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Barbary Wharf #4
Playing Hard to Get
Was she leading a secret life outside of the office?
Valerie Knight knew the meaning of commitment. As a feature writer with the Sentinel she'd fought for the articles she believed in. She knew the risks and rewards of getting the story.
But what about commitment in her private life? Gib Collingwood, the paper's financial editor, had been relentlessly pursuing her. Valerie was obviously attracted to him, yet she seemed determined to keep him at a distance.
Was there someone else - someone Gib didn't know about - in Valerie's life? Or was she simply emulating her employer, Gina Tyrrell, whose rejection of Sentinel boss Nick Caspian was common knowledge? Was she avoiding office gossip? Or was Valerie simply playing hard to get . . . ?
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. . . .
Valerie Knight knew the meaning of commitment. As a feature writer with the Sentinel she'd fought for the articles she believed in. She knew the risks and rewards of getting the story.
But what about commitment in her private life? Gib Collingwood, the paper's financial editor, had been relentlessly pursuing her. Valerie was obviously attracted to him, yet she seemed determined to keep him at a distance.
Was there someone else - someone Gib didn't know about - in Valerie's life? Or was she simply emulating her employer, Gina Tyrrell, whose rejection of Sentinel boss Nick Caspian was common knowledge? Was she avoiding office gossip? Or was Valerie simply playing hard to get . . . ?
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. . . .
186 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1992
About the author
Charlotte Lamb
262 books320 followersSheila Ann Mary Coates Holland
aka Sheila Holland, Sheila Coates, Charlotte Lamb, Sheila Lancaster, Victoria Woolf, Laura Hardy
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.
aka Sheila Holland, Sheila Coates, Charlotte Lamb, Sheila Lancaster, Victoria Woolf, Laura Hardy
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.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 3, 2017
Re Playing Hard to Get - Charlotte Lamb continues on with her endless mini-series featuring the people who work at the Sentinel - a big newspaper complex built off the Thames River and called Barbary Wharf.
Our lead characters for this episode are 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 for Sir George's death and vows to make him pay.
MAC CAMERON: International star of stage and screen. Mac has the reputation of being a merciless lady-killer who. rumour has it, will stop at nothing to achieve his goal.
VALERIE KNIGHT: High-flying award winning feature writer, Valerie is determined to unmask treachery of any sort, particularly concerning romantic betrayal. Following the bitter divorce of her parents, she is adamant that she herself will never get involved with a married man—whatever she feels about him!
GIB COLLINGWOOD: Charming but cheeky finance editor who, having recently been divorced, has now set his eye on wooing Valerie, only his plans don't quite work out as he expected.
GUY FAULKNER: The sophisticated Sentinel lawyer. He has recently realizes that his career has become his whole life. It's time to devote some attention to outside pursuits, it is time to fall in love.
This time CL lets the food porn run rampant, we get Parma Ham, cherry jam, delicate trout and melon and a really great Chinese lunch with giant prawns as well. I was happy to see the return of the food porn, it was by far the most interesting aspect of the book. Other books in this series have a dearth of the usual CL gourmet meals, and it really hurts the overall enjoyment of reading CL.
As far as plots go, well the marauding pirate trope is running rampant. With Gib continuing to chase Valerie as he has throughout the previous books and Nick Caspian, otherwise know as Caspian the Barbarian, forcing Gina to accompany him to San Francisco to stay with his mother, ostensibly because Gina needs to understand Caspian International.
The book starts with Valerie, a blonde bombshell who seems to appeal to a lot of men, worried about the threat of a lawsuit regarding a story she has written about a pregnant girl who claims a famous actor is the father of her child. Her editor, a half Asian lady named Colette who was head hunted by Nick Capsian from another paper, grills Valerie pretty hard on the pregger girl's veracity.
Valerie has no problems with the downmarket turn the paper has taken, a lot of her items are of the gossip column variety and Valerie has a huge following, but in this instance Valerie absolutely believes the pregger girl and Colette claims she will back her to the hilt. Tho CL throws out plenty of vibes that Colette isn't the most trustworthy person in the world, we will have to wait and see who Colette manages to stab in the back.
(I have to say that CL puts some very subtle negative connotations into these books. It isn't overt, but every evil OW in this story that actually gets page time is Asian and unfortunately, CL's bias really shows in the way she phrases things.
I felt really uncomfortable with CL's assumptions and suppositions here, but then again every single woman in this series is an utter catty witch at one time or another, so I am not sure what to make of the whole thing. However CL's disapproval for anything non-British {or British approved like Spain,} is prevalent throughout the series and really kinda ruins it, if the poor romance plotting did not already.)
So while Valerie is doing her best to make sure that her pregger girl is on the up and up, Gib is breaking the news to her that Esteban is now engaged to Irena. Valerie had casually dated Esteban, he was the type of man she wanted to marry. He was serious and studious, very charming and had a romantic streak and always treated her like a lady.
For all of Valerie's bombshell looks, she is a very serious lady. Tho the other ladies in the books absolutely despise her because of her looks and vivacious manner, she does a good job with her reporting, and takes relationships very seriously indeed. When Gib first asked her out, he was married and claimed he was getting divorced. But Valerie's iron clad rule is NO Married Men Ever! This POV extends to divorced men as well, cause Valerie believes that divorced men just aren't stable enough to make a real try at marriage and are therefore unreliable.
When she was younger and just out of school, she met a guy she fell in love with and he took her for a ride until she discovered he was married. Her parents are also divorced and her father wandered off, never to be seen again. Her mum remarried and her stepfather is wonderful, Valerie wants love and marriage, but to a seriously committed man, just like her stepfather.
Gib, the financial editor for the paper, is not a serious kinda guy. He plays all sorts of sport, is the newspaper's Rugby hero and has more dates with various ladies in a week than Valerie does all month. Valerie is convinced he chases her because she keeps telling him NO, and she is sure that if she did succumb to Gib's Manly Lurve Mojo, she would be dropped from his mind the very next day, faster than a used tissue. Gib is also rather handsy and Valerie fiercely resents that most men think it is fine to make suggestive remarks and try to fondle her.
Valerie actually has to defend herself from a few secondary characters in this one, mainly another reporter who tried to get a scoop on her pregger girl story and then when Valerie wouldn't cooperate, tried to feel her up. Valerie punched him the head and then went into work.
Gib and Valerie end up being thrown together quite a bit, as Gib pushes his way into Valerie's flat when he gives her a ride home when it rains and also shows up at her flat a six in the morning when a photo of Gina appears in a rival paper with the actor who is the father of Valerie's pregger girl. Valerie resents these intrusion and Gib's rough attempts at kissing, so she does her best to throw him out and ward him off. Gib is stubborn, so he refuses to stop his stalking or his gropey handsing.
Gib eventually has to drive Valerie down to the farm where pregger girl is hiding, when the paper wants Valerie to re-verify the girl's story and doesn't want Valerie followed by rival papers. So Valerie gradually comes to accept Gib's presence, but she doesn't like him or the situation very much, until she suddenly decides she is in love with him. (And it really is that abrupt, with a 180 degree turn in a paragraph. I thought for a moment I was reading a Sara Wood's book here and had to check the cover.)
We get a little side character action and h baiting for the next book, when Guy, the Sentinel's lawyer and his secretary Sophie, who hates Valerie, are used by both Valerie and Gib to bring out a fit of jealousy in each other. Yes, the love triangles are endless in the daily life of the Sentinel and it can be rather wearing keeping them all straight.
In the meantime Gina and Hazel discover that Hazel, who is married to Piet from the first book, is preggers. Hazel is freaking out because Piet is trying to start his own firm and he totally forbade Hazel from having any kids until he is established. Hazel wasn't trying to get preggers, but precautions failed and now she has to tell Piet they are expecting or maybe just book a quiet termination. Gina talks Hazel out of the second option and then Gina and Nick go to San Francisco.
We arrive and Nick drags Gina sightseeing, threatens to rape her if she won't give in to his wanting and then introduces her to his mother, who is pretty useless as far as mothers go. She was bought as a wife at 17 to Nick's 60 year old father and then forced a separation after having Nick and his two sisters.
She refused to get a divorce because she did not want Nick's father having any other sons - but she knew the man had other women, so I don't see how that was supposed to stop him. Then she lost custody of Nick and he got put in boarding school. She cries prettily as she reveals all this, but really you can see where Nick gets his manipulation skills from and it wasn't his father. Basically Nick's mother is trying to get Gina to pimp herself out because that is what her beloved and darling Nick wants.
Gina unfortunately doesn't have the internal fortitude or the brainpower to take herself off to a hotel or fake an emergency and head back to England, so now she is left with Nick and his mother in America and we can all await the results of that situation in the next book.
Meanwhile, Valerie sees Gib with Sophie after he had backed her into a corner and demanded that she stop seeing Guy, Sophie's boss. Gib has been regularly trying out some punishing kisses on Valerie and the latest assault sends her temper soaring. After another grill session with the Sentinel lawyers about the pregger girl story, she invites Guy into her flat when he gives her a ride home. She and Guy are all set to go out for dinner, when Gib calls up telling Valerie that she has to go to the country and see pregger girl right away.
Pregger girl has gone into labor and she wants Valerie there for the birth. Guy leaves after learning that he has no shot with Valerie, Gib shows up to drive Valerie to pregger girl's hospital and after accusations of betrayal on both sides, Gib and Valerie finally have a big roofie kiss and declare their true love for each other for this book's HEA.
Next book up is Sophie and Guy, (who is rumored to be engaged to yet another woman,) the ongoing battle between Nick and Gina and the truth about the father of pregger girl's baby and a possible lawsuit against the Sentinel. We can all kick back now and google gourmet main course meal pics as we await the next installment of Barbary Wharf.
Our lead characters for this episode are 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 for Sir George's death and vows to make him pay.
MAC CAMERON: International star of stage and screen. Mac has the reputation of being a merciless lady-killer who. rumour has it, will stop at nothing to achieve his goal.
VALERIE KNIGHT: High-flying award winning feature writer, Valerie is determined to unmask treachery of any sort, particularly concerning romantic betrayal. Following the bitter divorce of her parents, she is adamant that she herself will never get involved with a married man—whatever she feels about him!
GIB COLLINGWOOD: Charming but cheeky finance editor who, having recently been divorced, has now set his eye on wooing Valerie, only his plans don't quite work out as he expected.
GUY FAULKNER: The sophisticated Sentinel lawyer. He has recently realizes that his career has become his whole life. It's time to devote some attention to outside pursuits, it is time to fall in love.
This time CL lets the food porn run rampant, we get Parma Ham, cherry jam, delicate trout and melon and a really great Chinese lunch with giant prawns as well. I was happy to see the return of the food porn, it was by far the most interesting aspect of the book. Other books in this series have a dearth of the usual CL gourmet meals, and it really hurts the overall enjoyment of reading CL.
As far as plots go, well the marauding pirate trope is running rampant. With Gib continuing to chase Valerie as he has throughout the previous books and Nick Caspian, otherwise know as Caspian the Barbarian, forcing Gina to accompany him to San Francisco to stay with his mother, ostensibly because Gina needs to understand Caspian International.
The book starts with Valerie, a blonde bombshell who seems to appeal to a lot of men, worried about the threat of a lawsuit regarding a story she has written about a pregnant girl who claims a famous actor is the father of her child. Her editor, a half Asian lady named Colette who was head hunted by Nick Capsian from another paper, grills Valerie pretty hard on the pregger girl's veracity.
Valerie has no problems with the downmarket turn the paper has taken, a lot of her items are of the gossip column variety and Valerie has a huge following, but in this instance Valerie absolutely believes the pregger girl and Colette claims she will back her to the hilt. Tho CL throws out plenty of vibes that Colette isn't the most trustworthy person in the world, we will have to wait and see who Colette manages to stab in the back.
(I have to say that CL puts some very subtle negative connotations into these books. It isn't overt, but every evil OW in this story that actually gets page time is Asian and unfortunately, CL's bias really shows in the way she phrases things.
I felt really uncomfortable with CL's assumptions and suppositions here, but then again every single woman in this series is an utter catty witch at one time or another, so I am not sure what to make of the whole thing. However CL's disapproval for anything non-British {or British approved like Spain,} is prevalent throughout the series and really kinda ruins it, if the poor romance plotting did not already.)
So while Valerie is doing her best to make sure that her pregger girl is on the up and up, Gib is breaking the news to her that Esteban is now engaged to Irena. Valerie had casually dated Esteban, he was the type of man she wanted to marry. He was serious and studious, very charming and had a romantic streak and always treated her like a lady.
For all of Valerie's bombshell looks, she is a very serious lady. Tho the other ladies in the books absolutely despise her because of her looks and vivacious manner, she does a good job with her reporting, and takes relationships very seriously indeed. When Gib first asked her out, he was married and claimed he was getting divorced. But Valerie's iron clad rule is NO Married Men Ever! This POV extends to divorced men as well, cause Valerie believes that divorced men just aren't stable enough to make a real try at marriage and are therefore unreliable.
When she was younger and just out of school, she met a guy she fell in love with and he took her for a ride until she discovered he was married. Her parents are also divorced and her father wandered off, never to be seen again. Her mum remarried and her stepfather is wonderful, Valerie wants love and marriage, but to a seriously committed man, just like her stepfather.
Gib, the financial editor for the paper, is not a serious kinda guy. He plays all sorts of sport, is the newspaper's Rugby hero and has more dates with various ladies in a week than Valerie does all month. Valerie is convinced he chases her because she keeps telling him NO, and she is sure that if she did succumb to Gib's Manly Lurve Mojo, she would be dropped from his mind the very next day, faster than a used tissue. Gib is also rather handsy and Valerie fiercely resents that most men think it is fine to make suggestive remarks and try to fondle her.
Valerie actually has to defend herself from a few secondary characters in this one, mainly another reporter who tried to get a scoop on her pregger girl story and then when Valerie wouldn't cooperate, tried to feel her up. Valerie punched him the head and then went into work.
Gib and Valerie end up being thrown together quite a bit, as Gib pushes his way into Valerie's flat when he gives her a ride home when it rains and also shows up at her flat a six in the morning when a photo of Gina appears in a rival paper with the actor who is the father of Valerie's pregger girl. Valerie resents these intrusion and Gib's rough attempts at kissing, so she does her best to throw him out and ward him off. Gib is stubborn, so he refuses to stop his stalking or his gropey handsing.
Gib eventually has to drive Valerie down to the farm where pregger girl is hiding, when the paper wants Valerie to re-verify the girl's story and doesn't want Valerie followed by rival papers. So Valerie gradually comes to accept Gib's presence, but she doesn't like him or the situation very much, until she suddenly decides she is in love with him. (And it really is that abrupt, with a 180 degree turn in a paragraph. I thought for a moment I was reading a Sara Wood's book here and had to check the cover.)
We get a little side character action and h baiting for the next book, when Guy, the Sentinel's lawyer and his secretary Sophie, who hates Valerie, are used by both Valerie and Gib to bring out a fit of jealousy in each other. Yes, the love triangles are endless in the daily life of the Sentinel and it can be rather wearing keeping them all straight.
In the meantime Gina and Hazel discover that Hazel, who is married to Piet from the first book, is preggers. Hazel is freaking out because Piet is trying to start his own firm and he totally forbade Hazel from having any kids until he is established. Hazel wasn't trying to get preggers, but precautions failed and now she has to tell Piet they are expecting or maybe just book a quiet termination. Gina talks Hazel out of the second option and then Gina and Nick go to San Francisco.
We arrive and Nick drags Gina sightseeing, threatens to rape her if she won't give in to his wanting and then introduces her to his mother, who is pretty useless as far as mothers go. She was bought as a wife at 17 to Nick's 60 year old father and then forced a separation after having Nick and his two sisters.
She refused to get a divorce because she did not want Nick's father having any other sons - but she knew the man had other women, so I don't see how that was supposed to stop him. Then she lost custody of Nick and he got put in boarding school. She cries prettily as she reveals all this, but really you can see where Nick gets his manipulation skills from and it wasn't his father. Basically Nick's mother is trying to get Gina to pimp herself out because that is what her beloved and darling Nick wants.
Gina unfortunately doesn't have the internal fortitude or the brainpower to take herself off to a hotel or fake an emergency and head back to England, so now she is left with Nick and his mother in America and we can all await the results of that situation in the next book.
Meanwhile, Valerie sees Gib with Sophie after he had backed her into a corner and demanded that she stop seeing Guy, Sophie's boss. Gib has been regularly trying out some punishing kisses on Valerie and the latest assault sends her temper soaring. After another grill session with the Sentinel lawyers about the pregger girl story, she invites Guy into her flat when he gives her a ride home. She and Guy are all set to go out for dinner, when Gib calls up telling Valerie that she has to go to the country and see pregger girl right away.
Pregger girl has gone into labor and she wants Valerie there for the birth. Guy leaves after learning that he has no shot with Valerie, Gib shows up to drive Valerie to pregger girl's hospital and after accusations of betrayal on both sides, Gib and Valerie finally have a big roofie kiss and declare their true love for each other for this book's HEA.
Next book up is Sophie and Guy, (who is rumored to be engaged to yet another woman,) the ongoing battle between Nick and Gina and the truth about the father of pregger girl's baby and a possible lawsuit against the Sentinel. We can all kick back now and google gourmet main course meal pics as we await the next installment of Barbary Wharf.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 15, 2023
I've only read 2 of these - it's only now dawning on me that it's a series, given how the story was cut off in its prime. I'm not a fan. I read the HP format for its succinct focus on two people in one brief package so I'll only get the others, if at all, out of CL completism. I rather think the 70s journalist vibe is well founded in CLs own experience and knowledge and I for one am glad those appalling sexist, misogynist days are over. Lol. They aren't ofc but we increasingly have legislation to tackle it. For now.
Anyhow, this one focuses on Valerie and Gib with a healthy side of Nick and Gina. The following quotes, and their casual acceptance by the h's, probably illustrate why it's not really my cup of tea. I love a hard, macho, self controlled, sexually driven alpha but here it's the old slapping and shaking and rape threats. If a H resorts to them, he exchanges his H badge for his creepy Andrew Tate Caveman Certificate in my book. It's not big, it's not clever and it's not hot. Have some self respect, ladies.
"She was afraid too, of how Gib would behave then. He might yell at her, if provoked enough he might slap her back, or, even worse, kiss her" (Gib and Valerie)
"My God, you're lucky I don't hit you...one day I'll be pushed too far, Gina, and then...I might be driven to taking what you're refusing to give me." Nick wasn't just talking wildly, not just trying to scare her. He meant it. (Nick and Gina)
These stories feel like someone wrote 100k words and sliced them up with a meat cleaver. Usual caveats about CL phenomenal talent still apply ofc.
Anyhow, this one focuses on Valerie and Gib with a healthy side of Nick and Gina. The following quotes, and their casual acceptance by the h's, probably illustrate why it's not really my cup of tea. I love a hard, macho, self controlled, sexually driven alpha but here it's the old slapping and shaking and rape threats. If a H resorts to them, he exchanges his H badge for his creepy Andrew Tate Caveman Certificate in my book. It's not big, it's not clever and it's not hot. Have some self respect, ladies.
"She was afraid too, of how Gib would behave then. He might yell at her, if provoked enough he might slap her back, or, even worse, kiss her" (Gib and Valerie)
"My God, you're lucky I don't hit you...one day I'll be pushed too far, Gina, and then...I might be driven to taking what you're refusing to give me." Nick wasn't just talking wildly, not just trying to scare her. He meant it. (Nick and Gina)
These stories feel like someone wrote 100k words and sliced them up with a meat cleaver. Usual caveats about CL phenomenal talent still apply ofc.
January 11, 2016
This is one story in a series of tales about several ensemble characters I guess. But the problem is when you read only part in such a series and the author assumes you are reading all of them. So there is too much loss of continuity , and too much presence of the rest of the characters. To the extent that I spent a lot of time trying to figure out who among the crowd of characters are the actual hero and heroine.
The basic tale is fairly mundane. The girl is a ice maiden of sorts. Of course because of past bitter experiences. The hero keeps hitting on her. She likes him but resists due to her history.
Finally, for no particular reason, she decides that the hero is a safe bet after all. The only reason I could think of was - the requisite number of pages were already filled, so time for a HEA.
Ordinary fare , may be a decent read if read in continuity. But I am not keen on hunting the rest of the books down.
The basic tale is fairly mundane. The girl is a ice maiden of sorts. Of course because of past bitter experiences. The hero keeps hitting on her. She likes him but resists due to her history.
Finally, for no particular reason, she decides that the hero is a safe bet after all. The only reason I could think of was - the requisite number of pages were already filled, so time for a HEA.
Ordinary fare , may be a decent read if read in continuity. But I am not keen on hunting the rest of the books down.
September 20, 2013
it was annoying all those stories entwined in one book ! i wud have preferred a separate story about gil n valerie. i really liked them very much
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