The Debutante

Fortunes of Texas: Reunion #6

by Elizabeth Bevarly

"You want us to pretend to be engaged. You're joking, right?"
-- Lanie Meyers, Debutante

Doesn't everyone want true love? No way. For sexy Miles Fortune, the youngest of the Fortune triplets, soul mates are for suckers. But when the playboy rancher eyes blond bombshell Lanie Meyers at the governor's fund-raiser, he's soon face-to-face with a woman who's wilder than he is. She also happens to be the governor's daughter.

But the paparazzi have a way of showing up when things get crazy -- and their compromising position is making headline news. There's only one way to save face. Pretend to be engaged -- at least until Lanie's father's election is over. But when an underhanded deal goes sour, Miles must convince Lanie that playing to the press will be more pleasurable than she thinks.

Genres: Romance, Harlequin, Contemporary, Contemporary Romance

Mass Market Paperback

First published November 8, 2005

About the author

Elizabeth Bevarly was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky and earned her BA with honors in English from the University of Louisville in 1983. Although she can’t recall ever wanting to be anything but a novelist-oh, all right, she toyed briefly with becoming an archaeologist, until she realized how awful she looked in khaki and flannel, and there was a brief fling with the interior decorator thing, until she realized she had trouble distinguishing chintz from moiré, and… (Where was I? Oh, yeah. My brilliant career.) Anyway, her career side trips before making the leap to writing included stints working as a bartender, a waitress, a movie theater cashier, a soap-hawker for Crabtree & Evelyn, an apparel-hawker for The Limited, and a bridal registry consultant for a major department store. She also did time as an editorial assistant for a medical journal, where she learned the correct spellings and meanings of a variety of words (like microscopy and histological) which, with any luck at all, she will never use again in this life.

She wrote her first novel when she was twelve years old. It was 32 pages long-and that was with college rule notebook paper-and featured three girls named Liz, Marianne and Cheryl, who explored the mysteries of a haunted house. Her friends Marianne and Cheryl proclaimed it “Brilliant! Spellbinding! Kept me up past dinnertime reading!” Those rave reviews only kindled the fire inside her to write more.

Since sixth grade, Elizabeth has gone on to complete more than 60 works of contemporary romance. Her novels regularly appear on the USA Today and Waldenbooks bestseller lists, and The Thing About Men was a New York Times Extended List bestseller. She’s been nominated for the prestigious RITA Award, has won the coveted National Readers’ Choice Award, and Romantic Times magazine has seen fit to honor her with two-count ‘em TWO-Career Achievement Awards. Her books have been translated into two dozen languages and published in three dozen countries, and there are more than ten million copies in print worldwide. She has claimed as residences Washington, DC, northern Virginia, southern New Jersey and Puerto Rico, but she now resides back in her native Kentucky with her husband and son and two very troubled cats where she fully intends to remain.

Reviews

[Dina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Título em português: A Debutante

Tradução: Marie Olivier

Sinopse: Para o sexy Miles Fortune, um dos trigêmeos Fortune, amor à primeira vista só existe em contos de fada. Mas quando os olhos do playboy vêem a estonteante Lanie Meyers, filha do candidato a governador, ele começa a mudar de opinião.

[Steve Bender · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun book until the 3/4th mark, then the story was left and the author explained all the other characters in the Fortunes series. Still fun romance.

[Priscilla · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sexto volume da série Fortunes of Texas.

Há tanta interação da família que o casal principal se perde na história.

Fraco.

[TINNGG · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book made me sad. You know that cliche, "poor little rich girl"? That's our h. Her father, ambitious career politician, has essentially molded his family to suit his needs, and the h - young, attractive, and poorly socialized in any way that truly matters, has blundered a few times, earning an undeserved reputation. The H, adrift in a family of overachievers, hasn't a v. good reputation either. Naturally, they get caught in a seemingly compromising position due to the misfortune of a hanging basket dumping its contents on him, and them both having a moment of poor judgement in cleaning it up. Naturally, it was the paparazzi that found them.

Dear old dad goes ballistic, essentially browbeating her, and bribing him, into a fake engagement.

Over the course of this farce, they fall for each other, only for her to find out about the bribe when she goes to tell her dad they were going to get married for real. H, btw, had no intention of taking the money, and was disgusted at being offered. He went through with it because he liked her.

I dunno... a part of me - a rebellious part of me - thinks at some point dear old dad would have paid in other ways long before this began. I think it may have been the feeling the h had spent a lot of time in the care of nannies. She seemed entirely too concerned with her father's election for me. Too self sacrificing. I kept wondering how she ever got a reputation in the first place as she seemed to almost be the family doormat.

[Tonileg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sixth book in the Fortunes of Texas: Reunion. Pretend engagement until Miles falls for Lanie and has to convince her to make their relationship a real and lasting one.
This is Miles Fortune's love story, he is the last bachelor of the triplets brothers and he is considered the 'ladies' man' of the family. He lives on the ranch that he co-owns with his brother/triplet Clyde. So Lanie Meyers is the governor's daughter who hasn't found her passion in life yet, but she lives and parties while always being a good girl for her soon to be re-elected political father. So the two officially meet at one of her father's political fundraisers, although Lanie knows Miles because she has admired him from afar since she was a little girl. Miles is interested in this pretty lady in a blue dress at the boring fundraiser so he wants to get to know her better...
At this point there is the paparazzi photo catastrophe and I started to lose interest in this story. I could understand that they would pretend to be engaged to defuse the situation but I didn't feel any chemistry between the H/h because they just seemed like they could be good friends and not lovers.
This is my least favorite story in the 18 that I have already read in the Fortune's of Texas series. I just couldn't believe in any chemistry and the sexy scene near the end of the story is very light and quick.
226 pages and another 50ish pages of author interviews and trivia and a sneak peek of book 7 in the series.
2 stars

[Cassandra]

Pretty good. Not my fav. of the series so far but good enough when you've got nothing else to do.

[Alisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.85

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though there were completely random parts of this book unrelated to the main story.

[Harlequin Books]

Miniseries: Fortunes of Texas: Reunion
Category: Contemporary Romance