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Dangerous Interloper
The man was trespassing on her emotions!
Women as independent and career-minded as Miranda didn't just bump into a total stranger and fall in love. Ridiculous. Impossible. Totally unthinkable. There must have been some other more logical explanation for her extraordinary reaction to Ben Frobisher.
The computer expert had already made quite an impact on the small English market town, and the fact that he'd reduced Miranda to a giddy teenager only fueled her determination to remain detached. True, she found him incredibly desirable, but did he have to invade her dreams every night? Did he have to reveal emotions and needs she had never before experienced?
Women as independent and career-minded as Miranda didn't just bump into a total stranger and fall in love. Ridiculous. Impossible. Totally unthinkable. There must have been some other more logical explanation for her extraordinary reaction to Ben Frobisher.
The computer expert had already made quite an impact on the small English market town, and the fact that he'd reduced Miranda to a giddy teenager only fueled her determination to remain detached. True, she found him incredibly desirable, but did he have to invade her dreams every night? Did he have to reveal emotions and needs she had never before experienced?
288 pages, Hardcover
First published July 12, 1991
21 people are currently reading
51 people want to read
About the author
Penny Jordan
1,125 books668 followersPenelope Jones Halsall
aka Caroline Courtney, Annie Groves, Lydia Hitchcock, Melinda Wright
Penelope "Penny" Jones was born on November 24, 1946 at about seven pounds in a nursing home in Preston, Lancashire, England. She was the first child of Anthony Winn Jones, an engineer, who died at 85, and his wife Margaret Louise Groves Jones. She has a brother, Anthony, and a sister, Prudence "Pru".
She had been a keen reader from the childhood - her mother used to leave her in the children's section of their local library whilst she changed her father's library books. She was a storyteller long before she began to write romantic fiction. At the age of eight, she was creating serialized bedtime stories, featuring make-believe adventures, for her younger sister Prue, who was always the heroine. At eleven, she fell in love with Mills & Boon, and with their heroes. In those days the books could only be obtained via private lending libraries, and she quickly became a devoted fan; she was thrilled to bits when the books went on full sale in shops and she could have them for keeps.
Penny left grammar school in Rochdale with O-Levels in English Language, English Literature and Geography. She first discovered Mills & Boon books, via a girl she worked with. She married Steve Halsall, an accountant and a "lovely man", who smoked and drank too heavily, and suffered oral cancer with bravery and dignity. Her husband bought her the small electric typewriter on which she typed her first novels, at a time when he could ill afford it. He died at the beginning of 21st century.
She earned a living as a writer since the 1970s when, as a shorthand typist, she entered a competition run by the Romantic Novelists' Association. Although she didn't win, Penny found an agent who was looking for a new Georgette Heyer. She published four regency novels as Caroline Courtney, before changing her nom de plume to Melinda Wright for three air-hostess romps and then she wrote two thrillers as Lydia Hitchcock. Soon after that, Mills and Boon accepted her first novel for them, Falcon's Prey as Penny Jordan. However, for her more historical romance novels, she adopted her mother's maiden-name to become Annie Groves. Almost 70 of her 167 Mills and Boon novels have been sold worldwide.
Penny Halsall lived in a neo-Georgian house in Nantwich, Cheshire, with her Alsatian Sheba and cat Posh. She worked from home, in her kitchen, surrounded by her pets, and welcomed interruptions from her friends and family.
aka Caroline Courtney, Annie Groves, Lydia Hitchcock, Melinda Wright
Penelope "Penny" Jones was born on November 24, 1946 at about seven pounds in a nursing home in Preston, Lancashire, England. She was the first child of Anthony Winn Jones, an engineer, who died at 85, and his wife Margaret Louise Groves Jones. She has a brother, Anthony, and a sister, Prudence "Pru".
She had been a keen reader from the childhood - her mother used to leave her in the children's section of their local library whilst she changed her father's library books. She was a storyteller long before she began to write romantic fiction. At the age of eight, she was creating serialized bedtime stories, featuring make-believe adventures, for her younger sister Prue, who was always the heroine. At eleven, she fell in love with Mills & Boon, and with their heroes. In those days the books could only be obtained via private lending libraries, and she quickly became a devoted fan; she was thrilled to bits when the books went on full sale in shops and she could have them for keeps.
Penny left grammar school in Rochdale with O-Levels in English Language, English Literature and Geography. She first discovered Mills & Boon books, via a girl she worked with. She married Steve Halsall, an accountant and a "lovely man", who smoked and drank too heavily, and suffered oral cancer with bravery and dignity. Her husband bought her the small electric typewriter on which she typed her first novels, at a time when he could ill afford it. He died at the beginning of 21st century.
She earned a living as a writer since the 1970s when, as a shorthand typist, she entered a competition run by the Romantic Novelists' Association. Although she didn't win, Penny found an agent who was looking for a new Georgette Heyer. She published four regency novels as Caroline Courtney, before changing her nom de plume to Melinda Wright for three air-hostess romps and then she wrote two thrillers as Lydia Hitchcock. Soon after that, Mills and Boon accepted her first novel for them, Falcon's Prey as Penny Jordan. However, for her more historical romance novels, she adopted her mother's maiden-name to become Annie Groves. Almost 70 of her 167 Mills and Boon novels have been sold worldwide.
Penny Halsall lived in a neo-Georgian house in Nantwich, Cheshire, with her Alsatian Sheba and cat Posh. She worked from home, in her kitchen, surrounded by her pets, and welcomed interruptions from her friends and family.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 21, 2017
Re Dangerous Interloper - PJ does her uber ultra sensitive shy vacillating h in this one and pairs her with a very nice and sweet computer engineer but romantic at heart sorta Alpha H.
The h is in her late twenties and works as an estate agent in her father's business. She is pretty independent and career oriented, or so she says, but really she just has high PJ sensitive h standards, so no one who lives locally is going to meet them.
Especially since the only local guy who seems interested in the h is the husband of the h's father's fiancee's niece,(it is a very small community,) - and he is a slime gobbling blobfish pustule who thinks women are only good for one thing and maybe making pot roast. But the h is okay with that as long as Gobble Boy leaves her alone.
She has friends, memberships on several local committees about keeping the historic buildings historic and likes to help find ways to channel the local teenager's energy as they seem to want to run wild on the village green and the village elderly people and London weekenders don't like that.
The h has a cat named William too, she claims he only hangs around for the foodz, but we don't get William's POV on that and he seems to like her pettings. (I was kinda upset with no William page time, he only gets a few lines and so I had to downgrade accordingly.)
The h is also a lady who spends a great deal of time either day dreaming or fretting over her little social gaffes that she thinks everyone notices and for some reason she also has a LOT of inner tirades over ruining historical buildings. But as we shall soon see, this h uses ranty inner anger moments to hide her fear of unfamiliar or emotionally uncomfortable situations.
(Theoretically the h focusing on ranty moments about the buildings being renovated into something modern and not appealing is a release for her deep seated unease and powerlessness against Gobble Boy- he is the main contractor who messes the buildings up.)
So the book starts with the h having a ranty moment about a lovely Georgian building being ruined when the h sees Gobble Boy and his crew at work on it. Gobble Boy makes a lewd comment, so the h hurries herself off and runs smack into the middle of the H. Unbeknownst to the h, the H she has almost mowed down is the owner of the Georgian building and is intending to move his computer software business to it and get out of London. He is actually restoring the building tho and not modernizing.
As the h seems very flustered, the H asks her what is wrong and the h goes into a huge long winded spiel about new buyers not preserving historic buildings to hide her inner panic over Gobble Boy. The H tries to get a word in edgewise, but the h rushes off back to the estate agency to have a heated day dream about the man she just collided with.
Then her father tells her that a client who recently bought property through them will be attending a local tennis club dinner with the h, her dad and dad's nice fiancee. Guess who shows up for dinner? Yep, it is the H and now the h has to have increased inner ranty moments, cause she thinks the H knows she is totally day dreaming about him. When the H asks her to dance, the h has to give ANOTHER lecture on keeping historic buildings historic and then runs off when she feels really melty and trembly all over.
She runs to the conservatory, where Gobble Boy is waiting to trap her and there are angry words exchanged, but the h really needs to carry a big skillet cause it is clear Gobble Boy is intent on gobbling the h up. The h manages an escape before she is helplessly ravaged and tied to the railroad tracks, but the H offers to be her steady fake date to keep Gobble Boy away.
The h declares herself non interested, but really she is obsessing over the H all the time, she is so far gone that she has explicit dreams too. Even tho outwardly she is snappy at him when he comes to the historic preservation meetings and every gossip in the tiny market town has them paired off. Right away her BFF is planning the wedding in a very familiar PJ kinda way, and we haven't even had an official H and h alone moment yet, except for one roofie kiss in the hall at the tennis club.
Not to worry tho, we get the sneaky H maneuvered dinner date right after the BFF calls. Then the h has to inner fret over losing her independent career mojo too. (This h does a lot of fretting, which was probably what kept her so fashionably thin, but it got a teensy bit wearying by the end.)
The H also fired Gobble Boy and Gobble Boy has vowed revenge. There is a series of escalating sabotage events, but no proof as to who is doing it. The h frets about this too, because Gobble Boy is known to be vindictive. Eventually the h's treacherous inner meltiness overcomes her inner ranty historical building aestheticism and the H and h have a revocation of h unicorn petting rights moment after the h has a verbal mini meltdown over his irresitableness.
(Technically the h had an extremely painful ten second holiday encounter with a guy, but for all intents and purposes, the h is a mental virgin.) It is fabulous, but the h only leaves a polite thank you note when she sneaks out the next morning.
Then she has another little inner ranty moment cause she loves the H and he didn't say he loves her back - not that she said anything either, not even in the very polite thank you note closing did the h even hint that she is overwhelmingly lost on the deep seas of endless love for the H.
So we really can't take him to task for his lack of using the love word, the H practically said everything but love and the h was too busy having inner ranties to notice how he follows her around and hangs on every word in adoring puppy fashion and pretty much does everything but stand on his head to declare his devotion.
(It does seem like this h has a lot of ranty moments, but really it is the PJ way of showing off the H's manly male competency in caring for the h. He is very interested in keeping buildings historic too and he gets the teenagers learning computer skillz and software writing, so that they can write apps for that and make millions to be able to afford local property values after all the London weekenders finish driving property values up. )
Then the big crisis comes! Gobble Boy tries to destroy a wall and hurt the H on his Georgian building restoration and the h is in a panic. She rushes over and the H is okay, but Gobble boy collapsed a wall on himself and is in hospital in big trouble. Then the h runs off again to have another ranty moment in her office. Her rantiness is now so intense that she is talking to herself, the H wanders in just as she is confessing her love out loud.
The H's sigh of relief is immense. He has been having obsessive dreams about the h too and from the first time he saw her he was a goner. In fact he deliberately put himself in the h's path to make her run into him the first time they met, but he was at his wit's end cause she wrote a very polite thank you note for the best lurve mojo expression of his life.
It is all okay now tho, cause they are both mad about each other and can afford the local property values. So they buy a big estate house and still have enough left over to add a shower in keeping with the house's time period to the properly historically restored bathroom for a truly sparkling PJ HP HEA.
The h is in her late twenties and works as an estate agent in her father's business. She is pretty independent and career oriented, or so she says, but really she just has high PJ sensitive h standards, so no one who lives locally is going to meet them.
Especially since the only local guy who seems interested in the h is the husband of the h's father's fiancee's niece,(it is a very small community,) - and he is a slime gobbling blobfish pustule who thinks women are only good for one thing and maybe making pot roast. But the h is okay with that as long as Gobble Boy leaves her alone.
She has friends, memberships on several local committees about keeping the historic buildings historic and likes to help find ways to channel the local teenager's energy as they seem to want to run wild on the village green and the village elderly people and London weekenders don't like that.
The h has a cat named William too, she claims he only hangs around for the foodz, but we don't get William's POV on that and he seems to like her pettings. (I was kinda upset with no William page time, he only gets a few lines and so I had to downgrade accordingly.)
The h is also a lady who spends a great deal of time either day dreaming or fretting over her little social gaffes that she thinks everyone notices and for some reason she also has a LOT of inner tirades over ruining historical buildings. But as we shall soon see, this h uses ranty inner anger moments to hide her fear of unfamiliar or emotionally uncomfortable situations.
(Theoretically the h focusing on ranty moments about the buildings being renovated into something modern and not appealing is a release for her deep seated unease and powerlessness against Gobble Boy- he is the main contractor who messes the buildings up.)
So the book starts with the h having a ranty moment about a lovely Georgian building being ruined when the h sees Gobble Boy and his crew at work on it. Gobble Boy makes a lewd comment, so the h hurries herself off and runs smack into the middle of the H. Unbeknownst to the h, the H she has almost mowed down is the owner of the Georgian building and is intending to move his computer software business to it and get out of London. He is actually restoring the building tho and not modernizing.
As the h seems very flustered, the H asks her what is wrong and the h goes into a huge long winded spiel about new buyers not preserving historic buildings to hide her inner panic over Gobble Boy. The H tries to get a word in edgewise, but the h rushes off back to the estate agency to have a heated day dream about the man she just collided with.
Then her father tells her that a client who recently bought property through them will be attending a local tennis club dinner with the h, her dad and dad's nice fiancee. Guess who shows up for dinner? Yep, it is the H and now the h has to have increased inner ranty moments, cause she thinks the H knows she is totally day dreaming about him. When the H asks her to dance, the h has to give ANOTHER lecture on keeping historic buildings historic and then runs off when she feels really melty and trembly all over.
She runs to the conservatory, where Gobble Boy is waiting to trap her and there are angry words exchanged, but the h really needs to carry a big skillet cause it is clear Gobble Boy is intent on gobbling the h up. The h manages an escape before she is helplessly ravaged and tied to the railroad tracks, but the H offers to be her steady fake date to keep Gobble Boy away.
The h declares herself non interested, but really she is obsessing over the H all the time, she is so far gone that she has explicit dreams too. Even tho outwardly she is snappy at him when he comes to the historic preservation meetings and every gossip in the tiny market town has them paired off. Right away her BFF is planning the wedding in a very familiar PJ kinda way, and we haven't even had an official H and h alone moment yet, except for one roofie kiss in the hall at the tennis club.
Not to worry tho, we get the sneaky H maneuvered dinner date right after the BFF calls. Then the h has to inner fret over losing her independent career mojo too. (This h does a lot of fretting, which was probably what kept her so fashionably thin, but it got a teensy bit wearying by the end.)
The H also fired Gobble Boy and Gobble Boy has vowed revenge. There is a series of escalating sabotage events, but no proof as to who is doing it. The h frets about this too, because Gobble Boy is known to be vindictive. Eventually the h's treacherous inner meltiness overcomes her inner ranty historical building aestheticism and the H and h have a revocation of h unicorn petting rights moment after the h has a verbal mini meltdown over his irresitableness.
(Technically the h had an extremely painful ten second holiday encounter with a guy, but for all intents and purposes, the h is a mental virgin.) It is fabulous, but the h only leaves a polite thank you note when she sneaks out the next morning.
Then she has another little inner ranty moment cause she loves the H and he didn't say he loves her back - not that she said anything either, not even in the very polite thank you note closing did the h even hint that she is overwhelmingly lost on the deep seas of endless love for the H.
So we really can't take him to task for his lack of using the love word, the H practically said everything but love and the h was too busy having inner ranties to notice how he follows her around and hangs on every word in adoring puppy fashion and pretty much does everything but stand on his head to declare his devotion.
(It does seem like this h has a lot of ranty moments, but really it is the PJ way of showing off the H's manly male competency in caring for the h. He is very interested in keeping buildings historic too and he gets the teenagers learning computer skillz and software writing, so that they can write apps for that and make millions to be able to afford local property values after all the London weekenders finish driving property values up. )
Then the big crisis comes! Gobble Boy tries to destroy a wall and hurt the H on his Georgian building restoration and the h is in a panic. She rushes over and the H is okay, but Gobble boy collapsed a wall on himself and is in hospital in big trouble. Then the h runs off again to have another ranty moment in her office. Her rantiness is now so intense that she is talking to herself, the H wanders in just as she is confessing her love out loud.
The H's sigh of relief is immense. He has been having obsessive dreams about the h too and from the first time he saw her he was a goner. In fact he deliberately put himself in the h's path to make her run into him the first time they met, but he was at his wit's end cause she wrote a very polite thank you note for the best lurve mojo expression of his life.
It is all okay now tho, cause they are both mad about each other and can afford the local property values. So they buy a big estate house and still have enough left over to add a shower in keeping with the house's time period to the properly historically restored bathroom for a truly sparkling PJ HP HEA.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 20, 2018
Maybe the reason the female protagonist repeatedly bemoans the fact that she is "acting" like a child throughout the entire story is simply because she "has" the mental development of a child. Except that it would be an insult to children to liken them to this annoying, wishy-washy, insecure blobfish.
As for the hero, he is not even something real, just a figment of a wet dream, which the heroine kept having about him EVERY SINGLE NIGHT in ewwww-worthy, graphic detail. And then she goes to buy a book on the interpretation of dreams so she can find an explanation why she keeps having sexual dreams over this living, breathing Adoni...*face palm* So yeah, blobfish with a jello cup for a brain ROFL!
As for the hero, he is not even something real, just a figment of a wet dream, which the heroine kept having about him EVERY SINGLE NIGHT in ewwww-worthy, graphic detail. And then she goes to buy a book on the interpretation of dreams so she can find an explanation why she keeps having sexual dreams over this living, breathing Adoni...*face palm* So yeah, blobfish with a jello cup for a brain ROFL!
September 5, 2012
The book was boring. There can't be much else said for it. It was okay to read if you had nothing else to read or it was a rainy day but other than that I disliked it. I tried giving it two stars because it's a Penny Jordan novel but I don't necessarily believe that the book is more than one star, one and a half if we are stretching it.
May 19, 2020
Disappointing as there was little interaction to justify the intense awareness and attraction.
September 11, 2023
I ended up mostly skimming. Very PJ posh village romance with the h, Miranda, an estate agent (a very 80s PJ job, complete with lavishly described awful 80s suits and Charles Jourdain court shoes- presumably she was after freebies or on commission). The H, Ben, is a fairly blameless alpha software magnate relocating his business to the area. She's always been about the career and anti love n babies (unsurprisingly, given the ghastly limited pool of talent she's swimming in) and fights her immediate passionate attraction by behaving like a petulant child. Most of the book is her protesting too much and having night after night of exhaustingly erotic dreams about the H. It was all a bit overwrought and daft.
December 26, 2020
3 stars
February 11, 2014
This one tells the story of Miranda (a career driven estate agent) and Ben Frobisher (owner of a software development company) and really clearly illustrates just why Jordan was such a woman of her times. It’s the early 90s and the streets of Miranda’s lovely little country town are being ruined by them-Londoners moving in and buying up property as it falls into the commuter belt. Just as Miranda is getting all up in arms about “what is happening to her lovely little town” she falls (literally) into the arms of Ben Frobisher (one of them-Londoners who is ruining her lovely little town). It’s a Mills and Boon, so, of course, she decides she hates him – although her subconscious is telling her otherwise by making her have very erotic dreams about him.
Miranda is one of those career driven professional types who is so busy and bustling around and if she’s not at work, she’s meddling on some committee or other and Ben’s a bit wishy-washy. Jordan has included lots of material about women “having it all” – career, children, the lot – this was a big thing in the 90s and she was clearly tapping in once again to the period she was writing from. Perhaps because of this, there’s an interesting gender shift for a Jordan novel – in this one, the female lead catches the male lead in the shower naked (not the other way round, as is usual) and she’s the one who charges off after him when she believes he has been hurt too (as opposed to the hero rescuing her). It doesn’t really work – Miranda is the sort of woman I personally would cross the street to avoid and she only starts to get better when her desire for Ben start to make her lose her self-control and she gets a little bit more human. The “lovely little town” sounds like the sort of place that has a high rate of suicide, there’s that many meddling, nosy neighbours there and it’s hard to get excited about a romance between an estate agent and a software engineer. In truth, it’s a bit of a turn off just thinking about it. As a result, the sex scenes are a bit icky and then when Miranda finally starts to improve (and might consider stepping down from one or two committees), she decides that Ben doesn’t love her and therefore leaves him a note after their night of passion, dismissing him from her life. Why? Why? Why do these heroines always cut their noses off to spite their faces?
Of course, by page 181 they are revealing their mutual love for each other. “...you didn’t say anything. Didn’t tell me,” Miranda complains of Ben’s lack of pillow talk/love confessions. What does she expect? It’s a Mills and Boon – the heroes are notoriously speechless tending to only repeat the heroines’ name over and over at moments of heated action.
Other things I found wrong with this – (1) the cover art – the characters just look odd. Okay, it’s not as bad as that one where the heroine looked like she had glandular fever and the hero was sporting a mullet, but it’s bad enough. (2) I had an RE teacher named Mr Frobisher – put me off a bit, I’ve got to say. There’s a lovely line in the book where Ben invites Miranda in to help him understand all that “untranslateable estate agent jargon...” I can help you out there – “in a prime location” = next to a railway line and a motorway; “fixer upper” = it’s a dump; “single bedroom” = a cupboard; “externally maintained amenity planting” = you’ll end up paying the Council two grand a year to push a lawn mower over it. Never trust estate agents, Ben, never...
Miranda is one of those career driven professional types who is so busy and bustling around and if she’s not at work, she’s meddling on some committee or other and Ben’s a bit wishy-washy. Jordan has included lots of material about women “having it all” – career, children, the lot – this was a big thing in the 90s and she was clearly tapping in once again to the period she was writing from. Perhaps because of this, there’s an interesting gender shift for a Jordan novel – in this one, the female lead catches the male lead in the shower naked (not the other way round, as is usual) and she’s the one who charges off after him when she believes he has been hurt too (as opposed to the hero rescuing her). It doesn’t really work – Miranda is the sort of woman I personally would cross the street to avoid and she only starts to get better when her desire for Ben start to make her lose her self-control and she gets a little bit more human. The “lovely little town” sounds like the sort of place that has a high rate of suicide, there’s that many meddling, nosy neighbours there and it’s hard to get excited about a romance between an estate agent and a software engineer. In truth, it’s a bit of a turn off just thinking about it. As a result, the sex scenes are a bit icky and then when Miranda finally starts to improve (and might consider stepping down from one or two committees), she decides that Ben doesn’t love her and therefore leaves him a note after their night of passion, dismissing him from her life. Why? Why? Why do these heroines always cut their noses off to spite their faces?
Of course, by page 181 they are revealing their mutual love for each other. “...you didn’t say anything. Didn’t tell me,” Miranda complains of Ben’s lack of pillow talk/love confessions. What does she expect? It’s a Mills and Boon – the heroes are notoriously speechless tending to only repeat the heroines’ name over and over at moments of heated action.
Other things I found wrong with this – (1) the cover art – the characters just look odd. Okay, it’s not as bad as that one where the heroine looked like she had glandular fever and the hero was sporting a mullet, but it’s bad enough. (2) I had an RE teacher named Mr Frobisher – put me off a bit, I’ve got to say. There’s a lovely line in the book where Ben invites Miranda in to help him understand all that “untranslateable estate agent jargon...” I can help you out there – “in a prime location” = next to a railway line and a motorway; “fixer upper” = it’s a dump; “single bedroom” = a cupboard; “externally maintained amenity planting” = you’ll end up paying the Council two grand a year to push a lawn mower over it. Never trust estate agents, Ben, never...
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