Christa has turned the fabric business she inherited from her great aunt into a profitable design enterprise and she is a member of her local chamber of commerce where Daniel Geshard is speaking this month about his motivational course that trains people to trust their coworkers. Christa wants none of this; after all her best friend married a con artist, supposedly a motivational coach, and got taken to the cleaners, eventually to suicide.
After Daniel’s talk Christa stands up to ask him for his success metrics, can he prove that his course is effective? He can’t, instead challenges her to attend and see what she thinks afterwards. The other chamber members pressure her to accept and off we go to the Welsh mountains where Daniel will take her canoeing, mountain hiking and more, putting her in positions where she must trust and rely on someone else.
Daniel and Christa are instantly and deeply attracted, and given this is a Harlequin, end up as lovers. There are a few hitches, mostly around Christa’s unwillingness to trust Daniel, until Christa goes back home and Daniel overhears one of the chamber members taunting Christa that Daniel romanced her in order to get a successful outcome. Christa doesn’t believe this but Daniel thinks she does, etc., etc., etc. Typical romance where the two characters really don’t know each other well and are quick to take offense or to run off.
I’ve experience with business programs of the day, having gone through enough to know that while they often have merit, the quick and easy courses lack substance and the more difficult ones require long term commitment and usually fail because they do not result in change. It was easy for me to share Christa’s skepticism!
Even though I appreciated Christa’s point of view, she became whiny and obsessed with being too frightened to believe that Daniel had anything more in mind than a quick seduction and course success. That made the story tedious and hard to see why Daniel bothered with her.
The Trusting Game is one of the semi-smutty Harlequins, where the plot and story revolve around instant physical attraction. Will they sleep together? How and when? I’ve read a couple other Penny Jordan romances that have a bit more story, more developed and more likable characters. This one was mediocre.
2 Stars
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