Re Tempting Lucas - Catherine Spencer brings us a Typhoon of Tackiness with an h would could definitely be considered sloppy seconds to everything else in the H's life.
This one starts with our event planner and caterer h returning to her grandmother's home after an absence of ten years. When the h was 19 she took a risk and crawled into bed with the boy next door.
The two of them had grown up together and the H initiated things with a kiss when she was 15. The h went into paroxysms of love, as teen girls tend to do, and when the H returned home after becoming a doctor, the h and H had one night of love where unicorn grooming licenses were revoked for her. (Or just some sex, as the H dismisses it as.)
The H chucks her out of his bed as soon as realizes who the h is, then he introduces her to his Dr. fiancee a day or so later. The h had no clue he was engaged and is heartbroken and hurt, especially when she learns his fiancee was in the house on the night of her big seduction move. The H marries his ice queen Dr. fiancee and they go off to Africa.
Tho the H is haunted by the memories of his night of excessive passion with the h, cause his Ice Queen Dr. Wife thought lurve club events are too messy, the H regards the h as an immature tart with no morals whose siren-like boudoir moves have ruined him for 'his type' of woman.
Back with the h, she became pregnant and miscarried at 9 weeks and then married a rebound guy that ended when he left her for another woman. Now the rest of the h's family have guilted her into moving to California from Boston to care for her grandma and the H, whose Ice Queen Dr. Wife died during a plague in Africa has returned next door to devote his life to research and live with his grandma.
After a house fire at the h's grandmother's house forces them to move into the H's grandmother's house, the h finds herself falling in love with the broody slime pustule nematode all over again. Since the h has told the H about her pregnancy and her marriage breakup in the interim, the H makes it clear that the h is now shopworn tatty goods because of course it is all about him.
Basically he says the h never loved him and she was wrong not to tell him she was preggers, even tho he callously and harshly told her off and then married his fiance. Then he berates the h for getting divorced, berates her for running an event planning business and starting another one locally and flaunts another 'perfect' socialite OW in the h's face.
The same OW that has hired the h to do an event for her. The H and h have another night because this h is just TSTL to figure out that he just isn't that into her, while at the same time he won't say no to a pump and dump.
Tho CS tries hard to make us believe that the H's insults and tart and everything else shamming is the result of deeply buried positive feelings for the h, it doesn't really play out well when the H grabs her away from another guy she is thinking about being interested in and calls her a tart, again, but this time he accuses her of being a drunken tart too.
The h isn't drunk, she is seriously ill with hanta virus and if this weren't HPlandia and an attempt at romance, she would have been dead by the time the H got around to diagnosing it.
Anyhows, the h's near death experience supposedly rips the blinders off the H's eyes and he realizes that he loves the h and always has.
(It is debatable, this great love the H suddenly discovers. Mainly because this H DESPISES the h, he isn't angry with her, he literally believes she is pond scum because he is convinced that she is a Jezebel Delilah Harlot out to ruin him and he freely admits that his time in Africa has emotionally damaged him, probably beyond repair.)
Whatever, the H's sudden realization that he loves the h spurs his research to figure out what disease she has and CS does a pretty decent scene where the unshaven and crying H calls the h back from death while clutching her hand at her bedside - while she is on a ventilator.
The h miraculously is cured, accepts the H's marriage proposal right then and there and we can be happy the h is happy, cause she and the H marry and have a baby for the HEA.
I wasn't feelin' the love on this one, mainly because the H wasn't able to feel any. I think it finally kicked into his judgmental, contemptuous brain that his big passion is research and he did get his own research wing at the local hospital.
More importantly, I think he had a great time in bed with the h, could ignore her the rest of the time and his socialite OW would have demanded a lot more from him in terms of attention and time, so the h was the better option for long term neglect and for him to have some progeny.
The h was definitely willing to settle and the H had very little to give, so since CS chose to make all but the last few pages a bonanza of H repudiating the h moments and being tatty about it, this HEA is seriously suspect.
If you like to cringe every other page over a nematode scum gulper's beratement and repudiation of a nice but incredibly blind h, this is an HP Voyage worth a look at. HP reader's without cast iron stomachs for the huge Captain Consult needed to get through this might want to look elsewhere.