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Sexy Men...Sassy Women #3
Ties That Bind
Welcome to Sexy Men…Sassy Women
A bestselling author, a medevac pilot, a hotshot lawyer, a bodyguard, a football coach and a children’s book author…all sexy, sensitive men who can be stubborn and infuriating.
A reclusive artist, a CEO, a family court judge, a businesswoman, a college professor and a celebrity food channel host…all successful, smart and sassy women who can tame the men they love.
In TIES THAT BIND, Reese Bishop would like to think he’s gotten over his ex-wife, Judge Kate Renado, and vice versa. But when they’re thrown together to disprove an accusation by a former client, who they represented in their high-powered law firm, everything between them gets murky. They’re both involved with wonderful new partners, their daughter has finally accepted their divorce, and the cover-up in the prison system can’t quell the explosive attraction and deep love that surfaces when they work to prove their innocence. Readers will be shocked by the turn of events in this novel.
A bestselling author, a medevac pilot, a hotshot lawyer, a bodyguard, a football coach and a children’s book author…all sexy, sensitive men who can be stubborn and infuriating.
A reclusive artist, a CEO, a family court judge, a businesswoman, a college professor and a celebrity food channel host…all successful, smart and sassy women who can tame the men they love.
In TIES THAT BIND, Reese Bishop would like to think he’s gotten over his ex-wife, Judge Kate Renado, and vice versa. But when they’re thrown together to disprove an accusation by a former client, who they represented in their high-powered law firm, everything between them gets murky. They’re both involved with wonderful new partners, their daughter has finally accepted their divorce, and the cover-up in the prison system can’t quell the explosive attraction and deep love that surfaces when they work to prove their innocence. Readers will be shocked by the turn of events in this novel.
- GenresRomanceContemporary
368 pages, Paperback
First published June 6, 2006
19 people are currently reading
112 people want to read
About the author
Kathryn Shay
173 books501 followersKathryn Shay is a lifelong writer. At fifteen, she penned her first 'romance,' a short story about a female newspaper reporter in New York City and her fight to make a name for herself in a world of male journalists - and with one hardheaded editor in particular. Looking back, Kathryn says she should have known then that writing was in her future. But as so often happens, fate sent her detouring down another path.
Fully intending to pursue her dream of big city lights and success in the literary world, Kathryn took every creative writing class available at the small private women's college she attended in upstate New York. Instead, other dreams took precedence. She met and subsequently married a wonderful guy who'd attended a neighboring school, then completed her practice teaching, a requirement for the education degree she never intended to use. But says Kathryn, "I fell in love with teaching the first day I was up in front of a class, and knew I was meant to do that."
Kathryn went on to build a successful career in the New York state school system, thoroughly enjoying her work with adolescents. But by the early 1990s, she'd again made room in her life for writing. It was then that she submitted her first manuscript to publishers and agents. Despite enduring two years of rejections, she persevered. And on a snowy December afternoon in 1994, Kathryn Shay sold her first book to Harlequin Superromance.
Since that first sale, Kathryn has written twenty-one books for Harlequin, nine mainstream contemporary romances for the Berkley Publishing Group, and two online novellas, which Berkley then published in traditional print format.
Kathryn has become known for her powerful characterizations - readers say they feel they know the people in her books - and her heart-wrenching, emotional writing (her favorite comments are that fans cried while reading her books or stayed up late to finish them). In testament to her skill, the author has won five RT BookClub Magazine Reviewers Choice Awards, three Holt Medallions, two Desert Quill Awards, the Golden Leaf Award, and several online accolades.
Even in light of her writing success, that initial love of teaching never wavered for Kathryn. She finished out her teaching career in 2004, retiring from the same school where her career began. These days, she lives in upstate New York with her husband and two children. "My life is very full," she reports, "but very happy. I consider myself fortunate to have been able to pursue and achieve my dreams."
Fully intending to pursue her dream of big city lights and success in the literary world, Kathryn took every creative writing class available at the small private women's college she attended in upstate New York. Instead, other dreams took precedence. She met and subsequently married a wonderful guy who'd attended a neighboring school, then completed her practice teaching, a requirement for the education degree she never intended to use. But says Kathryn, "I fell in love with teaching the first day I was up in front of a class, and knew I was meant to do that."
Kathryn went on to build a successful career in the New York state school system, thoroughly enjoying her work with adolescents. But by the early 1990s, she'd again made room in her life for writing. It was then that she submitted her first manuscript to publishers and agents. Despite enduring two years of rejections, she persevered. And on a snowy December afternoon in 1994, Kathryn Shay sold her first book to Harlequin Superromance.
Since that first sale, Kathryn has written twenty-one books for Harlequin, nine mainstream contemporary romances for the Berkley Publishing Group, and two online novellas, which Berkley then published in traditional print format.
Kathryn has become known for her powerful characterizations - readers say they feel they know the people in her books - and her heart-wrenching, emotional writing (her favorite comments are that fans cried while reading her books or stayed up late to finish them). In testament to her skill, the author has won five RT BookClub Magazine Reviewers Choice Awards, three Holt Medallions, two Desert Quill Awards, the Golden Leaf Award, and several online accolades.
Even in light of her writing success, that initial love of teaching never wavered for Kathryn. She finished out her teaching career in 2004, retiring from the same school where her career began. These days, she lives in upstate New York with her husband and two children. "My life is very full," she reports, "but very happy. I consider myself fortunate to have been able to pursue and achieve my dreams."
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 18, 2021
Not, I think, a romance. Nor can I place it on the cheater's contrition tour, since he doesn't offer and she doesn't expect contrition for his infidelity. It's a case of greater sins.
SPOILERS
The protagonists were married for 14+ years when their marriage began to unravel. It started when the lawyer wife was nominated for an appointment to the judiciary, which was also a career goal for her competitive husband. Jealous of her success, he began pressing for them to have another baby (their only child, a daughter, was 10 years old). They argue constantly and grow distant. Little did he know that his wife was already pregnant and concerned about the impact of a baby on her career. She has an abortion and notifies him after the fact. He retaliates by having an affair with another lawyer. Eventually, they divorce. (I say "eventually" because there's confirmation of at least one angry sexual encounter between them "months after the abortion and the discovery of his affair. They'd both known the end was near...")
Here's the final scene from their marriage, which conveniently encompasses all these details, 5 years before the book begins [trigger warning: discussion of abortion]:
Worth repeating: this isn't the night she discovered his affair. That had been months earlier, when the wife's friend had told her she'd seen his car parked in front of another woman's home and the wife stormed in to find her husband naked in bed, smoking a cigarette. At least, I assume this other woman was lawyer Lindsay, since both protagonists later insist he'd only had the one affair before they divorced. It's interesting to me that she allowed the marriage to drag on while the affair was ongoing. She basically accepts the affair as punishment for her choice.
I am wholeheartedly in favor of reproductive freedom and a woman's right to choose. So it isn't the fact of the abortion that makes me allot the greater share of blame for the marital breakdown to the wife. It's that she had the abortion without informing him about the pregnancy first. That is a fundamental violation of marital trust. That was the death of the marriage. His sins -- attempting to sabotage her goals and then having a revenge affair -- echo that violation but pale in comparison. If she had discussed the abortion with him first, then gone ahead with it against his wishes, they could still have had the same fallout, but on a more even playing field.
It's five years later when our story begins. The ex-husband lives with an aerobics instructor and the ex-wife is sleeping with a slightly younger dreamy doctor. Their lovers are in cahoots trying to get the exes to commit to permanent relationships with each of them, which is a little creepy but still not deserving of the treatment they receive from their partners when the exes are forced to work together to clear their names after one of their former clients leaves a suicide note in prison implicating them both in a scandal.
The exes bicker and make out. Soon there's more making out than bickering, but the "current" lovers are dangled along until the 80% mark. Finally, the exes reconcile without ever talking through the abortion or affair. The "proof" that their reconciliation will work is the evidence of how they've both changed: she eagerly accepts the guardianship of his two nephews after her ex-husband's sister dies, and he declines the criminal court judgeship he is offered once his name is cleared. So she's ready for more family now, and he's no longer competitive about career achievements.
I hope they get counseling. Or not, because they were really horrible people.
Oh! Their current-now-former lovers get drunk on raspberry martinis and sleep together the night the protagonists officially dump each of them. But they agree to be just friends from now on because Dr Dreamy is still in love with the judge and the aerobics instructor is still in love with the cheater, and being in a relationship with someone who is in love with the same person that your previous partner was in love with during your last relationship is kinda creepy.
SPOILERS
The protagonists were married for 14+ years when their marriage began to unravel. It started when the lawyer wife was nominated for an appointment to the judiciary, which was also a career goal for her competitive husband. Jealous of her success, he began pressing for them to have another baby (their only child, a daughter, was 10 years old). They argue constantly and grow distant. Little did he know that his wife was already pregnant and concerned about the impact of a baby on her career. She has an abortion and notifies him after the fact. He retaliates by having an affair with another lawyer. Eventually, they divorce. (I say "eventually" because there's confirmation of at least one angry sexual encounter between them "months after the abortion and the discovery of his affair. They'd both known the end was near...")
Here's the final scene from their marriage, which conveniently encompasses all these details, 5 years before the book begins [trigger warning: discussion of abortion]:
Worth repeating: this isn't the night she discovered his affair. That had been months earlier, when the wife's friend had told her she'd seen his car parked in front of another woman's home and the wife stormed in to find her husband naked in bed, smoking a cigarette. At least, I assume this other woman was lawyer Lindsay, since both protagonists later insist he'd only had the one affair before they divorced. It's interesting to me that she allowed the marriage to drag on while the affair was ongoing. She basically accepts the affair as punishment for her choice.
I am wholeheartedly in favor of reproductive freedom and a woman's right to choose. So it isn't the fact of the abortion that makes me allot the greater share of blame for the marital breakdown to the wife. It's that she had the abortion without informing him about the pregnancy first. That is a fundamental violation of marital trust. That was the death of the marriage. His sins -- attempting to sabotage her goals and then having a revenge affair -- echo that violation but pale in comparison. If she had discussed the abortion with him first, then gone ahead with it against his wishes, they could still have had the same fallout, but on a more even playing field.
It's five years later when our story begins. The ex-husband lives with an aerobics instructor and the ex-wife is sleeping with a slightly younger dreamy doctor. Their lovers are in cahoots trying to get the exes to commit to permanent relationships with each of them, which is a little creepy but still not deserving of the treatment they receive from their partners when the exes are forced to work together to clear their names after one of their former clients leaves a suicide note in prison implicating them both in a scandal.
The exes bicker and make out. Soon there's more making out than bickering, but the "current" lovers are dangled along until the 80% mark. Finally, the exes reconcile without ever talking through the abortion or affair. The "proof" that their reconciliation will work is the evidence of how they've both changed: she eagerly accepts the guardianship of his two nephews after her ex-husband's sister dies, and he declines the criminal court judgeship he is offered once his name is cleared. So she's ready for more family now, and he's no longer competitive about career achievements.
I hope they get counseling. Or not, because they were really horrible people.
Oh! Their current-now-former lovers get drunk on raspberry martinis and sleep together the night the protagonists officially dump each of them. But they agree to be just friends from now on because Dr Dreamy is still in love with the judge and the aerobics instructor is still in love with the cheater, and being in a relationship with someone who is in love with the same person that your previous partner was in love with during your last relationship is kinda creepy.
maybe
November 6, 2020I'm pondering this one. Sometimes this author can write and sometimes, eh. And with her cheating books, not a lot of time is spent on the betrayal. I like that sinking gut feeling, but she kinda does what LLJ did with I want you back and backs into the cheating and it feels emotionless.
December 14, 2020
I couldn't get into this and I couldn't dnf so I skimmed about half of it. They're in other relationships when they are forced back into working together to save their careers and a lot of the story is about the detective work that bored me silly.
July 31, 2023
TIES THAT BIND
by Kathryn Shay
This story belongs to Family Court Judge Kaitlyn Renado and well known lawyer Reece Bishop. These two were once married but infidelity, careers and betrayals broke their bond. Nowadays, each is thriving in their careers and though finding companionship with individuals younger than them, years after, the flame has not extinguished. When a case and a family tragedy brings them closer, will they forgive themselves and each other and give marriage a second chance or will the past hurts keep them apart?
Once again, this talented author, presents the readers with real life stories that are thought provoking. Presenting us will characters that are imperfect and are dealing with situations that are very real.
by Kathryn Shay
This story belongs to Family Court Judge Kaitlyn Renado and well known lawyer Reece Bishop. These two were once married but infidelity, careers and betrayals broke their bond. Nowadays, each is thriving in their careers and though finding companionship with individuals younger than them, years after, the flame has not extinguished. When a case and a family tragedy brings them closer, will they forgive themselves and each other and give marriage a second chance or will the past hurts keep them apart?
Once again, this talented author, presents the readers with real life stories that are thought provoking. Presenting us will characters that are imperfect and are dealing with situations that are very real.
September 29, 2023
Bitter arguments between Reese and Kate descend into both parties doing unforgivable things and a divorce ensues. Five years later the pair have separate lives with new partners, until a suicide note blaming them draws them together to protect their reputations and careers. A lot of bitterness and anger is on both sides but their magnetic attraction keeps the sparks flying.
June 3, 2014
Interesting
Interesting story about relationships that happens everyday. it was fitting when dray stated she never thought she'll be one of those women. I just thought they was holding onto a losing battle and finally accepted it took easily at the end. became pathetic! overall very intriguing story
Interesting story about relationships that happens everyday. it was fitting when dray stated she never thought she'll be one of those women. I just thought they was holding onto a losing battle and finally accepted it took easily at the end. became pathetic! overall very intriguing story
March 6, 2016
What a great story. Thanks Kathryn. Loved how Kate and Reece put their past behind them to defend themselves. Enjoyed the whole storyline with the other loves in their lives and how they reacted to the situation and how Kate and Reece finally realize that they do belong together in the end.
September 4, 2016
This book just never got good. The lack of morality was disappointing and so much was just wrong. The mystery part wasn't good either and that's the only reason I stuck with the book!
I did finish it but don't plan on reading any more by her.
I did finish it but don't plan on reading any more by her.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews