Time for Another Dream

by Karen van der Zee

Why had Brand Edwards changed his mind?

Briana had done everything she could to convince him that she was capable of doing the job at the sheltered workshop and that she wasn’t a flighty number who’d take off again in a few weeks.

Nothing had worked. Brand Edwards had stubbornly refused to give her a trail. Now he was asking her to take on the job.

Powerful, arrogant Brand Edwards as an enemy was one thing. The thought of finally working with him as a friend and colleague was much more disturbing. And somehow exciting!

Genres: Harlequin Presents

187 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1986

About the author

I always wanted to write, ever since I was a child growing up in Holland. I was a dreamer, reading books and making up my own stories. I had notebooks full of stories which I illustrated with crayon drawings. My brothers burned the notebooks in the attic one day, fortunately not burning down the house. They don’t remember this now, but I do!

I also always wanted to travel. Holland is very flat and I wanted to see mountains and coconut palms and tropical beaches and deserts. I wanted to meet interesting people and learn about different cultures and see how people lived their daily lives. And then I wanted to write adventurous stories set in these exotic places

I got lucky and fell in love with a globetrotting American. I met him in Amsterdam, he asked me to marry him in Rome, and we tied the knot in a ten-minute ceremony in Kenya, East Africa, where he was a Peace Corps Volunteer. Some wedding that was! Not the stuff of romantic dreams, but really good for a laugh.

After Kenya we lived in the States for a while, then four years in Ghana, West Africa where not only our first daughter was born, but my first Mills & Boon romance as well. It took me a year to write, which is three months longer than it takes to have a baby. It was set in Ghana, and I called it SWEET NOT ALWAYS, a slogan found on a big colorfully decorated truck that transported people, goods, and live chickens.

I continued writing romances and loved the creativity of it, although it was, and is, never easy. Later we also lived in Indonesia, Ramallah (Palestine), then another three years in Ghana, and most recently six years in Armenia, which lies east of Turkey and north of Iran. Along the way we acquired a couple more kids, so now we have three.

I’ve written over thirty books now, many set in exotic locations such as Bali, Thailand, Malaysia, Java, Kenya and Ghana, as well as Holland and the US. Writing as Mona van Wieren, I received a RITA for a Silhouette Romance entitled RHAPSODY IN BLOOM.

I love the challenge of living in a foreign country where the food is different, the people interesting and life gives me endless inspiration for my writing. So, I’ll just keep going for a while.

Reviews

[boogenhagen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Re Time for Another Dream - KVDZ brings us another just visiting HPlandia story with a wealthy young widow who has an unhappy romantic past and a dual personality H who is total tyrant at work and really a nice person outside of it.

The story starts with the h trying to get the H to hire her for the job of supervising a workroom for a facility that provides jobs to disabled people. The current supervisor is the h's friend and has been there for years, but she is leaving the Washington DC area and has to resign. The h had a brother who had Down's syndrome and died at 12 years old, so she is used to working with people who have physical and mental challenges.

The H dismisses her as a rich dilettante, he wants a person who has all the degrees and experience the lady who is leaving has, but will work for peanuts. The H isn't having much luck finding anyone, but he is brutally dismissive of the h and her abilities.

Still the leaving supervisor shows the h the routines and introduces her to the employees and they all like her a lot. There are a few biting exchanges between the H and h, but no one suitable applies for the job, so the H gives the h a 90 day temp assignment.

The h moved to the area when her grandmother died and is currently staying in her old, kinda shabby house. She makes a few new friends, including a wanna be romancing neighbor and is amazed at how many different opinions she gets about the H.

Those that deal with him in professional capacity call him a bully slave driver and people who know him personally can't say enough about how wonderful he is. The h is of the former opinion, and as she settles into the job, he doesn't do much to change that.

Their work exchanges are tense and there is a big blow up when she suspends one of the workers for a few days. Eventually the H comes around to her way of thinking and backs her up. Then he asks her out and the h almost falls out of her chair. She accepts a dinner date but things go wrong when he starts probing about her former marriage. The h doesn't like to talk about it and is very emotionally scarred from the damage. The date ends in a guarded truce, but the h flashbacks to the day she found out her beloved husband of one year was cheating on her.

She married a charming playboy and was deliriously in love, blind to his faults - until she came home from shopping an hour early and found another woman in bed with him - in their marital bed. She has a mini breakdown and really withdraws when the cheater accuses her of being rubbish in bed, so he has to cheat. She is severely depressed for about a year and becomes completely indifferent to him and then he dies on his yacht in a storm while romancing yet another woman.

The h truly doesn't care, her trust has been so damaged she can't even contemplate another intimate relationship. When her beloved grandma dies and leaves her the house, the h moves to a Washington DC suburb to make a fresh start. She wanted the job with the challenged people to try and get out of her funk by focusing on others instead of herself. She doesn't mention any of this to the H and he continues his pursuit with some passionate kissing.

Then the h messes up big order and her parents cancel on her for Thanksgiving. She plans on fixing the order herself as there isn't time in the schedule at the workshop and the H finds out and invites her for Thanksgiving - really he needs her cause he can't cook a turkey and she is practically a gourmet chef. Between the H and her would be loverboy neighbor, the h manages to get the order fixed, tho she really lays into the H for being so hostile and verbally abusive about it.

The h and H spend Thanksgiving with a bunch of his friends and the H IS a different person, he is so nice she is falling in love and the H is falling right back. Finally the story about her marriage comes out and the H and h wind up in bed. They avow their mutual love and the h is working on adjusting to a new relationship with the H. He also makes her job appointment permanent.

Then she gets really ill with bronchitis and the H has to manage the shop without her and he is really nasty about it when he calls her from work. She tells him off for being a bully tyrant and the H apologizes, he will try to be nicer on the job cause she has trouble dealing with a split personality.

There is a bit of H jealousy too when the neighbor helps the h out when she is really ill. The neighbor wanders off after he figures out he doesn't have a chance with the h and the h finally gets better and goes back to work.

Then the h's grandma's house burns down and the H wants her to move in. He proposes, she accepts and they both promise to be nice and not bully each other too much for the HEA. The title comes into play at the end when the H tells the h that there is always time for another dream to replace the one she lost.


This one is a relatively quiet story, and it doesn't have a lot of the drawn-out introspection that KVDZ can delve into sometimes. I thought the H just turning on a dime and being in love was pretty quick (totally did not see that one coming,) but other than the abruptness of the love explosion, it isn't a bad book and the h's attempts to help the people she works with was pretty nicely done.