Child of Her Heart

by Arlene James

A cruel deception had robbed Dr. Gail Terry of her newborn baby. And after years of desperate searching, Gail had finally found her, alive and well and living in Texas. Now, the only person who stood between Gail and her precious daughter was ruggedly handsome Rand Hartesite.

Rand had made a loving home for not one, but two adoptive daughters. And Gail couldn't deny that her child's life had been blessed by the rancher's warm and gentle ways. Soon Gail wished she could keep her true identity from the man she'd come to love. Now taking back the child of her heart meant betraying the man of her dreams.

Genres: Romance

296 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1995

About the author

Arlene James has written romance for four decades, and has published 100+ novels. A mother of sons and now a happy grandmother to the brightest, most talented, and lovely of all granddaughters, she is finding her sixth decade to be great fun.

She and her very supportive husband of 45 years (whom she agreed to marry on their first date!) enjoy a busy social life and have visited much of the world. After calling Texas home for three decades, they now live in beautiful NW Arkansas.

Arlene grew up on a ranch in south central Oklahoma and still maintains strong ties in that area. She firmly believes that writing has afforded her the best of all possible means of earning a living, and credits a junior high school English teacher with proving to her that her dream of being an author was entirely achievable.

After 4 decades of deadlines and multiple-book contracts (for which she is deeply grateful), she is enjoying the ability to write exactly what she feels led to write on her own schedule.

Reviews

[Preeti ♥︎ Her Bookshelves · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok wow, if you’ve ever griped about the very few real moments of (pre-hea) loving intimacy between the mcs in your romances, then you must read this book for a surfeit, a smorgasbord of almost teenage fervor of love and adoration, possessiveness and tenderness - especially from the H.
Well, sometimes you fall hard, no matter the age.
And he’s forty-one! A 'large, solidly built, ruggedly handsome' cowboy. With a soft mushy heart!
And she’s thirty-two and the new doctor in town. I like the combination.
The h returns his feelings but her own deception stops her from openly joining in this impetuous free-fall.

The story is as described on the blurb, and the tone is sweet and heartwarming.
The father of her child was the H’s brother and a cruel, cheating scumbag who ran off with their newborn baby thirteen years ago, leaving her devastated and without answers. The h dedicates her life to tracking down her child while pulling herself out of deprivation and a foster-home background to become a doctor. She relocates to Marfa, Texas - the area where her investigator tracks the om’s family to. She meets the H (and so the family) when his mother has a fall and fractures a hip. The town people, till then, have largely ignored her and her practice, but the besotted H becomes her biggest fan and champion and makes sure that she gets accepted. I love how he ascribes super doctor abilities to the woman he loves and believes her capable of treating every affliction and helping everyone. He’s so proud of her!

But to come back to their first meeting, I found certain things in the first chapter a bit anomalous - like it's more than a little strange that she isn’t worried about running into her ex and the resultant confrontation. Or that she didn’t try to discretely fish out more information from the H about his family as he drives her to the ranch. She is at the end of her years long search and the probability of running into her ex-bf and her child is very real. But nothing! The author should also have shown her keen and nervous to meet her daughter as well.
Or even later when she’s told that the brother died in a car crash 11 years ago, she never wonders or asks if he was alone in the crash or was anyone else with him - namely their child.

And yes, a shocker awaits her. There’s not one child but two - twins! Why and how did her ex-bf hide this fact from her. Are they both even hers?
And the girls are different from each other as possible. The h’s poignant bewilderment at the lack of any subconscious mother-daughter connection or a flash of maternal recognition is touching. She isn’t even sure if she’s a mother to one or both of them.
Add to it is one of the girl’s antipathy to this newcomer whom their father/uncle is so smitten with.
So, yes complications!

The h finds herself dragging her feet in confronting the H with the truth as she dreams of having all three of them as her family and doesn’t know how the H will react to the truth. As a reader, I too felt that she missed one or two ‘good time’ to reveal the truth. And so, the story went on a bit longer than merited and drags while, the H carries on with his swoon-worthy wooing of the reluctant h, knowing that something holds her back.
The big showdown happens and shocked by the revelations, he slips into some unexpected pig-headed cruelty. So he does fail - like all men/Hs eventually do.*eyeroll*
Few more heart-wrenching scenes later, we get the hea.

[Sue Lauzon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty typical of a Harlequin romance. They pretty much all follow the same outline. There were parts of this that I found hard to believe. For example the couple in the story haven't known each other that long when they are declaring their love for each other and he is leaving his two daughters with her for an extended period of time (one, if not both she suspects is/are her daughter/daughters). Seems a little complicated.

[Tammi Kendall · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderful story