Here's the good news about Michael Ward: You don't have to hate him because he's handsome.

Don't begrudge him because he's buff. Those cheekbones are not his fault. You can even let it slide that he drives a Porsche.

To his credit, the 6-foot-tall Ward is low-key and modest. He knows what it's like to be, if not quite the ugly duckling, then the nerdy, overlooked one in high school.

But dreamy cover model? On a romance novel? That takes some explaining.

Ward, 49, a technology writer in the public affairs office at California State University, Sacramento, has mixed feelings about the whole thing. He's proud but a tad embarrassed.

Turns out, the modeling venture marks the final chapter of his transformation from Popsicle-stick-thin, athletically challenged teen, to chubby adult and, finally, to chiseled and overhauled 40-something single dad.

While the fictitious narrative for "Love, Lies & Videotape" reveals nothing about Ward in its 312 sometimes-steamy pages, the cover photo tells a story all its own.

Born and raised in Kansas City, Mo., Ward was one of eight kids. His father was a railroad porter who worked his way up to become an engineer.

"I loved sports. I just wasn't very good at them," Ward said. "When I graduated from high school, I weighed 145 pounds. I was a stick with an Afro."

Ward began taking photographs in high school and quickly found his niche. He enrolled at Arizona State University to study journalism.

"My parents always wanted us to have a better life than they had, but at the time I really didn't know what that meant," he said.

His siblings branched out in all kinds of directions. One brother graduated from both medical school and law school. One sister is a nurse. Another brother is a reggae singer in San Jose.

"I don't understand where he got the Jamaican accent, since we grew up in the same household," Ward said.

An introverted child, Ward continued to struggle in social settings as he got older. In college, he found an automatic circle of friends when he joined Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

"I was a geeky guy. I couldn't get a date until I was 19 – and I'm sure glad she asked me out," he said. "I'd go to fraternity dances and I'd be standing up against the wall."

After college, Ward returned to Kansas City and worked as a substitute teacher for a few years. When he took stock of his options, he decided to join the Air Force, writing and taking photos for various Air Force publications. He was 26.

"I did everything late. I thought I'd be in for four years – 22 years later, I decided to give it up," he said.

Along the way, Ward got married. His wife already had a young daughter and the couple had another daughter together. The relationship lasted 10 years. Ward says he didn't manage to come out of his shell until his mid-30s.

In 1993, around the time his marriage was crumbling, he had a life-changing experience while stationed in Korea – while preparing to have a snack, of all things.

"It was 9 o'clock at night and I was about to open a can of Pringles and I thought, 'What the heck am I doing?' It was an epiphany. I put that can on the shelf and it stayed there for a year."

Ward asked an Air Force pal to teach him to lift weights and he kept at it with newfound discipline. He changed his diet and scaled back his portions. He lost 40 pounds.

Whenever he felt like giving up, he told himself the same thing – "Go past quit."

By 2003, Ward was lean and muscled when he was assigned to temporary duty in Kansas City. He happened to be staying in the same hotel that was hosting a large convention for the romance novel industry.

Mistaken for a model, Ward was invited to the convention ball, where he made several friends. They tried to talk him into entering the Mr. Romance contest, the winner of which was awarded a cover model gig.

Ward declined. When his new friends asked him the next year, he said no again. The third year, he gave in – and he won, outshining about a dozen much younger men.

He shot the cover photos in Malibu, posing with a female model for about four hours.

On the cover, an emotionally wrought Ward appears to be urging the woman to give him a second chance – or maybe he's asking directions to Santa Monica. It's unclear.

"You tend to chuckle at the whole thing," Ward said.

Three months ago, Mr. Romance moved to Sacramento from Panama City, Fla., to start his new job.

His daughter, Candice, 22, attends the University of Central Florida on an academic scholarship. Asked how she deals with having a dad who doubles as a romance novel model, she laughed and said, "It's a little bit of bragging and a little bit of making fun of my dad."

"But he's a pretty humble guy," she said. "He's not egotistical about it. When he was put on the cover of that book, he was a little embarrassed."

This article was provided by: Sacbee
Written by: Blair Anthony Robertson