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Bare Essentials #2
Naughty But Nice
Cassie Tremaine Montgomery: The stunning lingerie model with a tough-as-nails attitude and a sheriff in her sights.
Sean "Tag" Taggart: The sexy-as-sin sheriff who is more than willing to play Cassie's game...his way.
Cassie intends to use all the seductive powers she has to entice Tag as part of her revenger on her hometown. Tag, however, isn't cooperating. he's more than willing to set the sheets on fire with her, But he's asking for more than just sizzling sex.... He knows she's not as tough as she pretends. And he knows she cares about him--even if she won't admit it. That's fine. He'll just turn up the heat until she concedes there's more between them than this red-hot passion.
Sean "Tag" Taggart: The sexy-as-sin sheriff who is more than willing to play Cassie's game...his way.
Cassie intends to use all the seductive powers she has to entice Tag as part of her revenger on her hometown. Tag, however, isn't cooperating. he's more than willing to set the sheets on fire with her, But he's asking for more than just sizzling sex.... He knows she's not as tough as she pretends. And he knows she cares about him--even if she won't admit it. That's fine. He'll just turn up the heat until she concedes there's more between them than this red-hot passion.
256 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published November 1, 2002
21 people are currently reading
526 people want to read
About the author
Jill Shalvis
388 books13.8k followersJill Shalvis is a NYT, USA Today, and Amazon Top 100 bestselling author of small-town romance and romcoms, known for big feels, found family, and plenty of shenanigans.
If you love small-town chaos, meddling friends and neighbors, sizzling chemistry, and heroes who fall hard for the one woman they absolutely did not plan on, you’re in the right place. Jill’s books blend laugh-out-loud moments with emotional gut punches, slow-burn tension, and deeply earned happily ever afters.
She writes the stories she loves to read: small-town romance and romantic comedies packed with heart, heat, second chances, grumpy/sunshine sparks, and the kind of found-family vibes that make you want to move right into the pages. Many of her series are perfect for binge-reading, and a number of her books are available in Kindle Unlimited and at major retailers.
When she’s not writing, she’s probably plotting new ways to torture her characters, avoiding laundry, or daydreaming about fictional men and the strong, complicated women who bring them to their knees—and then making them work for it.
You can follow Jill here on Goodreads to keep up with new releases, add her books to your shelves, and discover which small town you want to get lost in next.
If you love small-town chaos, meddling friends and neighbors, sizzling chemistry, and heroes who fall hard for the one woman they absolutely did not plan on, you’re in the right place. Jill’s books blend laugh-out-loud moments with emotional gut punches, slow-burn tension, and deeply earned happily ever afters.
She writes the stories she loves to read: small-town romance and romantic comedies packed with heart, heat, second chances, grumpy/sunshine sparks, and the kind of found-family vibes that make you want to move right into the pages. Many of her series are perfect for binge-reading, and a number of her books are available in Kindle Unlimited and at major retailers.
When she’s not writing, she’s probably plotting new ways to torture her characters, avoiding laundry, or daydreaming about fictional men and the strong, complicated women who bring them to their knees—and then making them work for it.
You can follow Jill here on Goodreads to keep up with new releases, add her books to your shelves, and discover which small town you want to get lost in next.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
August 28, 2014
Two-haiku review:
She has a stalker
He's sheriff, wants to protect
She doesn't like him
Common plot well done
I enjoy books with this theme
Well drawn characters
She has a stalker
He's sheriff, wants to protect
She doesn't like him
Common plot well done
I enjoy books with this theme
Well drawn characters
May 22, 2011
Shortly after her high school graduation ten years ago, Cassie Tremaine Montgomery kicked off the provincial dirt of Pleasantville, OH and headed to NYC to be someone. She had been considered a wild child, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, the daughter of the town wanton. All she wanted was to escape poverty and keep her heart safe from the sort of betrayal and hurt she suffered at the hands of the town, and most notably the town sheriff. In the ten years since, she became a wildly successful lingerie model, earned wealth and fame, and had built an impenetrable shield around herself, keeping her vulnerabilities and insecurities safe behind a mask of urbane sophistication. Until a stalker shook her to her foundations and sent her fleeing to Pleasantville for safety, and maybe just a little revenge on a town that had turned its nose up at her all those years ago.
Sheriff Sean 'Tag' Taggart is through with high maintenance women, and at thirty-two, is looking towards his future with a comfortable wife who will be a partner and helpmate to him. When the calls start coming in about one Cassie Montgomery being back in town and stirring up trouble, he does what any self respecting law man would do, gives her a ticket and denies the instant, sizzling attraction. He recognizes that the prickly, obstinate woman is the exact opposite of his fantasy woman. A few years older and several classes ahead of her in school, he never paid much attention to the rumors about her being wild, but he could easily see the trouble in her eyes now. Still, something about the tense flash of pain when she sees him in uniform draws him closer, and soon he realizes that her chilly response to him and her brash exterior hides a deep well of old wounds and a soft heart.
She's resistant to anything but a good time, he's intent on forever, but no amount of incendiary chemistry will be able to save them when their past slams into them and strips away all the masks, walls, and preconceptions.
What a great Blaze! It offered up quite a bit more story than I expected. Yes, the sex is smoking hot, and the characters are sizzling together, but in traditional Jill Shalvis style, there's also a surprising amount of depth and a wealth development given to the characters to flesh them out nicely and provide some decent pathos.
Tag wasn't as complicated or messed up as Cassie, true, but I favor romance in which the male lead is the one looking for forever and the woman is the one that's cagey about settling down, and his issues with his father - while perhaps glossed over and underdeveloped - provided a few nice layers to his character. He wasn't perfect, thankfully, and there were a few times he acted like a jerk, which kept him human, certainly, but he was a generally decent guy and I liked how clearly he saw through Cassie to the special woman beneath the glamor.
Cassie, on the other hand, was truly a flawed character with no small amount of bitterness over a past that wasn't as unkind to her as she remembers. She drags her past around with her, memories of poverty and ridicule are painfully fresh, and she wears the heavy yolk of her mother's indiscretions like an ermine stole. As a result, she has built up a 'shoot first, ask questions never' sort of personality, so much so that the concept of simple friendship is utterly foreign to her. Normally that would make a character pretty unlikable for me, yet there was something about Cassie's genuine confusion and sort of adorable befuddlement over the smallest kindnesses that was appealing and tugged at my heart.
Tag's attempts to connect with the heart of the woman provided a lot of nice conflict as they both evolved and their life goals slowly changed to make room for each other. Of course, they had plenty of smoking hot sex during the process, but it's a Blaze - I'd be disappointed if they didn't.
My only real issues with the book were an abrupt and rather pedestrian epiphany that Cassie has after a single conversation with her mother and the underdeveloped and unnecessary stalker plot thread. It was superfluous and served as more of a predictable and boring distraction than an interesting companion to the romance. The book could have thrived just as well with Cassie's issues had Tag's character been given a little more internal strife or the thread with his father been expanded.
Regardless, this was a totally likable book that offered more depth in both the characters and the story than I've seen in other Harlequin Blazes. It was a surprisingly satisfying, if less complex read by one of my preferred authors for light, humorous contemporary romances.
~*~*~*~
Reviewed for One Good Book Deserves Another.
Sheriff Sean 'Tag' Taggart is through with high maintenance women, and at thirty-two, is looking towards his future with a comfortable wife who will be a partner and helpmate to him. When the calls start coming in about one Cassie Montgomery being back in town and stirring up trouble, he does what any self respecting law man would do, gives her a ticket and denies the instant, sizzling attraction. He recognizes that the prickly, obstinate woman is the exact opposite of his fantasy woman. A few years older and several classes ahead of her in school, he never paid much attention to the rumors about her being wild, but he could easily see the trouble in her eyes now. Still, something about the tense flash of pain when she sees him in uniform draws him closer, and soon he realizes that her chilly response to him and her brash exterior hides a deep well of old wounds and a soft heart.
She's resistant to anything but a good time, he's intent on forever, but no amount of incendiary chemistry will be able to save them when their past slams into them and strips away all the masks, walls, and preconceptions.
What a great Blaze! It offered up quite a bit more story than I expected. Yes, the sex is smoking hot, and the characters are sizzling together, but in traditional Jill Shalvis style, there's also a surprising amount of depth and a wealth development given to the characters to flesh them out nicely and provide some decent pathos.
Tag wasn't as complicated or messed up as Cassie, true, but I favor romance in which the male lead is the one looking for forever and the woman is the one that's cagey about settling down, and his issues with his father - while perhaps glossed over and underdeveloped - provided a few nice layers to his character. He wasn't perfect, thankfully, and there were a few times he acted like a jerk, which kept him human, certainly, but he was a generally decent guy and I liked how clearly he saw through Cassie to the special woman beneath the glamor.
Cassie, on the other hand, was truly a flawed character with no small amount of bitterness over a past that wasn't as unkind to her as she remembers. She drags her past around with her, memories of poverty and ridicule are painfully fresh, and she wears the heavy yolk of her mother's indiscretions like an ermine stole. As a result, she has built up a 'shoot first, ask questions never' sort of personality, so much so that the concept of simple friendship is utterly foreign to her. Normally that would make a character pretty unlikable for me, yet there was something about Cassie's genuine confusion and sort of adorable befuddlement over the smallest kindnesses that was appealing and tugged at my heart.
Tag's attempts to connect with the heart of the woman provided a lot of nice conflict as they both evolved and their life goals slowly changed to make room for each other. Of course, they had plenty of smoking hot sex during the process, but it's a Blaze - I'd be disappointed if they didn't.
My only real issues with the book were an abrupt and rather pedestrian epiphany that Cassie has after a single conversation with her mother and the underdeveloped and unnecessary stalker plot thread. It was superfluous and served as more of a predictable and boring distraction than an interesting companion to the romance. The book could have thrived just as well with Cassie's issues had Tag's character been given a little more internal strife or the thread with his father been expanded.
Regardless, this was a totally likable book that offered more depth in both the characters and the story than I've seen in other Harlequin Blazes. It was a surprisingly satisfying, if less complex read by one of my preferred authors for light, humorous contemporary romances.
~*~*~*~
Reviewed for One Good Book Deserves Another.
November 4, 2010
Meh. High two low three. Nothing terrible about this. Just nothing really good either. A world famous lingerie model goes back to her small town roots to prove to them all that she's better than they are and to escape a dangerous stalker. She goes back to the town where she has a bad reputation and her mother was the town's favorite mattress topper and falls instantly in love/lust with the son of the sheriff who destroyed her trust in all men forever. Yeah, just saying it out loud drops it into the mid two's right there. Did I mention that the way the supermodel cleans up her image is to open an 'adult' gift store on main street? (That rating is dropping all the time - it's a good thing there were a couple of good sex scenes or this may have been a one for me.)
July 19, 2014
So, another one of Shalvis' books. It's not so much funny as extremely spicy. Wow. But, the relationship was rather refreshing. Small town girl who grew up under a cloud, then escaped, returns and finds everything is different from how she remembers. Not in substance, but in understanding and interpretation. And her Sheriff love interest is normal and (mostly) patient with her as she finds her way to being capable of a loving relationship. Of course, there is a lot of sex along the way. As I said, Wow.
September 8, 2009
When Cassie left her smallville town 10 years ago, she wrote her revenge list for a town that had mistreated her: drive a bright yellow sports car around down town, and get one on the sheriff. And the new sheriff in town happens to be the son of the one who had humiliated her many years ago. With a past like that, spark are bound to fly. But the sheriff is no where close to the person his father once was.
March 29, 2011
2.5
This books was okay, but hardly the writing or plotting I expect from Jill Shalvis. This must be an early example of her work.
This books was okay, but hardly the writing or plotting I expect from Jill Shalvis. This must be an early example of her work.
January 21, 2013
This was one of those books that far exceeds the plot summary. I can't say the plot was unique but Jill Shalvis worked her magic, made you care about the characters, and made this a delight to read.
June 29, 2017
4.25 stars
June 5, 2018
I didn't care for Cassie, she seemed very self absorbed for most of the story, but she did get better. The Sheriff's words didn't always match his actions.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 13, 2019
Really steamy. Decent girl-comes-home-and-makes-good story.
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April 16, 2011
I will give 3 stars to this one, ONLY because I felt that the wrist cutting attitude of Cassie did not convince in a proper way. Yes I understood her disappointment on "trusting" Tag's father, but i believe there was more there in the plot that was never told. It's good, but I still liked the other Bare Essentials better. Somebody needs to write the stories of all those ladies from Pleseantville, OH ...Cassie's and Kate's friends.....i believe all combines would be a great add to the Bare Essentials series.
October 28, 2016
I'm always pleasantly surprised when I find some of Jill Shalvis' old backlist available to read. Most of these older shorter stories are weaker then her more recent stories but I found this to be an exception. I completely got into these characters - Cassie coming back to her narrow-minded home town and Tag, the sexy sheriff who is pretty instantly attracted to her and sees past her bad girl bravado.
October 8, 2010
Für so ein kleines Heftchen eine wirklich nette Geschichte. Mein erster Roman von Jill Shalvis und ich werde wohl mehr von ihr lesen.
August 3, 2011
What would it be like to have a man on your side, forever?
January 6, 2013
3.5 stars
The whole "I can't be tied down to or lean on a man" thing got a little old after a while.
The whole "I can't be tied down to or lean on a man" thing got a little old after a while.
May 10, 2013
Loved this story. It was exciting and thrilling and so worth reading
January 11, 2014
liked it a lot. I love a good revenge of the way people treated you growing up kind of story
March 7, 2014
This was a fast, easy read. It was old school romance but not as annoying as most of them are. Because it's Jill and because it's funny. And the yummy man - not really stupid at all.
March 15, 2015
Read with Leslie Kelly's "Naturally Naughty"
December 27, 2015
Pretty good. I thought the pacing of the romance to be a bit uneven especially towards the end.
August 24, 2011
It was good!
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews