Pretty decent read by Lori Foster. Not what I've become used to by her, and could have stood out a bit more, but overall a decent read.

Lori Foster's Close Contact was fantastic! It kept me on the edge of my seat!

Lori Foster is an author that I’ve heard great things about but I’ve never gotten around to reading, and I’m very glad that I picked up Close Contact, book three in her Body Armor series. Easily read as a standalone novel, Close Contact follows Maxi Nevar’s turbulent life after she inherits her grandmother’s secluded farm and multitude of farm cats. Soon after moving in and taking over where her loving grandmother left off with the neglected farmhouse and surrounding acreage, Maxi is the target of strange happenings on the farm–and she can’t shake the feeling that someone has been inside her new home multiple times. But when she wakes up on hard ground on the far side of her pond after clearly being drugged, she’s had enough and she seeks out help from the Body Armor Agency–and more importantly help from ex-MMA-fighter-turned-bodyguard Miles Dartman. Even though Maxi and Miles only saw each other three times before Maxi disappeared from Miles’ life a few months earlier, neither one has forgotten about the other.

When Miles is hired by Maxi, they return to her farm and immediately get to work making security enhancements to her property, and so many people come out of the proverbial woodwork. Both Maxi and Miles learn so much about each other’s lives that they never had a chance to learn before, and that initial attraction is still there burning hot between them. Miles is still the same trustworthy, fun-loving, nice guy with a dangerous edge, while Maxi has gone from a high-end, put together personal shopper to a down-home country farm girl seemingly overnight–but it suits her and she’s content. While Maxi tries to keep Miles at arms distance emotionally, she has no problem getting physically closer to him again. But will it be enough for either of them and can either one of them fight their feelings very long?

Close Contact has an entertaining mystery surrounding who is targeting Maxi, trying to force her to sell her farm. But there’s also questions about why Miles quit MMA, which is something even the other fighters don’t know, and why Maxi doesn’t interact with her brother or sister. The unanswered questions brought up in the beginning of the book are slowly revealed to the characters, and I really enjoyed discovering the answers. I really loved how strong Maxi stayed throughout all of the ordeals, as well as how Miles never strayed from her side and protected her at all costs.

I give Close Contact a 4.5 out of 5. The suspense throughout the book builds and several suspects emerge, and while the culprit isn’t entirely unguessable, it’s still enjoyable and thrilling as the danger mounts and the crazed person zeroes in on our heroes. Maxi and Miles’ burgeoning romance is rekindled in a will-it-be-more-than physical kind of way, and I really loved Miles as a character. While Maxi was likable, I wished she would just say what she really wants more often. The other bodyguards and their wives, as well as their boss Sahara were welcome side characters, and they brought a nice variety and added action to the book. I really look forward to reading the next book, which features Sahara and another fighter Brand.

I loved this book! Ms. Foster hooks the reader right from the first sentence. The mystery starts off on the first page, and the humor follows later. I found the story quite a lot of fun.
The heroine finds it hard to trust. She has learned that she is not infallible and has trusted the wrong people before, so she decides the solution is not to trust anyone ever again. In Ms. Foster’s mind, that is a terrible place to be. Without trust we can’t have love and without love the world is a dark place. So a couple of times Maxi tries to just use Miles for his body without trusting him. He is a beautiful man but also has a beautiful character, so she knows that if she lets him he could really become important to her. She doesn’t want to trust him. When bad things start happening to her and she has to trust someone, though, she goes straight for Miles. She hopes hiring him through the Body Armor firm will provide an insulating barrier and protect her.
This is another in Ms. Foster’s Body Armor series. It is an interesting idea, to make a security company with a division of good-looking guys from which to select, not just plain guys in suits and earpieces. Anyway, as all the books in the series do, this book stands alone although it is delightful to meet “old friends” from the other books.
I voluntarily reviewed an Advanced Reader copy of this book.

GREAT standalone read. My first read by this author. This is not the first in this BODY ARMOR series but was able to understand - great standalone
Maxi wakes up outside her house in gravel with little memory of the circumstances of the evening. She is far from neighbors, the closes being a 79 year old. Incidents have been occurring that are both scary and questionable. She hires a bodyguard Miles, one whom she trusts and has had intimate relations with.
A suspenseful tale dealing with a battle of a stalker and of wills in and out of the bedroom.

When Maxi wakes outside, a long distance from her house, feeling sick and can't remember the previous night or how she got to where she was, she realizes her situation requires outside help. Strange things have been happening ever since she inherited her grandma's house, things being moved, things going missing and then reappearing, but never has she felt endangered until waking up outside. The only one she trusts is Miles, the sexy MMA fighter turned bodyguard she left behind after one explosive night without a word months ago.
Miles is in a state of shock when he is called for an assignment and finds it is Maxi, the one who he can't get out of his head after he woke up to find her gone. He is determined to protect her and win her at the same time, but in order to do that he has to get to know her and learn why she is so determined to stay in her grandma's house and take care of her dozen's of cats when she is being encouraged to sell, threatened by an unknown person.
I love this series and it only continues to get better. I absolutely cannot wait to read Sahara's story next!!!

I couldn't put Miles and Maxi's story down--the suspense and tension over Maxi's safety combined with the chemistry between the two of them had me glued to the page! As always, Lori has given us a story filled with heart and sprinkled with humor--completely riveting.

Close Contact is the third novel in the Body Armor series and like the previous two novels, this was another very good read, in fact, I stayed up all night and read straight through from cover to cover until 6 a.m., and it gets yet another 4.5 star rating from this reviewer.

The set up for the Body Armor series is that it's a private protection/bodyguard service run by Sahara Silver, one heck of a tough cookie, and the bodyguards she hires are former MMA fighters--big, gorgeous, hunky men who are fit and more than capable of protecting whoever hires them.

As the novel opens, the heroine, Maxi Nevar, awakens to a star-filled sky--her head and body are aching, she's nauseated, she's lying on gravel, dirt and grass, her mouth is dry, she's confused, her thinking is muddled and she has no idea where she is or how she got there. When she finally manages to rise to her feet, she finds herself a good deal downhill from her grandmother's house, which she recently inherited, near the 2-acre pond, with one of her aunt's many feral cats sitting beside her.

Almost as soon as she took up residence in her grandmother's home, she's been bothered by finding small items missing or moved around inside the house, hearing strange noises, and she suspects that someone has been inside the house when she wasn't there. Local law enforcement hasn't taken these incidents seriously, but after climbing up the hill and managing to become a bit more coherent, her first stop is at Body Armor, Inc., where she shows up in utter fear and disarray and wants to hire a bodyguard, but the bodyguard who's assigned to her case is someone she already knows--intimately.

That bodyguard is retired MMA star Miles Dartman, widely known as The Legend in MMA circles, who recently retired from cage fighting (for reasons you'll discover later in the book). Maxi is shocked when Sahara introduces her to her new bodyguard, Miles. He's as surprised as Maxi is, because two months earlier, after breaking off her engagement to her cheating fiance, Gary, she went to a bar, met Miles, they hit if off and had an incendiary one-night stand, and the sex was so good it led to a two-night, and then a three-night stand and then nothing, which is exactly what Maxi said she wanted, and after that third encounter, Miles had no way to get in touch with her, which he would have liked, so he's just as surprised to see Maxi as she is to see him, and Sahara is made aware of their earlier connection but trusts him to protect her.

One of the first things they do is take Maxi to the hospital to verify that Maxi had indeed been drugged and placed in the spot where she regained consciousness. Miles takes over and is quick to dump all the food and beverages in the house, and install new locks, security lighting and motion sensors on the property, and, as expected these two characters can't keep their hands off each other for very long. The only problem I had with this story is that their relationship is centered around their hot sexual encounters, and there are many of them. I would have preferred to see these two really open up to each other verbally as well as sexually because there is too much time wasted as Maxi and Miles try to figure out what they each feel for one another but never communicate those feelings to each other. Miles is still angry at being dumped by Maxi two months earlier, and Maxi, who has been denigrated by her family all her life can't figure out why someone as gorgeous as Miles would be interested in her.

There are a lot of twists and turns in this story, which is at its heart a whodunit. Maxi has a sister and brother, both high achievers and Maxi has always felt like the disappointment in the family. When her mother passed, her entire business empire was split between Maxi's two siblings, who certainly didn't offer to share with her, but when they discovered that their mother had filed for bankruptcy, their inheritance wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. When Maxi's grandmother dies and leaves her home and estate solely to Maxi, her brother and sister expect her to sell it and split the profits with them, something she refuses to do, deciding to keep her inheritance to herself, live in her grandmother's home and renovate it. Then there's Gary, the cheating ex-fiance who keeps calling, texting and then shows up still professing his love for Maxi who wants nothing more to do with him. One has to wonder if he's behind the odd occurrences at Maxi's home. There also the local lawman, whom neither Miles nor Maxi fully trust, and other locals who fall under suspicion as well. As the threats become more frequent and more violent, other Body Armor agents are brought in to help, and it was nice to reconnect with the two couples we met in the first two novels in this series.

If there's one thing I love it's a mystery that manages to keep me guessing to the very end, and this novel did just that, and what a suspenseful, smashing, and surprising reveal it is. Chalk up another great read from Ms. Foster. I can hardly wait to read the next installment in this wonderfully well- written series.

I voluntarily read an advance reader copy of this novel. The opinions expressed are my own.

4 out of 5 stars

Miles and Maxi have a history that Maxi left behind because she didn’t believe it could ever go anywhere. BUT when she finds herself in trouble, she turns to Miles, the only person she truly believes she can trust with her safety.

This book was good, but I have to say it wasn’t all that surprising for me. I figured out fairly early on who the culprit was though the author tried to sway me away. I didn’t read it just for the mystery though so it was still a good book.

The story had a lot of chemistry and though I haven’t read the two previous books, I enjoyed meeting those characters as well -- and added them to my ever-growing TBR. I felt connected to both Miles and Maxi and enjoyed the snippets we got from the “bad guy’s” point of view as well. This story isn’t one I’ll soon forget and I can’t wait to go back and read th other two in the series!


*** I received a complimentary copy of this novel via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review ***

This series relies on our love of hard bodies and overprotective men. I'm in. The owner of the company recruits MMA fighters to change careers and become a body guard. She believes that she can charge higher premiums for good looking guards - and she would be right.

Miles hasn't been in this business long but he will jump in with both feet and perhaps resolve the past while he is at it. Maxi wanted to leave her one (and repeated) night stand in the past. Her home should be her sanctuary but is no longer safe. Miles is the only person she trusts and maybe they can go for a three-peat?

Gotta love cats in this one.

Yeah this one was too slow for me so I DNF’d it. The attraction was there. The suspense was there too but it wasn’t moving fast enough. It’s probably me because I get impatient with the pacing of a book sometimes. What I did read I liked, it just didn’t hold my attention enough to finish it.

Lori Foster was one of the first romance author's I read and I really enjoy her writing style. She writes male friendship very well and her heroines are usually strong and smart. They support each other like family. I love it.

Close Contact is another great one by Lori Foster, and a nice addition to the Body Armor Series. In this one, Miles wants more than his casual relationship with Maxi. When she needs his service through his employer, Body Armor, he is determined to not only protect her, but to break through her walls and establish a more intimate, lasting relationship. Maxi has received a large inheritance and is being bothered by her ex and former so called friends. She doesn't know where the mysterious threats she is getting are coming from. Maxi trusts Miles to protect her body, but she has to decide if she can give hi her heart.

Maxi and Miles are wonderful characters, and it was great to see the rest of the Body Armor team and familiar characters from prior books. I loved Miles' protectiveness over Maxi, and thought they were great together. The storyline was intriguing, and I thought there was a good mix of romance and suspense. The story moved at a nice pace, and I was kept interested throughout. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing a copy of the book in return for an honest review.

That age old question, sex vs love, has another glorious chapter…
I always love going back to Lori Foster’s world of MMA fighters which has characters with heart and struggles you can feel right down to your toes. And my toes were tingling with this second chance romance that had suspense, family and sizzling heat in equal measure. Maxi is starting fresh but her family, her ex and scary shenanigans have been beating on her resolve. One night she is forced to ask for help, not realizing that Miles was going to answer that call…
Characters with strength and resolve are the best and both Miles and Maxi have that in spades. Despite all the opposition – including her own very real fears for safety – Maxi is determined to stay on the path she has mapped out for herself. Miles was an unexpected wrinkle and having him back in her life means he has an opportunity for more, which is what he wanted. It was a role reversal done perfectly as Maxi wanted to walk away with her heart intact, just sex please, while Miles wanted to see where their electric connection could go. Miles was a wonderful protector – strong and ready to protect Maxi and her herd of four-legged dependents. I would have fallen for Miles for that alone…
There was heat galore, mystery, suspense and characters – both new and already loved – to sink my reading teeth into. With a few twists and turns and a romance that had me at ‘one night stand’ I did just that! I can’t wait for more…
~Diane

I’m trying to think if there is any reason anyone who reads romance hasn’t read Lori Foster yet?? She writes amazing romance novels with strong female characters… I just adore these strong female characters!! I love the families among friends she has created throughout these books. No you don’t have to read the books in order but, I highly suggest reading them that way, then you get the family dynamic.

Miles book is finally here! yyyaasssss!!! It’s hard to believe that you can fall in love with these guys anymore as these books go on but I do. I adore the protective side, I adore his macho side, I just adore him. Of course he is trying but failing to keep his distance (his heart) away from Maxi, while protecting her. He doesn’t know why she ran away from him to begin with but he is going to find out.

Maxi while very mysterious was great as a lead female character. I loved the suspense of this book. I really enjoyed how she just knew deep down that Miles was the guy she could trust no matter what. Whew and that chemistry was off the charts!! Can she give her heart over to Miles??

This is not the first book I've read by Lori Foster and I'm quickly becoming a big fan of hers. I loved the characters, the set up with the detective agency being run by sexy ex-MMA fighters. Maxi and Miles were adorable together as well as being super sexy. What's more, I loved all of the relationships and friendships in this story. It really makes me intrigued to read more in this series and also to attack all of Lori Foster's backlist. What a fun, enjoyable, steamy read!

4 Stars

Close Contact is the third title in the Body Armor series.  Whilst you could read this title as a standalone the characters who appear in Under Pressure and Hard Justice, appear frequently throughout the story line with their love interests.

Close Contact is a second chance romance, packed full of suspense, action, intrigue, passion and steam.

Featuring Miles Dartman and Maxi Nevar, who's chemistry, attraction and connection is not only undeniable, but intense and fraught with conflict and heat.  Although Maxi is a strong, independent woman, when her life is turned upside down, and it's jam packed full of drama, responsibility, and danger.  Miles is a hot, strong, alpha, a former MMA fighter, turned body guard, who Maxi turns to for help despite their tumultuous past.

This title is told in multiple points of view including Maxi, Miles and that of the perpetrator.
As I've come to expect from Lori Foster this title is well written, and I look forward to reading future title in this series.

Close Contact is the third book in the Body Armor series. This one features former MMA fighter Miles Dartman and his heroine Maxi Nevar. Miles and Maxi met in a bar and hooked up 3 times before she disappeared from Miles life, leaving him smarting and a little hurt. They both had felt a connection to the other but Maxi’s life was a mess and she was afraid to trust Miles and drag him into her problems.

It’s not long before Maxi and Miles meet again when she flees to Body Armor, after some scary circumstances, and requests Miles as her body guard. It doesn’t take long for things to heat back up between Miles and Maxi as Miles works to keep her safe while trying to gain her trust and win her heart.

I liked Close Contract. Miles and Maxi were likable characters and the mystery was entertaining. Though, I did figure out who the bad guy was shortly into the book. The cats were a fun aspect to the story and I like seeing Maxi take on the home and legacy of her Grandmother.

All in all, Close Contract was, for me, a good read.

*ARC (Advanced Review Copy) received from NetGalley.

This book was pretty good, but there was a long period of angst and a dragging story in the middle. It had a good ending. The characters fought each other too hard.

Lori Foster is great and I love all of her books. This one continued the trend. I want to read the first two Body Armor books, but you can definitely enjoy this one without having read the others in the series. Maxi was a strong woman, with an independent, stubborn streak and Miles was so patient and steadfast. Throughout the crazy plot, I enjoyed watching them grow together.