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Guilty of Love by Jennifer Taylor

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I wish this author wrote more in the straight Harlequin line instead of the medical line because she always has some unusual plot points and character attributes. Guilty of Love features Alexandra Campbell, in her mid 20s, attractive, who designs, makes and sells her own jewelry and lives with her younger brother, Kenny, in a flat over her shop.

Kenny is a problem. Although he’s 20 years old and has a job, he has little common sense and Alex has shielded him and helped him out of his constant problems. Recently Kenny lost more gambling than he could possibly pay and Alex had to squeak out of her bank business loan to pay his debts. He also got into trouble at his work, Lang’s Engineering, and is generally immature. The story opens in late fall when Alex is tense and worried about her overdue loan and working flat out to prepare for Christmas shoppers.

Plot Synopsis – Click to Skip Spoilers

Kenny’s latest stunt is swiping design plan printouts for Lang’s top secret engine. He panics when he gets home and realizes what he did. Oops. What now? Kenny asks Alex to go with him to the factory, slip in to his boss’s office and return them. Kenny will distract the security guard for her. What could go wrong?

Well, two things go wrong. First Jordan Lang, the boss, comes in as Alex slips out. Second, Jordan knows that someone has sold some engineering designs to his competitor. He knows there is industrial espionage and now he know who did it. Alexandra Campbell is the spy.

Jordan needs a week to get his engine finished. He grabs Alex, forces her into his car and kidnaps her to his remote Wales cottage, intending to hold her for the week he needs. Alex tries to fight, tries to get away but cannot. She does not tell him her name and he calls her Jane as in Jane Doe. They stop at Jordan’s neighbor to exchange the car for a 4-wheel drive car to get up the rough hill track.

The power goes out at the cottage. Jordan goes to fix the generator and gets banged on his head, nearly knocked out. Alex finds him and helps him in the cottage, grabs the keys and drives off. As she walks out the door Jordan yells “I shall find you, Jane. Even if I have to move heaven and earth, I shall find you and make you pay for what you’ve done!” Jordan believes Alex is the spy and attacked him, hit him on the head – he’s not thinking rationally around her.

Jordan does not know who Alex is, has no idea that she is related to Kenny who works for him. Even so she is terrified that he will find her. And he does.

Alex is working when the shop bell rings and someone throws aside the bead curtain that separates her workroom from the store. It’s Jordan.

He threatens Alex. He will go to the police and report her and Kenny to the police for industrial espionage and assault. And if by some miracle Alex gets off then he will do everything he can to ruin her business and her personally. In fact he will ruin her business if he goes to the police since the bank will call her loan.

Jordan offers her a choice. Face ruin or marry him. Design flaws have delayed his engine development and that plus his competitors announcing a nearly identical design have caused his investors to drop out. He needs money and he needs it now. His mother left him enough money to complete his engine but he must be married to receive it. Thus marry Alex.

Jordan makes it clear it would be a short term, paper marriage although he demonstrates that they both are attracted to the other. He kisses Alex, acts seductive, then when she’s enthralled backs off and makes nasty comments about how they could make it a marriage in bed and on paper.

Alex is angry at him and even angrier at herself for responding to his pseudo passion (actually there was nothing pseudo about it although Jordan claims it was). She agrees and the date is set three weeks ahead.

Alex claims her innocence again and gets Jordan to agree that if he finds out that she was not the spy that he will drop the marriage idea. And they can divorce after six months. Jordan agrees with both but insinuates she might decide she likes being married. He’s insulting.

Jordan takes her to a fancy restaurant dinner with many friends to announce their engagement. One guest is James Morgan, Lang’s chief designer and Kenny’s boss. A lady asks Alex how they met and she tells the truth. Jordan saw her at his factory, jumped to conclusions and kidnapped her! Morgan asks the obvious next question, did Jordan realize he was wrong? Alex is saved from answering since the lady jumps in that of course he must have since they are now in love and engaged. Everyone laughs, although Alex doesn’t think Morgan is laughing at all or that he believes it.

Alex quickly finds out that Morgan did not believe it. Jordan takes her to the factory and is called away. Morgan inveigles her into touring the building, starts with his office, insists on showing her the engine plans then he leaves her in his office with the plans. Alex should have walked away but she knows the plans are confidential and starts to fold them up to shove into the file cabinet when Jordan and Morgan come in the office. Morgan denies getting the plans out, denies asking Alex to look at them and of course Jordan assumes she is back to her old espionage tricks.

Jordan is furious and disappointed. and moves the wedding up to a few days ahead. Alex reluctantly marries him and they go to his house in a close by town. He makes a pass at her, insults her some more, then leaves her to go back to work.

One night, after three weeks of steadily increasing sexual tension Alex cannot face going back to his house after she closes her shop. She goes shopping and out for a meal by herself, then back to her flat. She’s in the tub when Jordan rings the doorbell and keeps ringing it. She wraps herself in a towel (apparently no one in Harlequin land owns a bathrobe) and answers the door. Jordan is furious; he was worried she was injured or dead or had left him. They make love.

Next morning both are so happy, Alex decides to go home early on the off chance Jordan also came home. Unfortunately James Morgan is there, full of poison and eager to spill it all over Alex. Turns out that Jordan discovered before they married that it was Morgan, not Alex, who sold company secrets, moreover, Jordan only got half his inheritance. He gets the other half when he has a child.

Horrified Alex tries to dismiss Morgan’s insinuations, but she remembers. She remembers Jordan promised to let her off the marriage if he found the true spy beforehand. He knew she was innocent of his spy charge yet forced her to marry him. She remembers Jordan never said he loved her. Wanted, yes. Loved, no. She remembers that the only thing Jordan seems to care about is his business. He never seemed to care about her. She does not know that Jordan slept with her because of the will, but by now she doesn’t care. She is in love with Jordan and he broke her heart.

Alex lays into Jordan when he gets home; rather than defend himself or claim any love he gets on his high horse. “Lang’s isn’t some little two-bit concern. It’s been in my family for years. It’s part of me and yes, I would do anything to stop it being taken from me.” That seals it for Alex. She starts to walk out the door when Jordan grabs her and tries to seduce her into staying. Now she’s angry on top of hurt. She returns to her flat and shop and tries to stop hurting, stop caring about Jordan.

A few weeks later, just before Christmas, Jordan comes in the store as she’s closing up. She refuses to sell him anything nor will she talk to him. She hits the panic alarm when he refuses to leave, then runs upstairs and packs to go stay with Kenny since she know Jordan will return. Jordan catches her when she leaves the building and tries to compel her towards his car, but stops when she refuses to go with him or listen. Finally he tells her that he simply wants to talk to her, to explain, but if she won’t then he will get out of her life. He walks away, she yells and runs into his arms. (Cue Tchaikovsky.)

They drive into the country and Jordan tries to explain to her. He HAD to have the funds or Lang’s would go bankrupt since he had invested everything into his new project. He didn’t think she would marry him if she didn’t have to (apparently he didn’t think of the handy Harlequin buy-a-wife scenario) so he didn’t tell her he knew she had not spied on him. He loves her. He slept with her because he loved her, it went way beyond sex for both of them; he knows it, she knows it and he won’t let her cheapen it by claiming it was just sex. Jordan realized the company meant nothing compared to Alex. He sold a good chunk to a Japanese firm and put all the inheritance money into a trust fund for any children they might have.

Happy ever after.

Believable Romance

When you read the plot without reading the story the romance seems off kilter. How can Alex love a man as cold as Jordan? As obsessed about his business as Jordan? Who breaks a serious promise as did Jordan? True Jordan is immensely attractive and has a compelling personality. True, we can love people who do not “deserve” our love – in fact does anyone “deserve” another’s love? It’s fairly easy to believe Alex’s love is real.

Can we believe that Jordan turned himself around as he claims? That he truly puts Alex first, ahead of Lang’s? Jordan himself tells Alex that he knows she would find it difficult to believe him, that he repaid the inheritance into the trust fund he set up for any children, that he found investors in order that she can believe him. It’s remarkable and it is believable.

Overall

I liked Guilty of Love the first time I read it, reread and still enjoyed, in fact I liked it even better the second time. I bought a paperback copy and have re-reread and still like it. Sometimes it’s not clear why a book appeals so much, but let’s try.
* Jordan is a jerk at the beginning, suspicious, hard-hearted, almost cruel, accuses Alex of espionage and assault, kidnaps her. Whew.
* Alex fights him and wins, at least temporarily. She escapes and goes back to her jewelry business.
* Jordan tells Alex point blank that she’s doing Kenny more harm than good by easing his way through life. Later Alex realizes that Kenny is growing up now that he’s on his own. I detest entitled brats and it’s good to see Kenny grow up.
* Author Taylor shows, she does not tell.
* I like beautiful hand-made jewelry and drooled over the descriptions of Alex’s pieces.
* The love scene isn’t fade to black but it’s not at all explicit. Jordan promised to make it beautiful for them and he succeeds.
* Alex doesn’t rely solely on Morgan’s claims. Jordan sank his own boat when he refused to talk of love.
* Alex confronts Jordan before walking out. She is completely clear why she is going.
* Alex refuses to allow Jordan to seduce her into staying.
* She wins again (temporarily) when she gets Jordan out of her shop via the alarm.
* Jordan not only claims to love her, he defends his decision to force the marriage because Lang’s is so important, yet he also has now given up significant control in order to demonstrate his love.

4 Stars

I got my paperback copy from Thriftbooks. Amazon has used copies and you can likely find copies on other used book sites and eBay. As of this writing it is available on Archive.org but note they have lately made many books unavailable (I suspect because they are available to buy in paper or in E form).

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Wife by Agreement – Harlequin Presents by Kim Lawrence

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I liked Wife by Agreement the first time I read it. It was a “good book”, not excellent, but somehow it stuck with me and I reread it. Then reread again. And again. And again. Finally I realized that it resonates so much it is better than “good”. Try “Excellent”.

Why? What about this simple-appearing romance appeals so much? Let’s take a quick look at the plot, then delve into why this book is one I reach for when I’m tired or just want a pleasant, happy time.

Plot Synopsis – Click to Avoid Spoilers

Hannah married Ethan Kemp a year ago. Although she calls him “Ethan” and they visit his friends together and she has the bedroom next to his, they still relate to each other as nanny and employer. Ethan was widowed three years earlier and after several nannies lasted only a few months, leaving his 5 year old daughter Emma wary and unhappy, Ethan decided to marry Hannah when he thought she too might be considering marriage.

Hannah accepted because she loves Ethan, loves Emma and 3 year old Tom, and although she knew he felt nothing for her, decided to risk heartbreak and take what she could. What she gets was essentially nothing. Ethan remains disinterested, leaves early, gets home late, rarely talks to Hannah. He is a loving father and spends what time he has with his children, never with her.

Besides Ethan’s indifference, Hannah’s main problems are lack of time with people she likes, the oppressive feeling of living in a shrine to Ethan’s beautiful and ultra-talented first wife Catherine, and his former mother-in-law Alexa. Alexa constantly belittles Hannah and makes sure she realizes that she could never match up to the incomparable Catherine.

Wife by Agreement opens when Hannah comes home around 1 AM, scratched and bruised from jumping out of a moving car. She had gone out for a drink after her evening French class with several others and took a ride home with Craig who turned out to be a louche. Hannah figures she can get in without anyone knowing she had been so foolish, but Ethan is still up and he gets angry. In fact he’s nasty, attacks Hannah for unwisely accepting a ride with a man she does not know, putting herself at risk and she ought to stop taking French classes.

Hannah retorts that she likes French class, that she goes on her night off (Ethan objects to that term, she’s not the nanny but his wife and can have any night off), that she doesn’t intend to quit class.

The next day Hannah’s French teacher Jean-Paul visits and asks her to reconsider dropping his class and more, wants her to pursue a degree. Hannah is furious that Ethan so arrogantly quit for her and intrigued to get a degree. She left school before taking A levels because she had aged out of the foster care system and worked several bad jobs while she trained as a nanny. Hannah became a nanny because she like kids, had no way to pursue more education and the jobs provide room and board.

As Jean-Paul is leaving Hannah retrieves his glasses from Tom when Alexa walks in.

‘Does Ethan know you entertain your men whilst he is out working?’ Alexa settled herself into the chair Jean-Paul had vacated. ‘I expect you’ve been playing up a couple of scratches for all it’s worth.

Chapter 2

Alexa exaggerates the incident to Ethan as yet another example of Hannah being unworthy, incapable, careless with the children. That night Ethan is mostly angry because up to now he has shoved Hannah into the back of his mind, she’s in a box marked no-trouble/needs nothing, and now she’s causing all sorts of upsets to the household. He wants everything to be smooth, placid, peaceful.

‘No, you married me because you wanted a low-maintenance wife who would make as little impact as possible on your life!’ … He flinched as the accuracy of her husky accusation hit him. … He wanted things back to normal. At the end of the day he could always come home knowing she would have coped with any household crises with quiet efficiency, his children would be happy and content and nobody would make any emotional demands on him. He hadn’t realized how much he’d come to rely on this small oasis of peace until he’d been unexpectedly deprived of it.

Chapter 3

Up to now Hannah has clothes shopped with Ethan’s colleague’s wife (at Ethan’s request) who has horrible taste, but Hannah goes elsewhere for the next party and buys a few lovely, becoming and rather sexy dresses, gets her hair cut and highlighted and looks nothing like the nonentity she was at past parties. Ethan is wary of the change, he doesn’t want to Hannah to rock the boat because he likes his life just as it is yet he’s attracted to Hannah and decides to seduce her.

After the party – where Ethan was furious with the attention Hannah attracted – Ethan and Hannah get home. Surprise! Ethan’s widowed mother is visiting. And she’s getting married. Moreover, she has Drew with her, 35, good looking, a bit scruffy with a back pack. Drew instantly notices Hannah is wary, stiff and sore, bruised, looks at Ethan glaring murder at him and figures Ethan’s been hurting Hannah. Hannah tells him it’s fine and goes to bed.

She wakes up screaming from a nightmare, knocks a lamp over and both Drew and Ethan come in. Ethan shoves Drew out of the room with a few insults then seduces Hannah. This begins a halcyon few weeks when Ethan and Hannah make love, spend some time together, have a marriage.

Alexa can’t stand this. She is at Hannah’s when Jean-Paul calls to ask her to come discuss a degree and offers to take care of Tom and pick up Emma. She lets Emma wait a while and calls Ethan, frantic. Hannah abandoned the kids, forgot Emma at school, all to pursue her own pleasure.

Ethan believes her. Hannah tells him it is not true, that Alexa hates her for usurping Catherine’s place but Ethan refuses to consider this. Why would Alexa lie? Clearly Hannah is moving on, doesn’t care for the kids or him, is using them as a stepping stone. Hannah is horribly hurt. She loves the kids, Ethan won’t believe her and he says there is no “us”, she was convenient and he had needs, and that as for the house, she’s the hired help.

A couple weeks later Hannah and Ethan have the kids at a downtown hotel for Faith’s wedding. Ethan is cutting, disparaging, hurtful. Hannah has Emma’s hand when her hat blows off, she lets go of Emma for a second, long enough for the little girl to run across the busy street. Hannah drops everything, charges after her. She manages to toss Emma out of the way of the car before she is hit.

Ethan is horror-struck. He saw it all. Now he’s waiting at the emergency room to find out whether Hannah will live or have permanent damage. The doctor tells him she had been pregnant but lost the baby in the accident. Ethan tries to comfort Hannah but she won’t let him. She won’t talk about the baby. Both are grieving.

Ethan overhears Alexa apologizing to Hannah for sowing anger and discord and he’s appalled at his own behavior. Hannah tells Alexa and him that it no longer matters. She’s numb, so badly hurt. She doesn’t even care when Ethan apologizes, says he loves her, she tells him she married him for love, not security. “But don’t worry, mistrust and suspicion did what complete neglect couldn’t.”

Later Hannah has coffee with an old friend who came to her for help and learns that Ethan has been giving pro bono time to a trust that helps people find their way. She realizes she still loves him and visits his chambers. She apologizes for saying such awful things and she still loves him. They make love, Ethan burns their prenuptial agreement and sets off the fire alarm and sprinklers. HEA.

Technical Quality

This romance novel started off with a bang. Right away in first scene we see Hannah is wary of Ethan, that he takes her for granted, that things are changing. Both interact on page 2. Author skillfully lets us see Ethan growing frustrated with Hannah changing and rebelling (in his mind) and Hannah, fed up after turning herself inside out to ease his life, when he attacks her for the first ripple in the smooth water.

Kim Lawrence builds the tension, slowly then accelerates to the heartbreaking crisis when Ethan claims Hannah neglects the kids. Hannah is optimistic when Ethan makes love to her, sees them develop a true marriage, only to have it crash when Ethan believes Alexa instead of her. She isn’t completely surprised since Ethan had never taken her side with Alexa no matter how poisonous the comments, but Hannah had been hoping Ethan might eventually love her.

The pacing follows the same arc as the emotional tension: a bang, then accelerating followed by slower, more poignant scenes, then very fast at the emotional peak, then gently retarding as Ethan struggles, realizing he may have lost the woman he loved, and Hannah blind by grief and bitterness. This pacing is very well done.

Lawrence sets the slow, emotional scene where Ethan teaches Hannah to swim and they make love immediately before the cruel confrontation where Ethan accuses Hannah of abandoning and neglecting his children. That gives us readers time to catch our breath and see the growing love and care, the increasing warmth and time together before Ethan rips it apart with Alexa’s lies. Perfect contrast in pace, tension and emotions.

Characters

Alexa, Ethan’s former mother in law. “Alexa Harding had been horrified when she’d learnt that the nanny was to take her daughter’s place. Having any woman take Catherine’s place would have been hard for her to accept, but the fact that Hannah was, in her eyes, menial household help made the situation unacceptable to the older woman.” Alexa cannot accept Hannah, sees her as stealing Catherine’s place, resents that the children’s love Hannah as their mom.

She never lets a chance go by to run down Hannah, to compare her to Ethan’s first wife who was gorgeous, owned her own company and was an Olympic-level rider. “Catherine never let personal discomfort stop her doing what she wanted. She wasn’t afraid of anything!’ Alexa’s laugh was shrill. … And I’m sure Ethan remembers what he lost every time he looks at you,’ she sneered.

Finally Alexa snaps when Ethan asks her to take the kids while he and Hannah go on a belated honeymoon. She first offers to take care of Tom and pick up Emma from school so Hannah can talk to the college about a degree course, then she lies to Ethan. She lets Emma wait alone at her school so she can accuse Hannah of forgetting about her!

Hannah is more horrified that Alexa could do that to Emma than she is that Alexa lied – Alexa did everything she could to tear Hannah down – and she is heartbroken that Ethan believed her. She heard Alexa’s apology but was too numb and hurt to verbally offer forgiveness.

Faith, Ethan’s Mother. Faith doesn’t have a big part, mostly serves to observe and create plot points. Hannah is surprised that Faith is so friendly when she visits before her wedding. ‘‘I knew Ethan didn’t love you, and in my view marriage with love is hard enough, but without it…’ She lifted her shoulders expressively. “I could also see you loved him.’ Her blue eyes grew compassionate as she watched the colour flee dramatically from Hannah’s face. ‘I didn’t want to see you hurt.’

Faith comments that she is surprised that Hannah had not changed the home’s décor. Ethan is put out, ‘And Hannah knows perfectly well she can do anything she wants to the house.’ ‘From the expression on her face I’d say she might have felt more comfortable if you had told her that, Ethan.’

Drew, Faith’s To-Be Stepson Drew makes Ethan jealous, horribly, horribly jealous when he finds Drew in Hannah’s room when she has a nightmare. This is the impetus for Ethan to make love to Hannah.

Drew is an interesting person in his own right and it would be fun to read a romance with him as the hero. A couple years earlier his fiancée dumped him the day before their wedding because she thought he would need to have his suit removed surgically by the time he was 40. He sold his business clothes, took a leave from his banking job and went around the world. His dad caught up with him in Patagonia and this is where Faith met both of them. Drew is good looking, kind, fun and attracted to Hannah, a good spur for Ethan!

Ethan. Hannah’s Husband and Employer. Ethan is the most complex character and Lawrence shows him to us through Hannah and Ethan’s own point of view.

Ethan’s first wife, Catherine left two children, one 3 and the other an infant, when she died, leaving Ethan to find a nanny to care for his kids. Hannah knows Ethan is devoted to his children, enough to marry her in fact, and she admires him for this. He does not spend very much time with them as they are usually asleep when he gets home from work but he makes them his priority when possible. (She wishes she could be his priority too, but chastises herself for wanting even more when she has so much.)

Everyone says Ethan was devastated when Catherine died; everyone believes he was deeply in love with her and was filled with grief. In fact he and Catherine had drifted apart; she prized her accomplishments and public acclaim more than she cared for the kids or Ethan. Of course Ethan keeps this to himself. He doesn’t seem to realize (or care) how his silence and comments from Alexa and his friends affect Hannah, or how much his house feels to her like a shrine to Catherine with many photos and her medals and awards displayed prominently.

Hannah remembers the first time she hosted a dinner party with Ethan and his friend’s wife compared Hannah – dull and quiet – to the so much better Catherine. Ethan looked resigned and bleak and he barely defended Hannah beyond saying she is bright and he doesn’t care for the friend’s snobbishness.

Ethan started to story seeing Hannah as just another piece of furniture, ambulatory and loving to his kids, but unnecessary to him and simply there. “‘I took your contribution to this house pretty much for granted,’ Ethan continued, noting her expression with a look of satisfaction.” Hannah tells him off at one point, that she twisted herself into knots to give him the smooth, placid home he wanted and she is angry that just one false step causes him to accuse her of looking for excitement and on the verge of looking for an affair. Ethan is confident in her Hannah V1, but Hannah V2 challenges him immensely and he does not like it.

Ethan starts to see Hannah as a separate person when she comes home beat up from jumping out of a moving car. He’s flabbergasted she would do that, worried that she’s somehow inviting trouble, disquieted that she has a personality, quiet yes, but not a doormat and not solely a docile childminder. He insults her by saying she’s trouble and he’s not happy about it.

Ethan’s view of Hannah continues to evolve when Hannah reacts to his insults by dressing the way she likes, acting more the way she feels, saying more what she thinks. She still is quiet, peaceful, helpful, willing to stay in the background, do what she needs to provide Ethan a sanctuary, but she’s not going to put up with his silly assumption that she’s now looking for an affair or has completely changed or is willing to quit night class. The more he annoys her, the more Hannah acts like herself, and the more he finds he both likes and is afraid of the changes.

Once we know that Catherine was distant, cold to Ethan and to her children, then we can understand Ethan’s reactions to Hannah. Initially he simply wants her there, essentially as a nanny who can’t quit, a nonentity in his life, essential to his children. He claims later that he would never have married her without feeling a great deal more, but his thoughts at the beginning say otherwise. He may have realized she was a very good deal and could come to mean something more, but I don’t think she did, not at first.

Later Ethan is intrigued. He has been celibate for three years and Hannah is right there, in the room next to his, only a door between. He’s going to think sexually about her regardless of his emotions. Once he sees her as a person he isn’t able to think clearly about Hannah without his feelings about Catherine, about his children, his mother, his friends swirling around in his mind about his wife. He’s intrigued, starts to notice more, begins to listen to her, challenges her to express herself (and isn’t happy with what she says!), physically attracted to her. It’s how many of us respond when we find someone we might want to love.

He’s falling in love, realizes he loves Hannah, and he’s scared. Things are changing and he’s not sure he can cope with a wife who is his equal at his side. He’s not sure he wants to be in love or whether he’d prefer their earlier quiet, sterile non-relationship. Also, if Hannah is his equal, then she needs and deserves part of him, deserves his time and trust and attention, and her wants and desires are just as important as his.

Why does he believe Alexa? As Hannah says, he has zero reason to think she’d abandon the kids, zero reason to think so badly of her, she had never been anything other than reliably loving and always put them first. Yet Ethan condemns her without even considering what she might say. He had to realize Alexa is bitter, grieving, possibly blames him, certainly blames Hannah, but he chooses to believe Alexa instead of his own lying eyes.

It’s tempting to say he is frightened of his own feelings with his heart frozen, and that is part, but I think the bigger reason is that he doesn’t want to have to factor in another adult, his equal, who might want other things than he wants her to want. Ethan liked it when Hannah put his kids and him first, now she’s asking for herself. (Actually she isn’t asking, she is simply doing, but always leaving her family as top priority.) Hannah says at the start of the story that “Ethan could be mind-bogglingly selfish at times”. He is also a little scared and it’s so much easier to push Hannah aside, blame her, and after he does it once, it’s very tough to apologize and backtrack.

We don’t know how long it is between the confrontation where he accuses Hannah of neglect and Faith’s wedding, maybe around two weeks, but that is plenty of time for Ethan to harden his heart and keep it hard, especially when “the sight of her bewildered, distressed face hurt too much…what he’d find ‘incredibly easy’ would be taking her in his arms and kissing her.” But “he couldn’t let himself be sucked in again.”

Once Hannah shoves her care and love for Emma in Ethan’s face he has to face himself. Once he learns that she knew she was pregnant but had not told him, he has to face how he treated her. Once he hears her fear that Emma is hurt, that she knows Ethan will blame her for letting go of Emma’s hand, he has to realize exactly how much he destroyed the trust and growing love. Once he hears Alexa admit she lied out of jealousy it is too late. Hannah will think any apology is because Alexa lied, not because he knows Hannah and trusts her. She’s not going to believe his hooey any more. Oops.

It is only because Hannah truly loves him and doesn’t want to live in an emotional desert that they get back together. Ethan apologizes but obviously has no clue what to do next. Thankfully Hannah is able to overcome the gut wrenching hurt that Ethan inflicted, allows him to apologize and forgives him. She is even big enough to apologize for saying he was glad their baby died when she knows that his is not happy at all.

Overall

Kim Lawrence does an excellent character study of Ethan wrapped up in a category romance. On the surface Hannah is the main character and we mostly have her point of view but she does not change much, she begins the story as a complete character (albeit not one that Ethan sees) and ends the story richer and blessed, but still the same warm person. Ethan changes as he recognizes Hannah as the wife he truly is lucky to have.

5 Stars

I got my E copy from Harlequin.com and read it on Glose. You can find Wife by Agreement in Nook E format from Barnes and Noble and from Amazon in Kindle and paperback. (Harlequin has frequent sales.)

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Dark Master by Charlotte Lamb – Harlequin Romance

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Charlotte Lamb’s 1979 Dark Master is a romance between a bossy, possessive, rich French count and an ordinary English girl. I enjoyed it and found the romance believable despite the different personalities and backgrounds.

Plot Synopsis – Click to Skip Spoilers

Alex, an orphan, works at the front desk of a holiday hotel in England and is engaged to the hotel manager, Hal. She opens the story running along the groine (a wooden structure to reduce beach erosion), loving how the wind feels in her red hair as it flies around her head. Philippe sees her and wants to own all that wildness; he catches her when she falls at the water edge, both slide on the ground and he wets his suit with the salt water, rejects her offer to pay for cleaning.

Later, when Alex is working, Philippe asks her to dinner but she refuses. Hal expects to have time free that evening to spend together and she wants to be available for him; however, Hal ends up busy. When Alex is off work the next day she sees Hal in a clinch with young widowed hotel guest, Deidre. Both are talking “love you but we must not hurt Alex” and neither sees her standing by the stairs. Alex is stunned, Philippe walks by, takes in the situation, grabs Alex and hustles her first to a handy closet, then to his room. Philippe talks her into letting him take over and make it look like she has fallen for him and he sets up a scene for Hal that looks like they have made love.

Alex thinks Hal is in love and is being noble so as to not hurt her, that he will reject the lovely Deidre and Alex isn’t having that. She does not want to marry a man who loves another lady and marries her out of duty and pity.

Philippe spins her a tale that he too suffers from unrequited love, that the lady he loves married someone else and he wants to show her that he doesn’t love her. He carefully diverts Alex from realizing that Hal is a flirt, is not in love with Deidre, is unable to be completely faithful. Had Alex known that she would have dumped Hal without a worry, but thinking he’s in love, Alex gives Hal back his ring and Philippe takes her to London and marries her out of hand. As he says later, he didn’t want to give her time to think.

Two days later they arrive at his large chateau which is connected to the remains of a castle. Alex, coming back to her usual self, wonders why she let Philippe take her away, what she is doing at a castle. Philippe is not sympathetic, tells her she will cope just fine.

Alex meets Philippe’s family at dinner. His brother Gaston is younger, bitter about his marriage but warm and friendly, sister in law Elise is icy cold, nasty and clearly does not respect or love her husband. Alex overhears Elise insulting her to Philippe and assumes that Elise is the woman Philippe wanted to show he doesn’t care.

Alex is angry and hurt and scared. She had somehow not thought past the wedding and hadn’t thought about the marriage, assumed Philippe didn’t intend to sleep with her. Philippe tells her that he doesn’t give a d— why she sleeps with him, but sleep with him she will. He comes to bed and seduces her.

Over the next few weeks Alex learns how to run the chateau and the estate books, learns to ride and gets to know the staff and some of Philippe’s friends, even hosting dinner parties. She and Gaston become good friends, threatening to Philippe who makes Gaston and Elise move to the dower house about a mile away. Alex is fitting into Philippe’s world but she still doesn’t feel comfortable in her marriage; she does not think Philippe loves her although they make passionate love almost every night. She falls in love with Philippe and is not happy about it.

Alex is gobsmacked when Gaston shows that he is in love with her. She thought they loved each other like brother and sister, not romantic or sexual. Philippe says he should have known a man frozen by the iceberg Elise would instantly fall for Alex’s warmth.

Alex realizes she is pregnant while Philippe is away and is ambivalent. She wants this child but now she will never be able to leave and she still does not think Philippe cares for her. She goes up to the old battlements and runs down the stairs, falls. She wakes up in hospital, concussed, somewhat amnesiac and badly injured, miscarried. She does not recognize Philippe when he visits, only knows she doesn’t want to see him, doesn’t like him.

Eventually Alex heals well enough to have other visitors. Gaston’s visit triggers Alex’s memory. Elise left him for another man and Philippe is sending Gaston to London to set up a sales branch for their very expensive dinnerware. She refuses to leave with Gaston and goes home with Philippe but they are not sleeping together and Philippe is distant.

When Alex is more robust Philippe takes her to London, first to the hotel where Hal works, then to visit Gaston. She challenges Philippe that next he will give her away with a set of dinnerware! She feels like a lost kitten someone tries to find a home for and decides to find her own home. She gets a job and room at a hotel, packs and leaves, puts a note under Philippe’s hotel room door. He comes out and drags her into his room, finally tells her that he loves her, that he needs to give her the opportunity to choose since he railroaded her into marriage.

Alex claims she doesn’t want him either but he doesn’t believe it and forces the issue. The next scene is 18 months later when their baby is christened.

Why Romance is Believable

Dark Master is intensely emotional. Author Charlotte Lambshows us Gaston’s feelings, shows Alex’s falling in love with Philippe. She’s a little less obvious with Philippe but he is no enigma.

We readers know Philippe was Lying when he claimed he wanted to marry Alex only to show the girl he supposedly loves that he didn’t care at all. For one thing, this is more a high school girl’s approach than a mature man’s, for another he gives no indication he likes the supposed Other Woman Elise, nor does Elise act as if he does. The OW treats her own husband with scorn and antipathy but never tries to thrust herself at Philippe.

Of course Philippe claims this to Alex to save his pride and it backfires on him when she remains wary and unsure of him, even tries to leave him. Alex is gullible and silly to believe the lie, but since Philippe doesn’t act particularly loving nor cherishes Alex, she has reason to believe. Even though we readers know Philippe doesn’t want to show Elise anything (except the door), author keeps Alex guessing whether he loves her given his dismissive “you’ll cope” attitude.

Philippe wants Alex physically, relishes their sexual relationship and teaches Alex to enjoy making love with him. She comes to love Philippe’s home, to care for his staff and his friends, and eventually to love him despite feeling uncertain of his attitude towards Elise or herself. When she realizes she is pregnant she knows Philippe will never let her go and is frightened, yet she is glad to have something of him to love.

Philippe confuses Alex by how he treats Gaston and Elise. He doesn’t trust Gaston with Alex and he pulls Gaston away when he gets through to Alex in the hospital. Philippe thinks Alex might be in love with Gaston but isn’t sure whether she loves either Gaston or Hal or himself. He challenges Alex about her passionate response to him in bed when she claims she hates him to touch her; he knows he gets through to her physically – calls it their one sure line of communication – but he also knows that Alex hasn’t put it together yet that he loves her.

The part where Alex challenges Philippe as to why he is trying to find her a home – and a man – is funny in a poignant way. By this point Alex is certain Philippe does not love her, isn’t even sure he still wants her physically because they have not made love since the accident. She decides to cut her losses and find herself a new home, make a new life for herself. She tries to sneak away without talking to Philippe because she knows she cannot deny him and doesn’t want the heartbreak of making love without love. Finally Philippe is forced to be blunt and they talk through their beliefs and love. It is heartfelt and we can believe they are in love and will have a happy life together.

The sex scenes are not at all graphic, but intense. Lamb keeps the attention on Alex’s response and feelings, first dismay as she tries to push Philippe away, then physical enjoyment, then fear and finally joyful response. Philippe is intent on seducing Alex and on giving and invoking passion.

Dark Master uses plot to drive and build emotion and follows a classic plot event/Alex action/Alex emotional reaction and build. Author Lamb cycles through the events and builds the emotion to a peak in London. The final epilogue-like chapter adds nothing except a chance to see Alex and Philippe’s happy future and a parallel with her maid’s romance.

Overall

I like romances that feel real – even when the events and characters are way outside my experience – and Dark Master fits the bill. The initial seduction scene is one of the best in the Harlequin universe and I wish more authors realized we do not need technical descriptions nor a master class in arousing a partner. The physical actions can fade into the background as long as the scene creates and builds emotional response.

I keep a few romance novels handy for when I want to read a few pages that I know and enjoy. Dark Master is one of those. I like the London scenes where Alex rejects Hall, Gaston and tries to reject Philippe, only to be pulled up short when he questions whether she would show any man the passion she shows him. I liked how Alex takes charge of her own life, finds a job and a place to live and even more, how she gives into Philippe and stays with him when he finally confesses he loves her. The two bedroom scenes are excellent, clearly show Philippe’s character. The beginning confusion when Philippe pushes Alex into compromising herself and then into marriage is well done.

4 Stars

I got my paperback copy from Thriftbooks. Amazon, eBay and other used book sites likely have used copies. As of July 2023 Dark Master is not available on Archive.org nor in electronic format on Barnes and Noble, Amazon or Harlequin.

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His Convenient Marriage by Sara Craven

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His Convenient Marriage ranks low on both Amazon and Goodreads but I like it. Reviewers notice the romance seems to come out of left field, that Miles, the hero, gives almost no indication he loves heroine Chessy, that the minor characters complicate the relationship, that Chessy is weak willed at the beginning and that the sister and nasty neighbor are overdone. I shared this opinion the first time I read the story, but it stuck in my mind and I reread it several times and liked it better each time.

The romance is subtle but real. Miles shows he cares about Chessie immediately although he’s not demonstrative and thinks she is in love with someone else.

Let’s see whether I can show why His Convenient Marriage is a winner for me. First a quick plot synopsis.

Plot Synopsis – Click to Avoid Spoilers

Story opens with Chessie’s spoiled younger sister Jen bursting with news. Alastair, son of the local rich guy, whom Chessie dated the summer before her dad died in disgrace, is back. His father sent him to America two years before and Chessie heard nothing from him after a couple letters. Many things changed in his two year absence: Chessie’s dad died bankrupt and in disgrace after embezzling from his clients, Miles bought their old home and Chessie now works for him and lives with Jen in a separate annex in their old house. Quite a come down.

Jen is excited. Surely Alastair will ride in like a white knight to save Chessie from her life of drudgery working for novelist Miles as combination housekeeper and secretary! Except Chessie isn’t excited. She realized long ago Alastair was never serious about her and isn’t keen to reprise her role as lovestruck girlfriend, especially given her current status.

Jen is antagonistic towards Miles, has no consideration for him, resents her sister’s willingness to work for him (and support her by the way). Chessie likes Miles in a distant way and makes peace between him and her sister. Miles treats her with respect but not warmth until that same night when he asks Chessie to go out for dinner. In fact it’s the first time he calls her by her first name, not Miss LLoyd.

More surprises. Miles asks Chessie to marry him; he says while it could be platonic initially he will want closer relations eventually. He says he wants to entertain and needs a hostess and he’s angry with Jen on Chessie’s behalf; Jen takes and takes, complains all the while. This is first hint Miles might care for Chessie.

Chessie promises to consider it, She imagines making love with Miles, and is stunned when she realizes just how attractive he is. In the restaurant foyer she runs into Alastair’s step mother, the glamorous, ultra malicious, spiteful Linnet who makes her usual catty comments, implies Chessie is virginal and untouched because no one wants her. Chessie immediately corrects her, in fact she is engaged to Miles. Miles is angry that she used him to score points and has not committed herself.

Jen has Alastair in their sitting room when they get back and he’s chagrined that Chessie doesn’t fling herself into his arms. His dad, Sir Robert, had a stroke and moved himself, Alastair and Linnet back home to recover. Alastair wants to sell the home while Sir Robert is incapacitated and resents that his dad will prevent it. Chessie doesn’t like Alastair’s attitude about his father.

Meanwhile, Jen is getting into trouble. She attends an expensive school on scholarship and Chessie has ensured Jen has all the right label clothes and gear. Lately Jen has been out drinking with an unsavory guy and we learn later has cut classes, and not studied for her A levels. If Jen does not secure top grades then she cannot go to university; Chessie is counting on Jen leaving home and being on her own.

This evening sets the stage: Chessie, the heroine torn between her care for Jen, her natural resentment of Jen’s selfishness and her own growing feelings for Miles; Miles the ex war journalist turned author who tells Chessie his former fiancée rejected him after his injury, revolted by his scars and handicap. Alastair who expected Chessie to fall all over herself being grateful he returned, Linnet who cannot stop making trouble with gossip and malicious spite. Jen, the spoiled, careless sister.

We have several scenes with Linnet playing lady-of-the-manor, patronizing Chessie, flirting with Miles, being an all around first class obnoxious vamp. More scenes with Miles insisting Chessie play fiancee, wear his ring, sit at his table, entertain his visiting sister and Linnet when she calls. Alastair shows himself to be vile, selfish and unloving towards his father and complacent towards Chessie.

Linnet tells Chessie that Miles had been engaged to actress Sandie Wells, recently divorced after she married someone else and she is back in England. Surely Chessie realizes she cannot compete, that Miles simply was using her as Sandie’s temporary stand in? Chessie decides to find a different job and quit living at Miles’ once Jen is at college.

Eventually everything comes to a head at Sir Robert’s midsummer party. Miles buys Chessie a gorgeous dress and escorts her. He cannot dance due to his injuries but watches Chessie swirl around with all the men who lined up to ask her to dance. At one point he disappears due to a lady phoning for him. Chessie decides to leave herself. When she’s retrieving her wrap she overhears Alastair and Linnet; it’s obvious they have been lovers for years, even the summer Alastair dated Chessie, that Alastair greatly fears his father recovering and disinheriting him.

Chessie goes home, disgusted with all the lies and deceit, with Alastair and Linnet, with her sister jeopardizing her future, and most of all, with Miles for pretending to care for her even while he’s spending days in London when Sandie Wells is staying at his flat. She’s ready to chuck it all in and leave the bunch to fend for themselves when Miles comes home with crying Jen. Jen was with her boyfriend who wanted her to buy and then sell drugs; he was arrested and the police took her in too. She called Miles who brought her home. Miles tells Chessie he knows she wants to leave but she should delay until Jen’s more settled.

Chessie and Miles go to bed together, he tries to tell her something important, but Chessie cuts him off. She thinks he’s going to tell her about Sandie Wells and doesn’t want to hear it. Miles is in great pain afterwards from his back injuries, tells her that he wants to be free of the pain, free to take his wife to bed, to kick a soccer ball with his kids.

The next morning she discovers he’s gone and he took his portable typewriter with him, indicating a long absence. She’s heartbroken that he left without a good-bye. She finishes typing his manuscript and takes it to the post office where she runs into Sir Robert’s nurse who tells her that Miles is in London for a risky back surgery.

Chessie goes to the London clinic and tells Miles not to have the operation, it’s not worth the risk and if Sandie Wells really loved him she would love him the way he is, not require perfection at the risk of long term damage. Miles tells Chessie he is doing it for her, that she’s the one he loves, that Sandie Wells stayed at his flat but he stayed elsewhere, that he wants to make love to her all night long, that he fell in love with her two years earlier when they met. Chessie tells him that she’s marrying him no matter what happens and we have the Happy Ever After.

Why His Convenient Marriage Works

From the synopsis you can see why readers find the romance lacking.

Miles is emotionally distant and it’s hard to believe he could have been in love with Chessie for two years without showing it. However, I find this realistic given the situations for both characters two years prior. Chessie’s world caved in. Her dad revealed as a crook, dead, she herself responsible for her sister, homeless and dumped by friends after the scandal. Miles, badly injured in his last journalism assignment, in pain, dumped by his former fiancée horrified by his scars. Even had Miles not been in pain emotionally and physically he wouldn’t have tried to court a girl as devastated as Chessie was.

Chessie acts wimpy. Actually Chessie acts like someone who put her life and emotions in the freezer two years ago and simply wants to get through the time until Jen is off at school and she can look to her own future. Chessie shows great strength to take on a housekeeper/typist role, to live in her old home as an employee, to put up with her sister’s tantrums. She doesn’t stand up to Miles but she doesn’t need to.

Linnet is appalling. This is true. Linnet is constitutionally incapable of not flirting with any decent looking or rich man and she’s vicious, spiteful, takes glee in seeing Chessie living as an employee and in her mind, humbled. Chessie is a lady and Linnet is a bad imitation, and everyone can tell the difference. Add to that natural envy that an aging vamp has for a younger, pretty girl and we have all the reason Linnet needs to be malicious and make trouble. I suppose one could see Linnet as over the top, but given her character as sketched in the first 20 pages, Linnet is perfectly cast.

Alastair is an entitled jerk who gets little page time. He tries to make Chessie believe he’s in earnest about her at the midsummer party but Chessie by this time knows she loves Miles and doesn’t like Alastair at all, even before learning he’s been cuckolding his own father.

Sister Jen is a flat character. True. Author Craven portrays Jen as spoiled, willfully ignoring reality in favor of “well it should have been”, rude to Chessie and Miles, lazy, selfish. She doesn’t develop much as a person until the very end when she realizes that ignoring studies to go drinking might mean no university. We don’t see her after this so cannot see whether she matures.

The romance is believable given the people and the situations. The other characters act consistent with their personalities as written, the setting and plot are solid. Author Craven advances the plot and story with dialogue that shows personalities and actions that confirm character.

Overall

Given the complex set up followed by simple plot, author Sara Craven tells a very good story, a believable romance between two people who were badly injured two years ago who now find their future and happiness with each other.

Title misleads. Miles proposes a marriage for convenience, all the while wanting more, but the characters are engaged, not married through the story. His Convenient Marriage is part of the Wedlocked! series. The story is excellent and the characters are very well created, act consistent with their given personalities as cast.

4 Stars

His Convenient Marriage is available on Archive.org here, as a Nook here and in Kindle form here. You can find used paperback copies at most online used bookstores, Amazon, eBay. I bought the Kindle for myself.

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Disturbing Stranger by Charlotte Lamb

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Disturbing Stranger is not a romance. Our H, Randal, semi-forces innocent h Laura to marry him because he wants her body. Randal is obsessed, ridiculously possessive, jealous, completely gobsmacked with lust for Laura. Laura loves and thinks she’s in love with doctor Tom Nichol, her second cousin once removed who is a cross between brother, substitute dad, best friend, a caring, gentle man who intends serve the truly poor via the World Health Organization. (Book written in 1978 before WHO lost credibility.)

Randal knows Laura loves Tom and he’s going crazy thinking she’ll marry Tom and sleep with him. Randal chases Laura for months, kisses her enough for both of them to realize they both are attracted to each other. Eventually Randal catches Laura’s feckless father embezzling from him and blackmails Laura to marry him.

Laura enjoys their honeymoon; it’s passionate and Laura realizes Randal is kind, generous and can be fun. A couple scenes however show a different, fraught side. First scene is in Antoinette Bell’s Venetian palazzo. Antoinette takes Randal’s arm and leads him off, and Randal lets her, leaving Laura trailing behind. Antoinette tells one of the young men to dance with Laura. Randal eventually dances with Laura himself and is very jealous of the young men she met. When she mentions one of them in their hotel room he gets nasty.

The second bothersome honeymoon scene is their last morning when they are lying in bed and Randal is “sensuously engaged in his ceaseless exploration of Laura’s body”. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. When Laura says they should get up he threatens to “take you again to teach you a lesson you won’t forget.” More ugh.

The first night they are home in England Laura wakes up at 4 am and Randal wakes up too and rapes her, tells her he wants to hurt her. At the story’s end he tells her he wanted to hurt her, wanted to rape her, wanted to make her know she belonged to him and only to him. But it’s ok because he didn’t enjoy it either. What a guy.

In the denouement (I won’t call it a happy ever after) Randal says he fell in love with Laura at sight and was terrified that she would turn to Tom, that he was taking the biggest gamble of his life. He worried she would hate him for forcing her to marry him.

That’s the story in a nutshell. Although we shouldn’t forget that Randal and Laura have the second floor of his folks’ house and that his dad expects them to be prompt at meal times and that his mother tells Laura what to do (masked as suggestions of course). His mother thinks it would help Laura get used to running a house if she lives with them and learns from her, forgetting that Laura had been responsible for her own parents’ home, cooked most meals and took care of her own mother.

I don’t see this as a romance. Yes both characters claim to love the other but it’s a shallow, possessive type of love, a taking not a giving, driven by lust and jealousy. I’d call this more the prequel to murder.

Nonetheless, Charlotte Lamb almost makes this work. She is an excellent writer with a knack for making the most incredible jerk’s into heroes.

I don’t have to necessarily believe the happy ever after or love the characters to like a book, but it sure helps.

3 Stars

I got my paperback copy on eBay and you can usually find copies on Amazon, eBay, Thriftbooks and other used book sites. Mills and Boon reissued Disturbing Stranger, which was published originally in 1978, in 1984 in their “Best Seller Romance Line”.

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Makeshift Marriage by Marjorie Lewty

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Makeshift Marriage is a marriage of convenience between a loving, pseudo-doormat heroine and a too-stupid-to-live hero that veers off into I-want-to-dump-you, family pressure, Hong Kong, drug dealers, hair salon, Other Man and Other Woman. It is an odd romance that I had to squint and look sideways at to believe completely.

Plot Synopsis – Click to Avoid Spoilers

Makeshift Marriage opens with our heroine, Maggie, summoned to the big chief’s (aka the hero’s father’s) office for the chief to grill her on his son’s romance with Fiona, a red-haired manipulative, unfaithful bitch of an Other Woman. Seems sonny Blake has been dating Fiona extensively but his dad and the board of their construction/engineering company has serious reservations about Fiona and her sleazy connections to some drug dealers. Dad states he won’t approve Blake’s position as boss of a new development in Hong Kong if he marries Fiona.

Maggie and Blake are both engineers and Maggie works for him; Blake relies on her very much. He is supposedly brilliant, Maggie less so but more in tune with nitty gritty as one must be in the engineering world. They make a great pair and Blake is devastated when Maggie declines his offer to come to Hong Kong with him.

Maggie loves Blake; he is not indifferent to her, knows she’s pretty, is attracted to her, likes her very much, trusts and relies on her, his feelings are very close to love but he puts it off when he thinks Maggie isn’t interested. She’s managed to hide her feelings too well.

Maggie has weathered several Blake girlfriends before Fiona but it’s obvious Fiona is different, Blake is smitten. Fiona puts on a good show of sweet, slightly helpless which ensnares Blake; Maggie sees through the act to the cold, hard steel inside. Blake invites both ladies to dinner (he’s clueless) where Fiona gushes over how smart Maggie must be, etc., etc., thus defusing any romantic thought Blake might have about her.

Finally we’re about a month from the Hong Kong adventure when Fiona marries the race car driver she’s been dating in between Blake. Blake is devastated, gets drunk, Maggie helps him home, covers up his drunkenness. He asks Maggie to marry him since he needs a wife and he really doesn’t want to go to Hong Kong without her. (Clueless as noted.)

Of course Maggie agrees and her family is happy and excited. The day before the wedding Blake calls to meet her away from her home. Fiona’s husband died in a car accident and the poor girl is heartbroken and of course Blake can’t possibly marry Maggie now that Fiona is free. (Can we say STUPID???) He wants Maggie to jilt him by not showing up at church the next day. He can’t do it because his dad would be mad (and what about Maggie’s family and their happiness and expense?) nor is he willing to marry and then annul/divorce in a month because that would look bad too. Nope, Maggie has to do the dirty work. She is very unhappy and extremely reluctant but as usual agrees to what Blake wants.

That night she just cannot face the situation and goes to London to meet Blake, to tell him he has to tell his Dad the wedding is off, then she’ll tell her family. Blake isn’t home but Fiona is in his apartment and is quite open with Maggie about how she has no intention to go to Hong Kong, that she’ll divert Blake, that she is stone broke and needs Blake’s money. Maggie is appalled. She’s in a hard spot now.

If Maggie allows Blake to dump her and go off with Fiona his career is over despite being the boss’s son. Further Fiona is not welcome in Hong Kong and Maggie knows Blake will eventually realize what poison Fiona is. She’s finally angry now. Blake is always expecting her to pick up after him and she’s tired of it, tired of being the bad guy, doing his dirty work. Plus she wants to marry Blake and is pretty sure they could be happy together.

Maggie shows up at her wedding. Blake marries her then launches a tirade in the car afterwards, calls her nasty names, yells and has a tantrum that she did not do as he wanted. But he’ll show her! Blake takes her to Hong Kong, dumps her in a hotel room, asks a friend to take her around and goes back to London to sweet Fiona. (At this point we readers wonder what planet Blake lives on. What does he think will happen with Fiona? That he can bring her to Hong Kong as his mistress, leave his wife – a respected fellow employee – in an apartment and ignore her and still have the project workers respect him??)

Blake’s friend Nick, shows Maggie over Hong Kong. They had dated before; Maggie liked Nick a lot and he is the Other Man, half in love with her. A coworker sees Nick comfort Maggie and spreads vile rumors they are having an affair, which brings Blake hot foot back to Hong Kong.

This time he’s scared he might lose Maggie and is angry about the rumors, they sleep together. He meant it brutal force but Maggie, in love with him, gives herself with joy and Blake discovers she was a virgin.

Cranky Blake ignores Maggie, stays out all night, refuses to have her work with him and she follows up on a tentative friendship with the lovely Ling Sang who is opening a beauty parlor. Maggie helps her set up the salon and is her first customer.

She gets all dolled up for Ling Sang’s grand opening fancy party to which Blake agreed to go with her. He comes late and stays only long enough to tell Maggie she looks nice and he’s sorry, something came up and he can’t stay.

Maggie sees Blake with Fiona and decides she’s had enough. She gets Nick to get her a flight home and goes to her sister in law’s Scotland home. She discovers she’s pregnant. Blake shows up and confesses all. When he went back to London the first time he found Fiona in his bed in his apartment with another guy. He had a heart to heart with his dad, learned that Maggie had known Fiona was unwelcome and Blake would have destroyed his career had he kept her. Meanwhile he missed Maggie, missed talking to her, spending time together, all the things he had thrown away.

Blake met up with Fiona in Hong Kong because she had chased after him, was arrested in connection with another drug dealer guy and she needed his help to clear her name. Supposedly he’s done with Fiona and will devote himself to Maggie. I love you and Happy Ever After.

Can We Believe Blake?

The entire premise of the Makeshift Marriage happy ever after is Blake loves Maggie and will remain faithful and loving in the future. Do we readers believe he is sincere and that he will keep his promises and continue his sincerity in the future?

I find Blake sincere at the story close. I’m not convinced he will stay sincere, that he will remain loving and faithful (emotionally and physically) to Maggie; the odds are 50/50 or 60/40 that his turnaround will last. I give such low odds of future fidelity and happiness because:

  • Author Lewty tells us Blake had never fallen for anyone before Fiona. He fell for her hard.
  • Even after seeing her in bed with someone else Blake puts Fiona’s need ahead of Maggie’s clear, strong desire for him to come to Ling Sang’s party. One could argue a legal problem trumps a party, but this is a big deal for Maggie, she spent a lot of time and expense making herself beautiful and Blake knew it was important to her.
  • Fiona had come to Hong Kong to get Blake back, yet we’re supposed to believe he helps her out of kindness and wants to get her out of their lives.
  • Blake takes Maggie for granted. He assumes Maggie would stop the wedding, would understand even his choice to help Fiona vs. go with Maggie. This attitude is hard to change.
  • He claims he wants to make love to Maggie, that he missed her, that he wants their baby. Even Maggie has to stifle her doubts and she does mostly because she loves Blake.

I’m not sure Fiona herself will continue to be a problem, but it is strongly possible that Blake will keep finding other Fionas – ladies who appear delicate and needy and lovely and soft – a complete opposite from his strong, intelligent, capable wife. Blake shows he is susceptible to that sort of person.

Their future happiness depends on Maggie gently steering Blake, giving her strength to him. She becomes less understanding and less willing to accept his lack of character through the novel, first when she refuses to do his dirty work and jilt him, then when she makes herself enjoy Hong Kong with Nick, and last when she walks away after he chooses to help Fiona vs. keeping his promise to go to the party. She’s beginning to hold Blake accountable to get himself right, not rely on her, but I think she will always have to be the strong one in their marriage.

Overall

I like Makeshift Marriage. Author Lewty developed Maggie into a believable, realistic character and contrasted her strength to Blake’s supposed brilliance that devolved to stupidity and cluelessness. It would be easy to see Maggie as a doormat, in fact she sees herself that way in the beginning. We see her grow and take ownership for herself and forces Blake to take responsibility for himself as the book progresses.

Maggie’s main flaw is she will do anything for Blake, she’s his to command. She confronts that flaw when she decides to go ahead with the marriage, when she is alone in Hong Kong, when she gives herself to Blake in bed, when she dumps him even though pregnant. By the end of the book she’ll still do many things for Blake but she is done with lying for him, hiding his problems, taking the blame for his actions.

Most of the reviewers on Goodreads find the happy ever after unbelievable, don’t like Blake, and think Maggie is a doormat. Agree on Blake; he is an immature jerk who needs to grow up. I disagree about Maggie. She starts as a doormat but gets tired of having Blake wipe his feet on her and will not allow him to do so any more.

4 Stars

I got my paperback copy of Makeshift Marriage on Thriftbooks, it was not available on Archive.org at the time I read it nor is it available in E format from Harlequin, Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Amazon has paperback copies and you can probably find this on eBay and other used book sites.

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The Odds Against Kinda Sorta Romance by Margaret Pargeter

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This Is a Romance?

Carl her husband and the Hero: “I don’t want your love!… I never asked for it or encouraged it, so don’t blame me if you get hurt.” “If I care it’s because you’re my wife, something belonging to me, but not for you personally.” Carl kisses her so hard that her mouth bleeds, grinds his chest into her breasts, bites her breast, shows triumph when he sees that he hurt her.

His wife Gail, the heroine, thinks during this: “Carl must still be hurting terribly to be capable of saying such things. If she cared for him, her love might act like a healing balm and he might forget.”

I don’t see love here. I see a petulant, spoilt man whose fiancée walked out rather than deal with his broken leg, and who married the girl that he knew had loved him unconditionally for years. I see a woman who fools herself into believing that this sorry excuse for a man could grow up and be worth her time and marriage.

Plot Synopsis

Carl owns a racing stable and is engaged to Other Woman Petula, a very spoiled, selfish beauty. Petula dumps Carl just before book opens because Carl broke his leg and Petula wants a man who can take her around, lavish money and attention, and clearly Carl is out of the running for a couple months.

Gail’s father had been Carl’s chief trainer and Gail worked as his assistant and has been acting as the trainer/stable manager for several months. Gail has been in love with Carl (why??) for years and he alternately acts ignorant and as if he knows. I believe he knows and thinks it’s hilarious. Gail comes to his house, cooks his dinner, gives of herself with zero return.

Carl starts to pay Gail a little attention, finally he asks her to marry him, going out of his way to make it clear that he cares nothing for her, even threatening her with losing her job if she refuses. “In a way, being so plain, you could consider you’re doing rather well for yourself, marrying me.” Carl does not suffer from humility.

They marry. Carl insults Gail’s dress, calls her dowdy and claims people will feel sorry for him because she looks so awful: “I didn’t realize that after marrying you I might be pitied even more than I was.” Carl says several times that he will eventually get tired of her and make her leave.

Carl and she share a suite in his house, he doesn’t intend to sleep with her, a few days later Carl blames drinking too much for kissing her. Eventually Gail offers herself and at first Carl is delighted to sleep with her but later blames her for it and he continues to make “scathing remarks”.

Eventually OW Petula, now divorced, sees Gail at a race and tells her to tell Carl that she’s back and wants him. Of course Gail does not do this.

Carl acts even more erratically and Gail calls him on it, says he’s afraid to go places where he will run into Petula. He hits her because “You aren’t fit to mention her name!” Gail knows her marriage is doomed and decides not to tell him that she is pregnant.

Carl meets up with Petula in London and decides to divorce Gail and marry Petula in New York. He has his bags packed when she comes in – apparently he wasn’t going to bother to tell her – and we have the low light of this faux romance and insight into this conceited man:

“You didn’t tell me you saw Petula at Ascot.”
“What would be the point? She hurt you and I didn’t want it to happen again.”
“She realizes she hurt me, but she was confused. When she was engaged to me, her feelings had never been so involved before and she became frightened.”
“So frightened she married another man.”
“She felt safe with Oscar. He was like a harbour in a storm. It wasn’t until she married him that she realized what she’d given up.” (As noted before Carl does not have low self esteem.)
“Doesn’t she have any conscience about leaving her husband?”
“She couldn’t make him happy when she can think only of me.”
“Hasn’t our marriage meant anything to you?”
“You knew when you married me that there was little chance of our relationship being permanent. It wasn’t a normal marriage.”
“You made it one.”
“You didn’t exactly discourage me. Proximity had a lot to do with it. I believe you knew I was fighting it, yet you couldn’t stay out of my bed. As a woman, even a fairly innocent one, you couldn’t help taking advantage. It’s not always easy to resist something that’s handed to you on a plate.”
“How can you (love Petula)? She’s like a statue, beautiful but as cold as marble. She’ll never be able to love you back in any way because she’s not a real woman.”

At this point Carl hits her across the room. Gail apologizes for saying that about Petula! And no, Carl does NOT apologize.

Gail offers to leave and Carl tells her he would be grateful if she did because Petula wants the house completely done over before they return from New York. He walks out. Gail drives off to her sister’s house and gets into a car accident and miscarries. (Of course.) Her sister and brother in law are glad to have her with them but Gail knows she needs to get a job, be independent, she’s frightened of running into Carl or Petula if she works with horses.

About six weeks later Gail is home by herself when Carl comes. He knows all about the accident and the miscarriage and he’s bitterly remorseful. He claims he realized on the flight to New York – sitting next to Petula – that he doesn’t love Petula, he loves Gail. Now he’s come to ask her to come home to him. Like a dummy Gail does.

What’s Wrong with This?

A better question might be “What’s right with this?” Carl hurts Gail mentally, emotionally, physically. He constantly throws her looks and her love for him in her face, mocks her, holds Petula up as the model for women. Gail takes it all because she loves him.

I understand putting up with things you do not like in a marriage, with putting your spouse before yourself, honoring and cherishing them. But I do not understand marrying a man who loves someone else, who thinks of you as third-rate, who has no respect for you and considers himself to be the be-all and end-all of men. Much less staying with a husband who throws you across the room for being disrespectful towards the woman he prefers to you.

It’s hard to believe this is love. Yvonne Whittal uses the same plot in House of Mirrors, where the H marries the h then dumps her to be with the OW. In that story the hero is selfish but never physically abusive and he clearly likes the heroine and finds her physically attractive. The heroine has self worth, blames him for her miscarriage and asks her sister not to mention his name. Later she realizes she loves H and forgives him when he humbly asks. That story felt real. The Odds Against does not. If I were Gail I’d shove Carl out the door of her sister’s house and sue him for divorce with an enormous settlement. I would not risk my heart and health to this man again.

Overall

The Odds Against has plenty of angst, misery, horrible hero scenes, vicious OW, pleasant scenery, all things that make a delightful Harlequin romance. Unfortunately the key ingredients that Harlequins need to be believable romances are missing. The heroine has little to no self-respect and Carl’s apology and grovel do not seem credible. The same hero who fondly believed he is so wonderful that Petula couldn’t let herself give in to the overwhelming emotions she had is now apologizing and planning to make it up to Gail? I doubt this will last more than a few days. In a week or two Carl will be right back with the cruel, condescending remarks and looking for Petula or a Petula-lookalike.

Still I have to give this story

3 Stars

simply for the angst and misery level. It is emotionally intense, although I don’t believe some of the feelings are real.

I got my copy of The Odds Against from Thriftbooks and you usually can find copies on Amazon, other used book sites and eBay. It is not available on Archive.org as of February 2023.

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The Bedroom Barter Harlequin Presents Romance by Sara Craven

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The Bedroom Barter combines an unusual plot that offers many opportunities for a great story with a leaden pace burdened by too much thinking. We spend over half the book inside the heroine’s head. We get to listen while Chellie alternates between being mad at herself for getting into a stupid, very dangerous situation and for falling in love with Ash who can’t possibly love her back, with worrying about how she will live with no money, no job, and virtually no skills.

The Bedroom Barter from Amazon

Plot Synopsis – Click to Skip Spoilers

Chellie is young, barely 20, and works in brothel/girlie joint in a Latin American seaside town. She isn’t a prostitute or dancer, she is a singer. She got stuck in the girlie joint when she ran away from home with her Latin American pseudo-fiancé who promised her all sorts of things until he got her to his country, discovered she didn’t get her trust fund for 15 years, raped and dumped her after stealing all her money, credit cards and valuables.

Her hotel kicked her out and she was quite ill. She asked a policeman for help who sent her to Mama Rita’s house. Mama offered Chellie a singer job, reassured her she wouldn’t have to pole dance, and kept her passport. Naturally the wages barely covered room and board and Mama needs Chellie to pay an inflated bill before she’ll hand over the passport.

Chellie sees Ash across the room when she sings and both are attracted. Ash asks for her to do a “private dance”. Chellie is terrified, starts to dance, then realizes she cannot strip and collapses. Ash offers to get her passport and get her out of the country on the yacht he is boat-sitting in exchange for her cooking during the trip.

Chellie falls in love with Ash on the trip but she sees a photo of a lovely young blond, the boat owner’s daughter, by his bed and assumes the girl is his fiancée. Both are attracted, but separately decide they aren’t going to complicate things by sleeping together. Ash doesn’t feel he can give into his attraction because he hasn’t told Chellie the truth; Chellie resists because she fears to trust her judgement now and believes Ash is serious about the girl in the photo.

Once they reach the island Ash takes Chellie to a home owned by Mister Howard, the same man who owns the boat Ash captained. She is increasingly frantic, wants her passport, wants Ash, wants to decide what she should do back in England.

When Ash arrives they do sleep together, but Ash removes all evidence before Chellie wakes up, leaving her to believe he fears his girlfriend finding out. She decides to borrow money from Ash and leave, but then her father’s right hand man, Charles, arrives and makes it clear he resents having to waste his time fetching her and that her father resents it even more.

Chellie is heartbroken. Ash rescued her for money, at her father’s behest. She goes home to London, manages to get a receptionist job and shares a flat, gets singing lessons and some small singing gigs. She sees Ash while singing at her latest engagement, drops everything and runs after him. Ash confesses he loves her but doesn’t feel that he can get in the way of her singing career. Chellie tells him she loves him and doesn’t care about singing compared to being with him. Happiness ensues.

Why Doesn’t The Bedroom Barter Work?

The Bedroom Barter should be an excellent book with a tight, intense plot, plenty of attraction, interaction, fear, embarrassment. Instead it’s a dreary slog through Chellie’s head. She naturally worries about her future, feels guilty and ashamed of running away with the creep who abandoned her, and is afraid to trust her judgment about Ash, especially since Ash is running hot and cold and she doesn’t know why he helped her.

Chellie knows Ash is physically attracted but she wants more and she doesn’t think he is offering anything except a short affair. Chellie is wise enough to know that sleeping with someone under those conditions is not a recipe for peace and probably a bad step into another disaster.

We get very little of Ash’s point of view, only a couple conversations with Laurent, his boat crew. It’s obvious that there is more going on, that he didn’t simply help Chellie out of kindness, and author Craven doles out little tidbits to tell us it is a paid rescue fairly early in the novel. Chellie doesn’t know this but is astute and picks up that there is more going on. We readers can surmise it’s her father but it never occurs to Chellie that her dad would care enough to track her down or that someone would be able to find her.

The mental head journeys take up over half the word count in The Bedroom Barter. The scenes between Ash and Chellie, or Chellie and Charles or her father, or Ash and Laurent, are excellent, tightly written and move the story. I wish Sara Craven had more of these and less of the endless moaning, self pity, worry and fear. Anyone with a dollop of empathy would know that Chellie is afraid and worried without having pages of the internal monologues. Plus the introspection uses many extra words, “But he… And he… So it…” so on and on and on and on some more. It drags the pace and ruins what could have been a good story by a favorite author.

Sara Craven includes a LOT of internal monologue in her novels but usually offsets it enough that the story moves and we can continue to invest in the characters. Over half the book happened inside Chellie’s head, far too much to keep my attention on the romance and story.

Overall

Chellie is an appealing character, still optimistic, hopeful, loving, despite terrible experiences, being betrayed, confined, exploited. The story almost works because she is a character worth writing about. Her romance with Ash initially is a combination of physical attraction and gratitude until she is able to step back and look at him as a person. Chellie and Ash never spend enough time to get to know each other but their time together is so intense I can understand why both feel they are in love and love the other.

However, it’s a good question how long the love will last under the pressure of day to day living. I would doubt the Happy Ever After for that reason, except strong-willed Chellie and Ash will somehow make their marriage work and be happy together.

Overall I rate this

3 Stars,

middle of the road, good but not good enough that I want to reread. I have a mental list of the books I would pack if we should decide to move again – and it’s a much smaller list than the number we moved here – and The Bedroom Barter wouldn’t make the cut.

I bought my paperback copy from Thriftbooks and you likely will find this on most used book sites, eBay and Amazon. Amazon has the Kindle version here.

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Guilty Passion – Romance by Jacqueline Baird

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Author Jacqueline Baird manages to tie 3 Harlequin Presents topes – Revenge, Second Chance, Secret Baby – into one excellent and enjoyable story. Guilty Passion succeeds despite a nutty backstory because the characters show themselves and drive the plot. There is very little introspection or mental whining; the heroine gets up and takes care of things.

Plot Synopsis – Click to Skip Spoilers

Benedict pursued and won Rebecca for revenge because she supposedly had rejected his younger brother Gordon who then drove off a cliff in despair. Rebecca met Gordon when she was 18 and had fun with him that summer with no talk of marriage. The papers painted her as a heartless Lolita who drove Gordon to suicide, but the autopsy and inquest showed Gordon had an inoperable brain tumor and accidentally hit reverse instead of drive. It was not suicide, although Gordon’s mother convinced herself it was after she read Gordon’s diary entry that he loved Rebecca.

Benedict was pursuing his anthropology hobby when he was hurt and spent a few years with Indians in the Amazon jungle. His family thought he was dead. While he was gone his father and then his brother died, and when he returned he believed his mother’s version of Gordon’s death even though his uncle told him it was an accident.

Four years after Gordon died Rebecca goes with Rupert, the Oxford professor who employs her as a part time researcher, to Benedict’s lecture about his time in Brazil. Rebecca has a double first and wants to be a teacher; her father died and she lives with Rupert and his wife Mary who were her dad’s good friends. Rebecca is entranced with Benedict. At first he’s uninterested until Rupert introduces her with her last name, then he is extremely interested in her and they spend quite a bit of time together after the lecture and the next few weeks. Rebecca is in love and thinks Benedict loves her. He gives her an inexpensive garnet ring and she is thrilled and starry-eyed about being engaged, although Benedict never actually proposes.

Rebecca goes shopping in London, stops by Benedict’s house. She’s surprised he has such an expensive home. They sleep together and it is everything Rebecca dreamt, right until Benedict is furious afterwards that she had been a virgin, that she cheated Gordon, that she’s nothing but a heartless gold digger. He frightens Rebecca because she doesn’t know what he is talking about, why he is so angry that she hadn’t slept with Gordon, why he is accusing her. Benedict explains Gordon was his half brother, that Rebecca dumped him and caused his death, and that he never had any intention to marry her. And on and on. Rebecca is desolated and furious. She takes her shopping, dumps the ring and leaves. Benedict drives her to the train station and she goes back to Rupert and Mary’s home and tells them the engagement is broken.

They meet again when Rupert and Mary have their baby baptized and they both are godparents, but Rebecca refuses to have anything to do with Benedict. She later discovers she is pregnant. She has the baby, gets her teaching certification and starts teaching older kids. She has a little money from her dad and has good friends who help and she does not tell Benedict about their son Daniel because she knows he despises her. There’s a bit of payback here too.

Five years later we are in the present. Rebecca is chaperoning a bunch of students in France with two other teachers (who are no help) when Benedict spots her. Rebecca is tiny, very pretty with good figure, and fearless. Her students do what she tells them. Benedict takes her to dinner one night, then inveigles himself to help drive the kids’ bus (this would never happen nowadays) and Rebecca feels like maybe she ought to tell Benedict about Daniel. They are together when Rebecca buys a bottle of cognac for Josh; it’s a thank you for taking care of Daniel while she was in France but Benedict assumes Josh is her lover. The last evening Benedict breaks a date with her because the lady Rebecca thinks is the Other Woman called. Rebecca is glad she didn’t say anything.

She goes home, picks Daniel up from her friends, and is doing the laundry when Benedict arrives. He’s furious. He realized that if Rebecca calls herself Mrs. then she probably has a child, and he hired an investigator who found that indeed Daniel is just the right age to be his son. Benedict demands she either marry him or he will seek full custody in court. He states right off that he probably couldn’t win on the merits, but he’s got a lot of money and can tie her up for years. Plus Daniel bonds with him immediately. He tells her to dump Josh, doesn’t listen when she tries to tell him who Josh is, gets her school to release her from her contract, takes her and Daniel off to his country home.

They marry. At the reception Daniel mentions Josh which infuriates Benedict and he drags Rebecca back home to consummate the marriage immediately. Finally he listens to Rebecca and believes her that she had no lovers, Josh and his wife are good friends and no, she never got his apology letter and yes, she loves him. He loves her too. The final scene has little Daniel coming in their bedroom banging on a drum his uncle gave him. (Obviously the uncle has sadistic tendencies.) Happy Ever After.

Characters Make This Work

How does the author pull this hodgepodge of crazy plot and nutty backstory and over the top problems into a believable story? Characters are excellent. Jacqueline Baird uses dialogue and events to show the people and drive the plot, she does not rely on introspection or self pity.

Rebecca Rebecca is consistent throughout the story. She Is warm, loving, emotional, loyal to friends. She trusts almost everybody – at first any way, until they prove they cannot be trusted – and then she will remember that distrust even while she looks for mitigating reasons. Benedict hurt Rebecca terribly when he turned on her after they made love, accused her of wanting his money, of leading Gordon on and cruelly dumping him, claims he never proposed (true, he simply gave her a ring and seemed to agree they were engaged).

When Rebecca learned she was pregnant with a child by a father she couldn’t trust she didn’t waste time whining or feeling miserable or plotting revenge. She got on with things, got her teaching certificate, had the baby, bought a place to live, found day care and took care of her child, got a job and taught.

Rebecca is wary when she meets Benedict 5 years later yet she is willing to spend time with him, to listen to him, to get to know him. She plans to tell Benedict about Jonathon when he casually breaks their last date and she realizes that she is still not important to him.

Benedict calls Rebecca a firecracker. She is physically tiny, beautiful, with an outgoing, sunny personality, high energy and strong will. She keeps the teenagers in her student group under control and deftly manages the other teachers who are less assertive even though the teens are all much larger than she and full of the usual teen mischief.

She knows what she wants and works to get it. Rebecca turned down a lucrative banking job in the US because she wanted to teach. She teaches at a big school in London – apparently kids around 16, not small children. She wanted a decent place for Jonathon to live; she invested her small inheritance in a place with a small garden (aka yard for us Americans) and she furnished it to be comfortable and private. Even Benedict is impressed despite himself when he comes there.

Rebecca stands on her own yet is not too proud to accept help from friends, such as when Josh and his wife take care of Jonathon while she is with her students in France. Rebecca takes good care of her son, is careful not to spoil him and is careful with the money she has. She is smart, and moreover, rather wise. She doesn’t date and isn’t interested in guys after Benedict.

Benedict seems to veer crazily emotionally, swinging from berating Rebecca and acting hateful to quickly regretting his behavior. After he turned on her when they made love he insisted to take her to the train station, then watched the train leave and ran after it. His whole emotional responses to Rebecca is like this; he loves her despite not wanting to do so and is at constant loggerheads with himself, despising her, then despising himself for loving her then despising himself for rejecting her.

He felt terribly guilty when he learned the truth about Gordon and tried to apologize to Rebecca but he didn’t try very hard. He sent a letter but did not follow up when he got no response. My inference is that he regretted his behavior and felt guilty, wanted to make amends but was relieved when he could let it drop while telling himself Rebecca didn’t want anything to do with him.

Benedict acts the same way 5 years later when he finds out about Jonathon. He is initially furious, then he realizes he still wants Rebecca (still won’t admit he loves her), realizes she had some good reasons to keep away from him. He tells her with some self-righteousness that she owed it to tell him about their, after all he had tried to apologize, etc., etc. Later when he calms down Benedict knows he was just as much to blame if not more so than Rebecca.

I foresee a somewhat stormy future for these two strong-willed people!

Overall

It’s somewhat off putting to read Benedict’s constant disparagement that runs in parallel with his constant attempts to sleep with Rebecca. We see the turmoil in his heart all though the story. Rebecca is steadier but she too has a temper and a strong will. These two play off each other and make the story. Author Jacqueline Baird is wise to skip over the struggle that Rebecca must have faced as a single mother, especially since she had not gotten her teaching certificate before she got pregnant. Instead she shows the emotional swings both Benedict and Rebecca endure.

On the down side, the putative Other Woman stirs the pot for no discernable reason. From Benedict’s perspective the OW has no reason to feel jealous because she is simply an employee, but she nonetheless is nasty to Rebecca and tells her that Benedict will dump her the minute Jonathon no longer needs her. There doesn’t seem to be a good reason for the OW to be in the story.

Guilty Passion is believable despite the trope mash ups and thus

4 Stars

I got my copy from Thriftbooks and you can likely find copies on other used sites and on Amazon or eBay.

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Bride at Whangatapu – Romance by Robyn Donald

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Bride at Whangatapu marks Robyn Donald’s foray into Harlequin Presents Romance, published in 1977. Since then Ms. Donald has become a very successful and popular author, serving us intensely emotional romances usually set in New Zealand. I enjoy her work.

Plot Synopsis – Click to Avoid Spoilers

Fiona interviews for a job on a rural station in New Zealand. She is a skilled, well-paid secretary with a 4 year old son who is not recovering from bronchitis as he should, and she wants a position in the country so her son can recover in fresh air. Surprise! Her interviewer is Logan, the man she had a brief affair with 5 years ago, the father of her son.

Fiona has not seen Logan since the morning after they slept together. He was so shocked that she was a virgin that he verbally ripped her to shreds, called her every name possible and that she was nothing but a cheap tarty whore. (Which was obviously not the case but let’s go with it.) Fiona was shocked and went home. She was so hurt after Logan attacked her that she refused to tell her parents his name and did not tell him about their son. Her parents died and she lives alone with son Jonathan, wears a wedding ring and pretends to be a widow.

Logan recognizes her and he knows from her application that she has a small boy. He’s suspicious and interrogates Fiona about the boy’s dad. Sure enough, Fiona has a dated birthday picture of her son in her purse and Logan grabs the purse from her and snoops. He coerces Fiona to marry him by claiming he will do everything possible to wrest custody from her and since he’s rich, he can tie her up endlessly in court if nothing else. They agree to tell everyone that they had married 5 years ago and reconciled now for the son’s sake.

Logan takes her to Whangatapu where she meets his mother, his housekeeper and his steady girl friend. The mother and housekeeper are hostile and unpleasant and the girl friend acts superficially friendly but is jealous, possessive, unkind underneath. Fiona refuses to sleep with Logan until they love each other and Logan feels guilty enough that he goes along with this. Of course this adds to the unpleasant atmosphere.

The son, Jonathan, is very happy and recovers from his endless cough. He likes the housekeeper, his grandmother, his father and he also likes Denise, the girl friend. Denise likes him too.

Fiona doesn’t do much to endear herself to the others at first, but eventually she becomes friends with the mother and housekeeper, but she still distrusts Logan and avoids him, acts as his secretary but otherwise avoids him as much as possible. Denise suspects they married only recently and she plays up to Logan and when he’s not around, she makes no pretense of friendship for Fiona. She instead acts as though she and Logan had been engaged, that they are having an affair, and that Fiona should waft away on the breeze, leaving Jonathan behind.

Logan makes several passes at Fiona. They both know that he could seduce her into bed and they don’t sleep together only because he’s honoring her request. Logan’s feelings for Fiona are not at all clear. He doesn’t act lovingly towards her, he encourages Denise and plays up to her, he makes it clear that he married Fiona for Jonathan’s sake, not her own. (Of course Logan imagines that he is completely transparent and that of course Fiona knows he doesn’t love Denise. Clueless.)

Eventually Fiona faces the situation. She has three choices. She can continue, give Logan nothing of herself, distrust him, make a life with his mother and housekeeper and Jonathan. She can leave, leaving Jonathan for Logan and eventually, Denise, once Logan divorces Fiona and remarries. She can trust Logan, give him something of herself. Logan clearly states she is not to leave, there will be no divorce. Fiona chooses the option 3. First she gets rid of Denise. Fiona tells Denise she loves Logan, that she’s staying his wife, that Denise has no leverage, that it will do her no good whatsoever to tell people that Fiona and Logan married recently, that Jonathan had been illegitimate.

Fiona is no coward and once she decides on option 3 she sleeps with Logan but it is not lovemaking. Logan is not cruel but his also not at all tender, somewhat hurtful in fact. Fiona feels she was seduced, not made love to, and she fears this will the rest of her life.

Logan brings her back to bed and they talk. He thinks it was clear that he did not love Denise, did not have an affair, that he loves Fiona. She has to tell him that nothing has been clear. She doesn’t know him at all. He apologizes for being rough with her, she explains why she decided to “allow him his legal rights to her person”. Happy ever after.

Does This Work?

I do believe the happy ever after ending. Logan has been overbearing and he is angry with Fiona for not telling him about Jonathan, even though he recognizes that his verbal cruelty after their night together 5 years earlier gave her plenty of reason to keep their son a secret.

Logan is never had a big problem with anything. Men like him, he’s dynamic and super attractive to women, he’s rich, successful, good looking. He eventually realizes he is super lucky, won the jackpot when he got Fiona as his wife. She’s smart, strong, an excellent secretary, organized, kind and helpful, attractive, very good with people and knows what to say and when to keep still. She does an excellent job raising Jonathan. Unfortunately for Logan, Fiona is still wary of him, she doesn’t know him, doesn’t trust him. She doesn’t completely buy Denise’s persona of jilted almost-bride or lover, but sees Logan play up to Denise and thinks he might still prefer her to herself.

By about the middle of the story Logan is going quietly nuts. The man who never had a problem attracting women can’t get his own wife to sleep with him. His son loves him now too, but fiercely defends his mom when anyone says or implies anything negative. His own mother and housekeeper have brought Fiona into their family and he’s feeling left out. Poor baby.

I love how Fiona treats Denise. She doesn’t let Denise rule the roost or crow over her and she is politely skeptical about the whole almost-fiancée thing. She is never rude but never a doormat. This is one of the best heroine/Other Woman interactions in all of the Harlequin universe. The scene where Fiona tells Denise to take a hike is classic.

Fiona seems to see herself as more wishy washy around Logan than she is. She tells him what she thinks and what she wants quite clearly except for the few days where she seriously considers leaving and letting him have Jonathan and Denise. She eventually tells Logan she loves him at the end after she decides to give up her pride. She tells him she had no idea what he thought or felt, that she had not known him at all. Right there we have a peek into the problems with any marriage of convenience, no matter why the couple marries; if they don’t know each other, trust each other, marriage with its continual intimacy of living together regardless of sexual situation, is difficult.

Summary

I like Bride at Whangatapu for the character development, New Zealand glimpse, Fiona. It lacks some of the emotional intensity that Robyn Donald builds into her later books. Ms. Donald shows us how Fiona grows and develops her relationships with her mother in law, housekeepers, putative other man, family guests, Denise, but she more tells us than shows us how Fiona sees her relationship with Logan. I think that is the missing element that keeps Bride at Whangatapu from being a 5 star read for me.

3 Stars

I got my copy on eBay. You can likely find copies on Thriftbooks or other used book site and Amazon has new and used copies and an audio version.

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