Playing Around Books in Order

Playing Around takes readers into Hollywood, where a career can depend on an image, a headline, or one moment caught by the cameras. The series begins with Playing the Part, a romance between Piper James, a bestselling romance writer, and Mick Blackwell, an action star known for his playboy reputation.

Piper has already had a public professional stumble. To show her publisher she can keep things steady, she agrees to help Mick prepare for a role that requires him to look convincingly in love. It sounds like research. It becomes much more personal.

The problem is not chemistry. The problem is everything around it.

Piper wants to protect her career and stay out of the spotlight. Mick is used to attention, but that does not mean he understands intimacy or knows how to let someone see beyond the public version of him. Their arrangement comes with rules, including an end date, but the more time they spend together, the less believable those rules become.

The Hollywood setting gives the romance an extra layer of pressure. Privacy is limited. Reputation matters. A mistake can become entertainment for strangers, and both characters have plenty to lose if their personal lives become a story for everyone else.

At the same time, the book keeps its focus on the quieter question underneath all the celebrity noise: can two people who are used to performing for other people be honest with each other? Piper and Mick have to sort out old hurt, career anxiety, and the difference between desire and a relationship that might last.

It is a sleek, sexy contemporary romance with a behind-the-scenes feel.

Start with Playing the Part. It is the first and central title in the series, and it works as a complete story. Readers who enjoy celebrity romances, a writer heroine, forced proximity, and a carefully controlled affair that goes off-script will feel at home in this world.