Second Service

Tess Auerbach reads bodies for a living. She tells Fortune-500 executives what their hands are doing while their mouths say something else, and she is very good at it, which is part of why she has spent fifteen years not saying the things she notices about the people she loves. Jude Auster runs a tennis academy in San Diego and is raising three kids. He says only what he means and means only what he says, and he has not played a competitive match since his shoulder gave out. When a seniors exhibition in Newport offers them both an appearance fee to play mixed doubles together, fifteen years after the qualifying week where she stood him up, they each say yes for reasons they keep to themselves. Six days. One rented cape. A kitchen too small for two people who once almost happened. On the grass their partnership is still effortless. Off it, every silence has weight, and the careful distance they have each spent a decade perfecting starts to cost more than it saves. Second Service is a quiet, grown-up love story about the bodies we end up in, the things we refuse to ask for, and what it takes for two guarded people to stop calling it courtesy. For readers who like their romance slow, smart, and earned. Content: explicit sexual content; for adult readers.