That's Richard Parker-Harris' outlook on life, so of course that's how he ends up -- broke and brokenhearted on his grandmother's doorstep in New York for the umpteenth time. This is getting to be a habit, a habit that Richard is determined to break.
Hopefully before Susan Cade, his stepsister Meredith's cousin, breaks his nose again. But it looks like history is about to repeat itself when Meredith invites Richard to Cicada Ranch, the horse farm she and Susan own in California, and he fails to recognize Susan.
The ugly duckling Richard remembers has turned into a swan, and she still has an uncanny knack for picking winners at the track. Richard needs money, but he wants Susan, more than he's ever wanted any woman.
Susan is hopelessly in love with him -- Richard the scoundrel, the wastrel, the real ugly duckling. For once Richard vows to do the right thing and get out of Susan's life.
My first book was published in 1984 when I was 12. Why are you laughing? Since then I've published 16 books and 2 novellas: two Regencies originally written as Jane Lynson, one paranormal romantic suspense as Paula Christopher and everything else as Lynn Michaels. My husband Michael warned me never to dedicate a book to him, so instead I stole his name for my pseudonym.
Michael and I have 2 grown sons and 1 grandson. We live in Harry Truman's hometown, Independence, Missouri.
I keep my copy of Lynn Michaels' "Second Sight" in my bedside table among my other favorite books and dip into it whenever I need a smile, or to read a good story and great characters all over again. I loved Richard from the first page of the book, despite all of his failings and his selfishness, and his slow transformation once he flies to California to be with his step-sister and her fiance, and with Susan Cade, the girl who'd been in the background of his life as a boy, never fails to satisfy. Susan is a wonderful character as well, and that's the thing about this book .... there isn't a character in it who doesn't come alive vividly in Michaels' story, from Richard's awful mother and grandmother to Devlin, the butler who loved him and raised him, and Meredith, Richard's step-sister, who is determined to keep their connection alive despite his mother's rejection of her and Richard's own standoffishness.
There is a lot of humor in this book, and many touching moments, and when Richard makes his choice in the end and faces down his mother and grandmother, I'm always laughing and cheering for him .... it's a funny scene, full of comic pratfalls, but at the same time it's a great scene where Richard makes his final step to become the man Susan and Meredith want him to be, and the man he wants to be himself.