Daniel Bruneille, head of the Sentinel's foreign affairs desk, was the most insufferable man Roz Amery had ever met. He was arrogant and opinionated, and to make matters worse, he was her boss.
So why did the fiery foreign correspondent find herself attracted to Daniel? And why had their clashes become as legendary among their colleagues at the London daily as the battles between Nick Caspian and Gina Tyrrell?
Roz knew that Nick and Gina's war continued, because Nick wanted control of Barbary Wharf and the Sentinel. Dare she hope that Daniel simply wanted control of her heart?
Barbary Wharf is home to more than a newspaper. It's home to a group of men and women whose careers—and passions—are intertwined.
Sheila Ann Mary Coates was born on 1937 in Essex, England, just before the Second World War in the East End of London. As a child, she was moved from relative to relative to escape the bombings of World War II. Sheila attended the Ursuline Convent for Girls. On leaving school at 16, the convent-educated author worked for the Bank of England as a clerk. Sheila continued her education by taking advantage of the B of E's enormous library during her lunch breaks and after work. She later worked as a secretary for the BBC. While there, she met and married Richard Holland, a political reporter. A voracious reader of romance novels, she began writing at her husband's suggestion. She wrote her first book in three days with three children underfoot! In between raising her five children (including a set of twins), Charlotte wrote several more novels. She used both her married and maiden names, Sheila Holland and Sheila Coates, before her first novel as Charlotte Lamb, Follow a Stranger, was published by Mills & Boon in 1973. She also used the pennames: Sheila Lancaster, Victoria Wolf and Laura Hardy. Sheila was a true revolutionary in the field of romance writing. One of the first writers to explore the boundaries of sexual desire, her novels often reflected the forefront of the "sexual revolution" of the 1970s. Her books touched on then-taboo subjects such as child abuse and rape, and she created sexually confident - even dominant - heroines. She was also one of the first to create a modern romantic heroine: independent, imperfect, and perfectly capable of initiating a sexual or romantic relationship. A prolific author, Sheila penned more than 160 novels, most of them for Mills & Boon. Known for her swiftness as well as for her skill in writing, Sheila typically wrote a minimum of two thousand words per day, working from 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. While she once finished a full-length novel in four days, she herself pegged her average speed at two weeks to complete a full novel. Since 1977, Sheila had been living on the Isle of Man as a tax exile with her husband and four of their five children: Michael Holland, Sarah Holland, Jane Holland, Charlotte Holland and David Holland. Sheila passed away on October 8, 2000 in her baronial-style home 'Crogga' on the Island. She is greatly missed by her many fans, and by the romance writing community.
RE Battle for Possession - Round two of the on going Charlotte Lamb saga of Barbary Wharf. This one picks up where Besieged left off. Our cast of characters for this one is as follows:
PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS IN THIS BOOK NICK CASPIAN: International media tycoon. He is a ruthless and dangerous predator who set his eyes on owning the Sentinel and on destroying anyone who gets in his way.
GINA TYRRELL: The young widow of Sir George's beloved grandson James, and, following Sir George's death, the joint owner, with Nick Caspian, of the Sentinel. She blames Nick Caspian for Sir George's death and vows to make him pay.
ROZ AMERY: Foreign affairs reporter. She is fiercely ambitious and sees her future as being tied firmly to the Sentinel and to Gina Tyrrell in person.
DANIEL BRUNEILLE: Chief foreign affairs editor. Rules the department with an iron fist. Fiery and temperamental, he is not the easiest of men to get on with.
DES AMERY: Father of Roz and internationally renowned reporter in his own right. He currently lives in Montreal, Canada, but spends a lot of time in Paris, his favourite city.
IRENA OLIVERA: A mysterious and beautiful young woman seen in Des Amery's company in Paris.
When we left our last episode, Gina had just vowed vengeance on Nick for causing the death of Sir George. She hasn't changed her mind, tho CL is rewriting a little history by having Gina speculate that their could-have-been love affair was killed in the budding by Nick's actions. (In the first book, Gina was adamantly against any involvement with Nick irregardless of her body's instalust.)
For whatever reason, now Gina is depressed over the death of Sir George and having mopey moments about her destroyed relationship with Nick that actually never was. Gina is mourning and looking haggard, she cuts Nick dead at the funeral and refuses to even acknowledge his existence. However the young man that was going to sell his shares to Nick changes his mind after talking with Gina, which means that Nick and Gina still share the same amount of power at the Sentinel.
When Nick barges into Gina's house and finds out that the share sale is off, he demands that Gina show up and share an office with Hazel and become the Vice Chairperson of the paper. Nick travels a lot in this one, so they have limited interactions, but Nick is still trying to push a relationship on Gina and she is still firmly refusing - while inwardly pining.
She knows she can't trust Nick, as he is rapidly replacing valued Sentinel staff with hand chosen minions of his own. The paper is becoming a lot more down-market in scandalous content as well, and Gina isn't happy about that either.
Roz on the other hand is getting more frustrated. Daniel, whom she has known since childhood when he was growing up and mentoring with her father Des, is still refusing to allow her much in the way of foreign assignments. Roz feels Daniel is hindering her career and she is also worried cause Des disappeared from his flat in Montreal, Quebec and no one has heard from him. She wanted to tell Des about the death of Sir George, as the two were old friends, but Des seems to have vanished from the face of the earth and he neglected to take care of his cat, so the neighbors had to take her in. (I hated Des for that, but at least the cat got a better home.)
Daniel sends Roz to Montreal to do a tourism promotion story, which means the paper needs some words and pictures to put between the advertising, so Roz does some sleuthing around her dad's apartment. She finds an address in Paris, France and after being hounded by Daniel a time or twenty, she tells him about it. He sends one of Nick's female French reporters (and an implied lover of Daniel's) over to check the address out. We find out that the place is an apartment owned by Roz's dad and that a young woman around twenty years old has been living there for a year.
Roz is a bit confused, tho Daniel taunts that she is jealous. Roz really isn't, she is more shocked, cause after her mum died when she was six, her father has been pretty casual in his lady buffet sampling and certainly not with ladies forty years younger that he is. Daniel is very nasty in his accusations tho and for some reason continually irate that Roz doesn't pine by the phone when she is not at work, waiting for his calls.
However Roz is not really wanting to wait around for Daniel's calls in her personal life. When she was 18, she had a huge crush on Daniel and kissed him. He threw her off him and then mocked her and has continued mocking her ever since - when he wasn't calling her a tart for going out with other men. Since Daniel is no monk in either thought or deed, it is a real pot and black kettle situation as Daniel has no intention of practicing what he preaches.
Roz flies back to England and Daniel meets her at the airport. He is still being nasty and accuses her of not being a 'real woman' and hero worshiping her father.
(Which I did not actually see happening. Tho Roz had to go to boarding school after her mum died and her dad went back to roving reporting, she always joined her dad in various places on the holiday and she got a real yen for traveling and roaming around. She likes the roving reporting thing for its own sake, not because she wants to be her father.
One thing I totally never understood in this one is why Roz just did not go get a job somewhere else or go freelance in a foreign country, it would have been very much in character for her to do so. But CL had to keep Roz pinned down for the slime swiller Daniel and so the idear was never mentioned.)
After Daniel picks Roz up at the airport, he takes her home and lectures her on not allowing 'love' into her life, only going for the lust side of things. Then he starts seducing her and right when she is getting interested back, he storms off - cause Roz needs to learn the difference between lust and love. (Which was very weird and awkward, cause CL makes it clear that Daniel only ever does lust, but she had to get a roofie kissing scene in somewhere, cause Gina is still holding out.)
Then Roz finds out that the French foreign correspondent position is open and no one told her about it so she could apply. She taxes Daniel with this little oversight and he pretty much admits he blocked her - he claims she is too inexperienced and she retorts that he is hindering her getting any.
Gina and Roz meet pretty regularly for lunch and Gina decides that she needs to make some staff appointments of her own. She found out about the vacant French post from Hazel and she decides that Roz can do the job. Hazel and Piet from the first book are engaged now, and Piet wants to leave the Nick empire and set up his own architecture firm in Holland, where his family lives. Nick overhears this and starts subtly threatening Hazel. He also overrules Gina decision to make Roz the French correspondent, tho Roz does get on the short list to be interviewed for the position.
We meet some future characters in the lunch room too. There is Esteban Sebastian, Nick's marketing director, Valerie Knight, a Sentinel women's section reporter and Gib Collingwood, the Sentinel's financial editor - who has a thing for Valerie, who won't date him, but is flirting with Esteban.
Gina and Roz decide to go to Paris for the weekend. Daniel bullies the information out of Roz and he shows up on the plane and at their hotel. For some reason Daniel thinks he should be privy to Roz's life and her family - he warns her not to try and check on her father. He brings champagne to Gina and Roz's room and tries it on with Roz while Gina is in the shower.
They are outside on the balcony and Roz sees her dad with a young girl at the cafe across the street. She pushes Daniel off and goes after her dad, once she gets dressed, but she can't find him. Her and Gina do Paris things, but we get very little patented CL food porn, she just mentions the food was good. We do get lots of Paris travelogue and Gina and Roz and Daniel get a tour of Nick's French paper with the female reporter who is also Daniels ex lover and in line for the French correspondent job.
Eventually Des shows up in a bar with Daniel and explains to Roz that he slept with Roz's nanny after her mum died. The nanny was a uni student from Spain and when Des decided to go back to roving reporting, she was preggers - she was also engaged to a farmer from Spain and she decided to marry him when he offered, even tho she was preggers by another man, and to raise the baby as his own. Irena, the young girl who is living in Des's apartment, is his daughter and Roz's half sister and they are both excited to meet each other.
So we all get back to England and the interviews for the French position. Except none of the interviewees get the job, because Des gets it. He wants to stay in Paris while Irena is studying at the Sorbonne and he offers Roz a job as his assistant and it may be a way for her to take over the correspondent position when her father retires. Des indicates that is a temporary appointment for him. Roz weighs up the pros and cons and then decides to do it. She would like to get to know her sister better and France is one of her favorite places.
Gina, in the meantime is still fighting with Nick and now decides she needs to get the young man who was originally going to sell his shares on her side. She sets up a lunch with the young man, tho we don't know the outcome of that yet, as the more immediate threat of a lawsuit against the paper because of a vendetta Nick has against another man comes to attention.
Roz and Daniel meet up again as they are both going to a party put on by Des, Daniel is his usual arrogant nematode self, gleefully passing along the news that his ex-lover reporter will be working with them in London for the next year. Since the woman is clearly a witchy OW, Roz loses her temper and tells Daniel that is great, she will be in France.
Daniel freaks out and demands that she stay and continue to be held back in her job and be his doormat cause he ,owns er, loves her. He was only pushing her away because she was young, but he has wanted her forever and all those other women were really only bed warmer substitutes, cause his heart was always Roz's. Roz decides that she loves him back and will stay and the ending is Daniel and Roz walking off and running into Des, as they tell him they aren't going to his party and Des gives the fatherly blessing to their pairing.
So now we all have time to straighten our shoulder pads and re-tease our big hair, as we wait for the third installment of Barbary Wharf in a future HPlandia outing.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Not enough interaction between Nick and Gina. The side story was ok. I so hate the excuse of I was waiting for you to grow up while I was dating and sleeping with others.
I usually write a review of Harlequins I read but this one was not remarkable enough that I can really remember anything to write about it. They did not copulate.
Roz Amery was an excellent foreign correspondent, but she was never given the chance to widen her experience because of her boss, Daniel Bruneille. She had known him since she was a teenage and had fallen in his love once. However, when she was brave enough to kiss him, he mocked her attempt and told her she was too young for adult games! After some years, she meets him again, but this time he was her boss in Sentinel Newspaper. He still makes fun of her and she still stands up to him, but she knows deep down she still loves him and he still rejects her.
The story of Roz and Daniel would have been so much more interesting if the writer didn't involve other characters stories with their main story. It just didn't work out with me the way the writer kept shifting the scenes from Roz and Daniel to Gina and Nick's story. It disturbed me and made me dizzy. I took endless agonizing hours to finish this book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Daniel Bruneille, head of the Sentinel's foreign affairs desk, was the most insufferable man Roz Amery had ever met. He was arrogant and opinionated, and to make matters worse, he was her boss.
So why did the fiery foreign correspondent find herself attracted to Daniel? And why had their clashes become as legendary among their colleagues at the London daily as the battles between Nick Caspian and Gina Tyrrell?
Roz knew that Nick and Gina's war continued, because Nick wanted control of Barbary Wharf and the Sentinel. Dare she hope that Daniel simply wanted control of her heart?
Barbary Wharf is home to more than a newspaper. It's home to a group of men and women whose careers—and passions—are intertwined.