Title:  Need You For Always
Series:  Heroes of St. Helena #2
Author:  Marina Adair
Genre:  Contemporary Romance
Published:  October 13, 2015
Publisher:  Montlake Romance
My Rating:  4 stars
Source:  NetGalley
Cover Description:

Emerson “Emi” Blake dropped out of culinary school to care for her ailing mother, but she has bigger dreams than running St. Helena’s most popular pita cart. First on the menu: upgrade to a gourmet food truck. A new part-time job as a personal chef will definitely provide the funds, but it also forces her into close contact with her one and only one-night stand, Dax Baudouin, who’s daring her to try a second taste.

Former army Ranger Dax has a clear mission: come home, get healed, and get gone. Yet Emi’s tough-girl exterior and hidden soft side are even harder to resist than her mouthwatering baklava. After years of battles, he knows better than to try and rescue anyone—not that she’ll let him get close enough to try. Truth is, Dax is starting to think that Emi’s the one person who can save him…if he can just persuade her to give him another shot.

Read on for my thoughts on Need You For Always.  No true spoilers, promise.

Emerson and Dax’s romance is rocky from the get go.  While they definitely enjoyed an amazing one night stand the night of Dax’s brother’s wedding – that’s all it was supposed to be a one time thing.  Then it was done because Emi simply doesn’t have time for romance, she barely has time to breathe let alone maintain a relationship.  Between her business, doing as many catering and odd jobs as possible and tending to her father and her much younger sister there is simply no time or energy for a romance that matters.  Besides she’s done that and gotten the heartache to remind her of the experience, not willing to take that risk again any time soon.

Dax always believed his life would be military from boot camp to his final forced retirement enlistment.  He was damned good at what he did in the special ops, surviving more than he ever expected to, he was at home with his team.  Much more so than at home with his brothers and a very small, small town mentality.  But life sucks basically, and Dax learned that first hand when a nearby explosion tore up his knee and his military life was over.  He came home, not because family was here in St. Helena, but because the best doctor in the nation called this small town home.  He had a plan B, but its success depended on getting his knee in peak condition along with some help from Emi, he’d take reluctant help but he would have her in his life again.

Need You For Always is a tender love story of two extremely stubborn people.  This novel, just as the first one in this series, is heavy on secondary characters.  This is not a series about a few random people falling in love, but it’s also about the small town community of St. Helena.  Any story will be enhanced by really good secondary characters, in my opinion.  They bring the believability level up a few notches.

I enjoyed Dax and Emi’s romance.  It was involved, at times slow moving as they each had so much going on in their lives.  Yet the rightness of them fitting together, in spite of their stubbornness made them a very realistic couple.  Not everything is fairy wings and rainbows, and this couple has so much on their plates that fitting in that romance isn’t the easiest thing, but when the other person is worth it you make it happen.

I would recommend Need You For Always for any romance reader, especially those that enjoy the details and characters that a small town brings.

*I received an e-ARC of Need You For Always from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. That does not change what I think of this novel.*

Available in paperback and for the Kindle