Header PromotionSeparate Lives by Caroline Jantz (HR 2793)
Gwen Shaughnessy is a 20 year old student in Vancouver, Canada, studying business and working herself to the bone with two part time jobs trying to earn some money to pay down the hospital debts that are being accumulated by her family in Toronto (her parents and brother in law have just been killed in a car accident, and her sister and neice are hospitalized and unable to walk, her grandparents out there taking care of them). Her godfather Leo has offered to help pay the bills but they don't want any charity of course. So Leo resorts to manipulation - his nephew Brad Robilliard needs money for his business as the accountant just embezzled half a mil at the same time that this important debt was due, so he's proposed that Brad proposition Gwen offering to pay her to marry him so that he can get the money for the business and not to mention that Leo is his uncle.
Brad realizes his employees really need him to stay in business so he reluctantly does so, and he and Gwen sign a contract for a year's platonic marriage, to end in an annulment. Only then she moves in and once the stress has left her she becomes healthier looking and they become attracted. But their marriage is a giant conflict - Gwen is a virgin and isn't jumping into bed with anyone but thinks she is falling in love with Brad, while Brad previously had a girlfriend accept payoff money to have an abortion and leave him, so he's very wary of Gwen's reasons for accepting the deal (he doesn't know about the car accident) and they don't know each other at all to start, so there are plently of misunderstandings. Will they be able to work things out?
This is an interesting book - it's definitely from another time: there's cigarette smoking, Gwen's only 20 compared to Brad's unspecified, but much older age, there's the fact that Gwen had had an apartment in Vancouver for $200/mo, and there's the fact that they're all in Canada but there are these "huge" hospital bills ($10k/mo). Anyway, it's an interesting book and basically follows the changes in their relationship over the course of a few months - the characters are very sympathetic (except for their arguments early in the book) and easy to care for. Very glad everyhing works out for them and their kittens.
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