back and bite her in the
  butt—she just hadn’t known it was going to happen today.
  
  
  Her morning had started normally enough, with getting her son on the bus to
  school, then going down the hall to her home office, where she wrote five
  fairly decent pages before stopping for some serious pacing, followed by
  deleting three of the last five pages. She was figuring out who to murder in
  the first chapter of her new book, not to mention how he or she would be
  murdered. Was decapitation just too predictable? Luckily her assis