4.5 stars.
This novel had me laughing at the way the H was panting after the heroine like she had a golden vagina or something ( maybe she did ... ). The H's name is Mark Rider ( Rider by name and Rider by nature ). OK that's enough of the tacky, cheesy comments.
This was an office romance: the old tried and tested boss and his secretary trope. At the start of the story, the lovely heroine Caroline has been working for Mark for about a year and during that entire time he has been asking her out on dates. Caroline is an old fashioned girl and wants marriage and kids; she isn't interested in being being another filly hitched temporarily to the "Rider" wagon. However, she is totally attracted to Mark and think he's the hottest guy ever but she is insistent about never letting him use her. She's been dating a young plastics salesman called Stephen and the novel opens with the MC's at the office where Caroline has yet again declined a date from Mark because she has plans that evening with Stephen. Mark is a bit upset but it hasn't really upset his male mojo because he is seen later that evening with a vampy looking model called Venetia ( the heroine refers to her as Countess Dracula and Stephen even chimes in with an annoying comment about not minding if Venetia sucked his neck ).
Mark appears to be angry and stares at Caroline all evening. This guy is another resident of Double Standards Central, because he is sitting with Venetia yet he is glowering at his secretary just because she is on a date. Jealousy is at a peak with this guy. He pays more attention to Caroline and Stephen and notices when the latter proposes marriage to the heroine. Caroline is shocked by Stephen's proposal and even more uncomfortable because Mark is staring shamelessly. Caroline seems to force herself to accept Stephen's proposal and I thought this was a very bad move because she doesn't even feel any great chemistry with the guy. Mark comes over and asks her to dance and then uses the time to glower and make cutting comments about her engagement and insult the institution of matrimony. His jealousy is again rampant. All this time, his vampy looking date is staring at Caroline in anger and outrage. He doesn't even seem to care about the feelings of his date.
Stephen invites Caroline to spend the weekend at his parents's home and she accepts but when she goes to work Mark has plans for her that derail her former commitment to meet her fiance's family. Under Caroline's work contract, she is expected to attend after hours meetings and even weekend business trips with Mark and the H invokes that clause to get her to spend the next 2 days with him. Caroline has little savings and can't afford to lose her job so she is forced to postpone her plans with Stephen. Mark was a bundle of contradictions. He claims he hates long term relationships but he wants her to be his mistress. He gets mad at her for being friendly to the client they're visiting but denies being jealous. He pulls out his great seduction skills on Caroline but even though she is a little weak towards him, she stops it from going further by forcing herself to remain unresponsive to his kisses and caresses. The girl really tried hard to lie like a stone while he was seducing her. Of course Mark gets mad and accuses her of being a hypocrite because she won't let him have sex with her. She really had no business getting engaged to Stephen if her physical responses to another man were this strong. She and Stephen have a platonic relationship and they seem so mismatched. However she does make her feelings about marriage very clear to Mark and of course he scoffs like all man whores are prone to do. Caroline also tells him she never asked him to offer her marriage or to offer her anything. Mark sure had a lot of one liners about Caroline's refusal to sleep with him. My favorite is:
"You're not refusing me," he said tightly, eyes like steel knives, "you're refusing yourself !"
The guy should have been a lawyer.
They end up in an accident due to snowy road conditions and are forced to stay at an abandoned cottage which has a convenient supply of canned food. During their arguments, the real reason for Mark's distaste for marriage is revealed: it's all because his mommy was a selfish, materialistic, promiscuous excuse for a mother who showed him no maternal love. I thoroughly enjoyed their verbal battles in that cottage, especially the one where he refused to marry her and she smiled sweetly and replied that it was ok because she was already engaged to be married. Mark was also too angry about her engagement and he hated seeing Stephen's ring on her finger. I thought that was a bit of a strong reaction from a man who claimed that he had no jealous feelings. I probably should not have enjoyed that so much because there's still poor Stephen whose fiancee is burning up with lust for hunky Mark in a cold cottage. Caroline kept fighting her emotions as if there was the Devil on one shoulder telling her to jump Mark's hot bod while the Angel on her other shoulder reminded her that she's an old fashioned virgin waiting until after marriage to Stephen. But Mark's "unique" philosophy about marriage and the way men are "badgered" into it kept me glued to the pages. I enjoyed reading the author's depiction of a cynical man whore's justification for his lifestyle. Quite often man whore heroes hardly go out of their way to explain themselves the way Mark does. Mark came with a lot of emotional baggage ! Their "confrontation" in the cottage was quite interesting and the author was able to peel the superficial layers off both characters and let the reader get a more discerning view of what really made each one of them tick. I really enjoyed the author's portrayal of a heroine who was determined to remain true to her old fashioned moral values. Unlike many other heroines in her situation, Caroline never denied being wildly attracted to the H. I have often rolled my eyes and shaken my head at self righteous heroines whose panties are melting for the H while their mouths are telling him they feel nothing. Caroline openly and carefully explained her reasons for declining his offer of meaningless sex. This was a clear case of the H and h having opposite moral values.
Mark was like a little boy begging for a toy. The big old man whore was begging for sex from the virgin. Lol. It was so funny the way he kept calling her a bitch one minute and then kept begging her for sex the next. This girl must have had some super pheromones calling out to him or a golden vagina. Then when she denies him sex he sulks like a toddler and says he can always get it from Venetia when he returns to London. Then he starts begging for sex again. Lol. My favorite line that Mark uses when he's begging for sex is:
"It would free you, Caroline."
Hahahaha. Omg that's a new one indeed. According to Mark, Caroline is living in a figurative prison and only his penis can set her free !
Mark doesn't even know the number of women he's slept with and Caroline yells at him:
"And you think I'd let a man like you take my body? My virginity? My self respect?"
Things in that cottage really started to get intense then and added to that was Caroline's sprained ankle. Unfortunately Mark worms him way under her defences but just as they are about to have sex, they hear the voices of their rescuers calling from outside. Mark's reply of " Not now !" was so predictable but I was glad he had to suffer through a case of blue balls. Stephen was one of the rescuers and Caroline realizes immediately that she can't marry him because she's fallen in love with the silver eyed man whore. Sigh. Guess nice guys who rescue damsels in distress do sometimes lose ...
Unfortunately Stephen ( poor guy ) is talking about engagement parties and Mark leaves in a huff because he doesn't know about Caroline's decision to end her engagement. I admire Caroline for coming to that rapid decision. She wasn't fooled into thinking that she would be marrying Mark but she at least she had the decency to realize that Stephen deserved a woman who truly loved him. When she did break the bad news to poor Stephen, I must admit my heart broke for the guy. I don't think he was madly in love with her but his pride was definitely hurt. Mark was happy about her broken engagement but sulked when she refused to be his mistress. He got me angry when he told her to phone Venetia ( aka Countess Dracula ). This man was an adult and yet he lacked maturity in his reactions whenever things didn't go the way he wanted. My dog Harold has more maturity than Mark because a few hours later that day he tells Caroline:
"It'll never be over until I make love to you !"
Tsk tsk tsk... And here I thought Mark was so happy after his long phone call with the vampire OW. Mark has little impulse control around Caroline.
And a minute or so after his declaration, above, Stephen appears and accuses them of being lovers while she had been his fiancee. It just so happened that a famous gossip columnist overheard and out of the blue Mark declares to everybody that Caroline is going to be his wife. At this point it was clear to the reader that Mark had indeed fallen head over heels in love with Caroline and was merely using the gossip columnist as an excuse to declare his marital intentions. Mark was so besotted by this point because Caroline doesn't care about what's written in the papers since all her relatives are dead anyway. But for a guy who has been so against conventional opinions and the institution of marriage, Mark really rushed to buy her an engagement ring and he was the first to say "I love you" to her. It was so sweet, coming from him after all the fight he put up against marriage. Another alpha male is vanquished by the power of love. Mark showed all the signs of being p***y whipped too should Caroline ever realize the full extent of her powerful golden vagina. Lol. The sex scene towards the end was good too. This novel was great - even if I still felt pity that poor Stephen was collateral damage in Mark and Caroline's journey to their HEA. Why have I not read anything by this author before ? I loved this , especially when Mark confessed to being celibate since Caroline started working for him ! He claimed his relationship with Countess Dracula was just for show and perhaps part of his own efforts to convince himself that everything was normal.