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Dark Victory
Flirting with danger
Cheska Rider thought that she'd fully recovered from her one-night stand with Lawson. She was wrong!
Lawson Giordano liked a woman who had her own thoughts, her own identity and ultimately the ability to make him jealous. In short, he liked the woman that Cheska had become.
Cheska had decided that the time was right to pay Lawson back for walking out on her. It would be interesting to see just how much provocation Lawson would take!
189 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published May 1, 1994
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 13, 2018
Re Dark Victory - Elizabeth Oldfield treats us to a second chance day at the HP office with this fourth addition to the Dangerous Liaisons series
Theoretically our Dangerous 26 yr old is going to use her Mata Hatari Fox Vixen wiles to get revenge on the half English/Italian film director H because she thinks he gave her a very memorable one night of Purple Passion Bliss five years earlier to get her in the appropriate mood for a racy exotic car commercial.
(By racy I mean the car was a fancy schmancy exotic breaking system sports car and the h looked like she was doing a bootleg turn in it. Which is fun to do as long as you don't accidentally hit a speed bump. Take note* speed bumps mess things up and people look at you funny and your significant other takes the car keys and won't let you do bootleg turns anymore.)
Unfortunately the h fell in love with the H during that Purple Passion Night of Bliss and he promised to call the next day - but he never did. So the h dumped her promising modeling career cause it bored her and went to work as a charity personal assistant in Thailand.
(The h had been manipulated into the car commercial by a wanna be OM and did not want to do it. But she felt bad for the OM's dad, who arranged it and grudgingly participated after dumping the wanna be OM and he swore revenge. )
The h figured the OM just found someone else to harass and only remembered that the H never called her and she thinks the H just loved her up to get that rosy Lurve Force Mojo afterglow on her face for the commercial.
The H was really, really neurotic about getting it perfect because he believed that the commercial was his big chance to be a big time film director- which it wasn't, but the H was neurotic about it anyway.
Five years on, things in Thailand went bad and the h ended up quitting cause her married and kinda weird middle aged boss fell in love with her and started harassing her. He even told her he asked his very nice wife with their three children for a divorce and the h freaked out and kicked him really hard and caught the first flight home.
The h also gave one of the Thai people she worked with all of her savings so he could buy a taxi and support his wife and gadzillion kids. So the h is now back in England, kinda poor and staying at her stepbrother's family home.
Her stepbrother is really nice and loves the h a lot and is at least 30 or so years older than her. His father and her mother were both widowed and they fell in love and got married and it was one big happy family until the parent's death.
The stepbrother is a famous butterfly explorer, he chases them and he writes books about them, but he isn't very practical about things and now he has to rent out the family manse because he needs an infusion of capital.
There is a busybody next door neighbor lady who has her eye on the stepbrother and she maneuvers the h into becoming the personal assistant of the director who has rented the manor for a period piece TV movie.
Of course the director is the H, he has graduated from commercials to Hollywood blockbusters and is now back in England because he is thinking about buying a manor house and starting a film school and making independent films.
The H and h meet again when she is out walking the estate woods and she sees the H and thinks he is casing the house to rob it. She falls in the pond and the H ends up carrying her to the house and there is all kinds of snarky banter and seething undercover Love Force Mojo brewing between them.
The H has a little freak out when she tells him that the guy he is renting the manor from is her brother, but he quickly calms down when she clarifies that he is her stepbrother. Soon the H and h are working together, cause he needs a PA and she needs a job, and it seems like both of them are mad at the other for their one night of Golden Transcendent Bliss and both of them want revenge.
After some midnight skinny dips and scary fox alerts, the H and h both allow Treacherous Body Syndrome to overcome their half baked grand plans o'vengeance and the two start another affair. They have conjoined Oast Houses while the manor is being used and they just go back and forth through the connecting door.
(Oast houses are where they used to dry hops to make English beer way back in the day, they look like little gnome houses and are really cute.)
We have some movie making moments and we learn that the h was kinda spoiled by her stepbrother because when her mother and stepfather died, the h was in backseat of the car and they died right in front of her. It was pretty horrible and the h was freaked out for a while. Then she thought she was getting too snooty, so she went to learn humility in Thailand.
The H actually wants to buy the stepbrother's house and land, because his dead mother was the stepbrother's full sister - she fell in love with an Italian and the stepbrother's evil mother cast her out. So the H is the stepbrother's long lost nephew and he initially freaked out because he thought the h might be his aunt. But she is not and that is a good thing.
Eventually the whole story comes out that the h's ex wanna be OM sent the H an, "I am dumping you" letter after the commercial and forged the h's name. So the H believed the h was using him and the h thought the same.
But as it turns out they were both interested in each other and it was all the OM's fault cause the h was stubborn and wouldn't pick up the phone and call the H and then she had to go learn to not be so spoiled. (Not that it seemed like she was very much, she just thought she was.)
Tho that worked out well too, cause the H had five years to become a rich and famous director and now he can afford to buy the stepbrother's manor, open a film school and get married to the h and have two kids, because they figured out that they both love each other and the Treacherous Body Syndrome is really the Lurve Force Mojo melding them together for a true love HEA.
This was a nice little story, but like all EO stories, there just wasn't a lot of drama and the big misunderstanding was pretty low key because they just went off and grew up and learned to adult in the interim.
Neither was sampling the lady or OM buffet and when they got back together, they sparked right away. EO probably just threw some vague thoughts of revenge in there to elongate the countdown to the Treacherous Body Syndrome explosion.
So like most EO HP voyages, our H and h are distressingly drama free and act like grown ups. They do get some snarky lines in and the stepbrother is marrying his meddling busybody neighbor. But he was very happy about it and the H and h were very happy about things too, so we can call this a just visiting HPlandia HEA.
Theoretically our Dangerous 26 yr old is going to use her Mata Hatari Fox Vixen wiles to get revenge on the half English/Italian film director H because she thinks he gave her a very memorable one night of Purple Passion Bliss five years earlier to get her in the appropriate mood for a racy exotic car commercial.
(By racy I mean the car was a fancy schmancy exotic breaking system sports car and the h looked like she was doing a bootleg turn in it. Which is fun to do as long as you don't accidentally hit a speed bump. Take note* speed bumps mess things up and people look at you funny and your significant other takes the car keys and won't let you do bootleg turns anymore.)
Unfortunately the h fell in love with the H during that Purple Passion Night of Bliss and he promised to call the next day - but he never did. So the h dumped her promising modeling career cause it bored her and went to work as a charity personal assistant in Thailand.
(The h had been manipulated into the car commercial by a wanna be OM and did not want to do it. But she felt bad for the OM's dad, who arranged it and grudgingly participated after dumping the wanna be OM and he swore revenge. )
The h figured the OM just found someone else to harass and only remembered that the H never called her and she thinks the H just loved her up to get that rosy Lurve Force Mojo afterglow on her face for the commercial.
The H was really, really neurotic about getting it perfect because he believed that the commercial was his big chance to be a big time film director- which it wasn't, but the H was neurotic about it anyway.
Five years on, things in Thailand went bad and the h ended up quitting cause her married and kinda weird middle aged boss fell in love with her and started harassing her. He even told her he asked his very nice wife with their three children for a divorce and the h freaked out and kicked him really hard and caught the first flight home.
The h also gave one of the Thai people she worked with all of her savings so he could buy a taxi and support his wife and gadzillion kids. So the h is now back in England, kinda poor and staying at her stepbrother's family home.
Her stepbrother is really nice and loves the h a lot and is at least 30 or so years older than her. His father and her mother were both widowed and they fell in love and got married and it was one big happy family until the parent's death.
The stepbrother is a famous butterfly explorer, he chases them and he writes books about them, but he isn't very practical about things and now he has to rent out the family manse because he needs an infusion of capital.
There is a busybody next door neighbor lady who has her eye on the stepbrother and she maneuvers the h into becoming the personal assistant of the director who has rented the manor for a period piece TV movie.
Of course the director is the H, he has graduated from commercials to Hollywood blockbusters and is now back in England because he is thinking about buying a manor house and starting a film school and making independent films.
The H and h meet again when she is out walking the estate woods and she sees the H and thinks he is casing the house to rob it. She falls in the pond and the H ends up carrying her to the house and there is all kinds of snarky banter and seething undercover Love Force Mojo brewing between them.
The H has a little freak out when she tells him that the guy he is renting the manor from is her brother, but he quickly calms down when she clarifies that he is her stepbrother. Soon the H and h are working together, cause he needs a PA and she needs a job, and it seems like both of them are mad at the other for their one night of Golden Transcendent Bliss and both of them want revenge.
After some midnight skinny dips and scary fox alerts, the H and h both allow Treacherous Body Syndrome to overcome their half baked grand plans o'vengeance and the two start another affair. They have conjoined Oast Houses while the manor is being used and they just go back and forth through the connecting door.
(Oast houses are where they used to dry hops to make English beer way back in the day, they look like little gnome houses and are really cute.)
We have some movie making moments and we learn that the h was kinda spoiled by her stepbrother because when her mother and stepfather died, the h was in backseat of the car and they died right in front of her. It was pretty horrible and the h was freaked out for a while. Then she thought she was getting too snooty, so she went to learn humility in Thailand.
The H actually wants to buy the stepbrother's house and land, because his dead mother was the stepbrother's full sister - she fell in love with an Italian and the stepbrother's evil mother cast her out. So the H is the stepbrother's long lost nephew and he initially freaked out because he thought the h might be his aunt. But she is not and that is a good thing.
Eventually the whole story comes out that the h's ex wanna be OM sent the H an, "I am dumping you" letter after the commercial and forged the h's name. So the H believed the h was using him and the h thought the same.
But as it turns out they were both interested in each other and it was all the OM's fault cause the h was stubborn and wouldn't pick up the phone and call the H and then she had to go learn to not be so spoiled. (Not that it seemed like she was very much, she just thought she was.)
Tho that worked out well too, cause the H had five years to become a rich and famous director and now he can afford to buy the stepbrother's manor, open a film school and get married to the h and have two kids, because they figured out that they both love each other and the Treacherous Body Syndrome is really the Lurve Force Mojo melding them together for a true love HEA.
This was a nice little story, but like all EO stories, there just wasn't a lot of drama and the big misunderstanding was pretty low key because they just went off and grew up and learned to adult in the interim.
Neither was sampling the lady or OM buffet and when they got back together, they sparked right away. EO probably just threw some vague thoughts of revenge in there to elongate the countdown to the Treacherous Body Syndrome explosion.
So like most EO HP voyages, our H and h are distressingly drama free and act like grown ups. They do get some snarky lines in and the stepbrother is marrying his meddling busybody neighbor. But he was very happy about it and the H and h were very happy about things too, so we can call this a just visiting HPlandia HEA.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 12, 2025
A good enjoyable and relaxing read!!!
doubtful-because-not-v
November 13, 2019Cheska Rider thought that she'd fully recovered from her one-night stand with Lawson. She was wrong!
Lawson Giordano liked a woman who had her own thoughts, her own identity and ultimately the ability to make him jealous. In short, he liked the woman that Cheska had become.
Cheska had decided that the time was right to pay Lawson back for walking out on her. It would be interesting to see just how much provocation Lawson would take!
Lawson Giordano liked a woman who had her own thoughts, her own identity and ultimately the ability to make him jealous. In short, he liked the woman that Cheska had become.
Cheska had decided that the time was right to pay Lawson back for walking out on her. It would be interesting to see just how much provocation Lawson would take!
December 6, 2023
Confesso que pelo título eu estava esperando algo mais risqué ou dramático... mas a história é um romance bem morno que não entrega nada do que a sinopse sobre ciúme e paixão promete.
June 9, 2016
The title of this book is totally misleading. There is nothing dark about it and, certainly, no trace of victory at all.
It's just a "beige" british romance story, lukewarm, dull and very boring.
I want to forget that I ever bothered with it.
It's just a "beige" british romance story, lukewarm, dull and very boring.
I want to forget that I ever bothered with it.
Read
June 25, 2018Flirting with danger
Cheska Rider thought that she'd fully recovered from her one-night stand with Lawson. She was wrong!
Lawson Giordano liked a woman who had her own thoughts, her own identity and ultimately the ability to make him jealous. In short, he liked the woman that Cheska had become.
Cheska had decided that the time was right to pay Lawson back for walking out on her. It would be interesting to see just how much provocation Lawson would take!
Cheska Rider thought that she'd fully recovered from her one-night stand with Lawson. She was wrong!
Lawson Giordano liked a woman who had her own thoughts, her own identity and ultimately the ability to make him jealous. In short, he liked the woman that Cheska had become.
Cheska had decided that the time was right to pay Lawson back for walking out on her. It would be interesting to see just how much provocation Lawson would take!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews