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Terms of Surrender
THE GAMBLER
The roguishly handsome Welshman Rhys Davies owned half of Starlight, Colorado, within weeks of riding into town. But there was one "property" he would give all the rest to possess.
THE LADY
Victoria Lawton, the glacially beautiful daughter of Starlight’s first family, detested Rhys’s flamboyant arrogance. But worse yet, she was shocked by her own most unladylike response to his compelling masculinity.
THE TERMS
To win the lady, the gambler would wager his heart, risk his life…and hope that the devil did indeed take care of his own.
The roguishly handsome Welshman Rhys Davies owned half of Starlight, Colorado, within weeks of riding into town. But there was one "property" he would give all the rest to possess.
THE LADY
Victoria Lawton, the glacially beautiful daughter of Starlight’s first family, detested Rhys’s flamboyant arrogance. But worse yet, she was shocked by her own most unladylike response to his compelling masculinity.
THE TERMS
To win the lady, the gambler would wager his heart, risk his life…and hope that the devil did indeed take care of his own.
448 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 1, 1993
3 people are currently reading
100 people want to read
About the author
Shirl Henke
63 books77 followersaka Alexa Hunt.
Working my way through college provided great life experiences for a novelist. One problem. I didn’t know I was destined to write books. Instead, I floundered around during and after receiving my B.A. and M.A. in history from the University of Missouri. None of my wide variety of jobs satisfied me: cashier for a loan company, public welfare caseworker, assistant circulation manager for a small daily, editor for several “house organ” newspapers, administrator of a federal information program for the elderly.
Finally I was offered the opportunity to use my history degrees, teaching in a large urban university in the Northeast. I truly enjoyed it. Unfortunately, when the history requirement was dropped for incoming students, so was my instructorship. After that I taught gerontology, sociology, proposal writing for social service agencies and freshman composition at the same university. Further life experiences. My last two years of teaching were in remedial English—just the nudge I needed to take this writing thing seriously.
Since childhood I’ve been an avid reader, everything from Robert Heinlein’s sci-fi adventures to Frank Yerby’s historical romantic sagas. More recently I became hooked on thrillers. Since childhood I had story ideas in my head, but never the epiphany to write them. Okay, maybe I just didn’t have the courage. But there were just so many times I could explain what a verb was to a college senior before I realized that maybe writing a book might be easier. I sold my first novel, a big historical romance titled GOLDEN LADY, to Warner Books in 1985. Within two years, I quit remedial comp. Now I can't imagine doing anything but writing for a living. In 2005 I switched over to the “dark side.” Tor published two political thrillers, CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY and HOMELAND SECURITY under the pseudonym Alexa Hunt. I’ve also written romantic suspense for Penguin Onyx and Silhouette Bombshell as Shirl Henke. Since I began my career, I’ve appeared on the USA TODAY bestseller list, been a RITA Finalist twice, received a BookraK Bestseller Award, and won three Career Achievement Awards, an Industry Award and three Reviewers Choice Awards from Romantic Times.
My husband Jim Henke is a former cabdriver, bartender, sailor, judo instructor and English professor. He's a scholarly authority on obscene slang and a master at its use, but an astonishingly understanding man who puts up with my all-night writing sprees and sudden dashes to my desk to jot down bits of dialogue as dinner burns on the stove. Since he took early retirement from academe, he has helped me brainstorm plots and research my novels.
After four years in the U.S. Air Force, our son Matt works in telecommunications and lives in an adjacent county with his brute of a cat, Max. Jim and I now share our cedar house in the woods with a pair of utterly adorable tomcats, Inky and Pewter, whose destructive capacity rivals that of a medium sized thermonuclear weapon. But just as life without writing would be unimaginable, so would life without cats.
For therapy when I'm not at the computer or off researching a new book, I cook large dinners for our extended family, putter in my garden and greenhouse, and still read voraciously. When deadlines permit, I love to travel. I'm a member of the Author's Guild, Romance Writers of America, Missouri Romance Writers, Sisters in Crime, Novelists Inc. and International Thriller Writers
I wrote my first twenty-two novels in longhand with a ball-point pen--it's hard to get good quills these days. Dragged into the 21st century, I now use one of those "devil machines. Another troglodyte bites the dust
Working my way through college provided great life experiences for a novelist. One problem. I didn’t know I was destined to write books. Instead, I floundered around during and after receiving my B.A. and M.A. in history from the University of Missouri. None of my wide variety of jobs satisfied me: cashier for a loan company, public welfare caseworker, assistant circulation manager for a small daily, editor for several “house organ” newspapers, administrator of a federal information program for the elderly.
Finally I was offered the opportunity to use my history degrees, teaching in a large urban university in the Northeast. I truly enjoyed it. Unfortunately, when the history requirement was dropped for incoming students, so was my instructorship. After that I taught gerontology, sociology, proposal writing for social service agencies and freshman composition at the same university. Further life experiences. My last two years of teaching were in remedial English—just the nudge I needed to take this writing thing seriously.
Since childhood I’ve been an avid reader, everything from Robert Heinlein’s sci-fi adventures to Frank Yerby’s historical romantic sagas. More recently I became hooked on thrillers. Since childhood I had story ideas in my head, but never the epiphany to write them. Okay, maybe I just didn’t have the courage. But there were just so many times I could explain what a verb was to a college senior before I realized that maybe writing a book might be easier. I sold my first novel, a big historical romance titled GOLDEN LADY, to Warner Books in 1985. Within two years, I quit remedial comp. Now I can't imagine doing anything but writing for a living. In 2005 I switched over to the “dark side.” Tor published two political thrillers, CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY and HOMELAND SECURITY under the pseudonym Alexa Hunt. I’ve also written romantic suspense for Penguin Onyx and Silhouette Bombshell as Shirl Henke. Since I began my career, I’ve appeared on the USA TODAY bestseller list, been a RITA Finalist twice, received a BookraK Bestseller Award, and won three Career Achievement Awards, an Industry Award and three Reviewers Choice Awards from Romantic Times.
My husband Jim Henke is a former cabdriver, bartender, sailor, judo instructor and English professor. He's a scholarly authority on obscene slang and a master at its use, but an astonishingly understanding man who puts up with my all-night writing sprees and sudden dashes to my desk to jot down bits of dialogue as dinner burns on the stove. Since he took early retirement from academe, he has helped me brainstorm plots and research my novels.
After four years in the U.S. Air Force, our son Matt works in telecommunications and lives in an adjacent county with his brute of a cat, Max. Jim and I now share our cedar house in the woods with a pair of utterly adorable tomcats, Inky and Pewter, whose destructive capacity rivals that of a medium sized thermonuclear weapon. But just as life without writing would be unimaginable, so would life without cats.
For therapy when I'm not at the computer or off researching a new book, I cook large dinners for our extended family, putter in my garden and greenhouse, and still read voraciously. When deadlines permit, I love to travel. I'm a member of the Author's Guild, Romance Writers of America, Missouri Romance Writers, Sisters in Crime, Novelists Inc. and International Thriller Writers
I wrote my first twenty-two novels in longhand with a ball-point pen--it's hard to get good quills these days. Dragged into the 21st century, I now use one of those "devil machines. Another troglodyte bites the dust
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 13, 2023
I merely want to leave my review here in case it's helpful to someone. This is a new author for me & I DNF. However, I'm positive that in this instance I’m the problem. Honestly, this is not a poor book. I enjoy the trope, but just not so much of the execution. I do think someone else, without my shared likes & preferences, would indeed find enjoyment of the novel. With that in mind, I think three stars seems like a reasonable rating.
To get into the plot, we have an infatuated hero & his lady love—the proud heroine who would love to hate him but can’t help to melt at his mere touches. MCs are both fine in their own right, but neither struck me as particularly appealing. Their chemistry seemed flat & their first kiss wasn’t all that. It was so random, I thought. Perhaps, the kiss didn’t appeal much to them either because we soon forget about it. I fail to connect with these two…
Now, I anticipated the hero to be a hard guy in nature, given his difficult early years & rough background, but oddly he wasn’t. Instead he was a softy, with chatterbox tendencies, too. He was very open about his love life to an older lady he barely know. But, I guess, the old lady was giving off motherly vibes so hero got comfortable confiding in her? He was then very much like a mommy’s boy, eh?
Next, the 3rd person POV was well-written but there was something distracting about it? Simply, there was too many characters to the point of losing track of who was who. And so on, simply, not for me.
To get into the plot, we have an infatuated hero & his lady love—the proud heroine who would love to hate him but can’t help to melt at his mere touches. MCs are both fine in their own right, but neither struck me as particularly appealing. Their chemistry seemed flat & their first kiss wasn’t all that. It was so random, I thought. Perhaps, the kiss didn’t appeal much to them either because we soon forget about it. I fail to connect with these two…
Now, I anticipated the hero to be a hard guy in nature, given his difficult early years & rough background, but oddly he wasn’t. Instead he was a softy, with chatterbox tendencies, too. He was very open about his love life to an older lady he barely know. But, I guess, the old lady was giving off motherly vibes so hero got comfortable confiding in her? He was then very much like a mommy’s boy, eh?
Next, the 3rd person POV was well-written but there was something distracting about it? Simply, there was too many characters to the point of losing track of who was who. And so on, simply, not for me.
January 15, 2026
This book is overloaded with tedious drama and severely lacking in romance.
The hero is supposedly smitten with the heroine, and through a series of convenient circumstances, he ends up marrying her. Unfortunately, her lack of interest in him is completely understandable. He owns a brothel—for God’s sake—and actually lives there. He won it through gambling, which is fitting since he’s portrayed as a compulsive gambler throughout the story.
Predictably, the plot is driven by endless misunderstandings. The heroine is already apprehensive and distrustful, so when things finally fall apart and the hero leaves her, what does he do? He immediately goes back to the brothel, moves in with his mistress, and resumes a physical relationship with her. That was the final straw. I already disliked the hero, but this cemented him as one of the worst heroes I’ve read.
Also, the way he calls the mistress “love”—and even uses it with the heroine—is off-putting. He even does it in front of the heroine. Maybe it’s just an endearment he uses for all women, but it’s incredibly annoying.
Overall, it’s a dull, drama-filled book with no chemistry, no passion, and a hero who is impossible to root for.
The hero is supposedly smitten with the heroine, and through a series of convenient circumstances, he ends up marrying her. Unfortunately, her lack of interest in him is completely understandable. He owns a brothel—for God’s sake—and actually lives there. He won it through gambling, which is fitting since he’s portrayed as a compulsive gambler throughout the story.
Predictably, the plot is driven by endless misunderstandings. The heroine is already apprehensive and distrustful, so when things finally fall apart and the hero leaves her, what does he do? He immediately goes back to the brothel, moves in with his mistress, and resumes a physical relationship with her. That was the final straw. I already disliked the hero, but this cemented him as one of the worst heroes I’ve read.
Also, the way he calls the mistress “love”—and even uses it with the heroine—is off-putting. He even does it in front of the heroine. Maybe it’s just an endearment he uses for all women, but it’s incredibly annoying.
Overall, it’s a dull, drama-filled book with no chemistry, no passion, and a hero who is impossible to root for.
April 19, 2020
I really liked this one, mostly for how much the hero loved the heroine. Oh, he still acted like an ass, but she was no prize either. Still, when he fell in love it was forever.
August 22, 2015
Ok
Wolf pelts and fur coats. . Not for an animal lover.
Just because it was norm back then doesn't make it right
Wolf pelts and fur coats. . Not for an animal lover.
Just because it was norm back then doesn't make it right
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews