Teri Malloy is struggling to support herself and her 2 year old sister Jill who hasn't been well. Living in Johannesburg, she has struggled between working to pay the rent and being able to spend time with her sister, but she's a kind hearted person who makes the effort to bring groceries to an older woman,Emma Roland, who she met in the grocery store when Emma injured her foot. One rainy day Teri is jaywalking to get to the store for Emma when her one nice dress is splashed with mud by a passing car, which she throws a mud ball at in retaliation. Of course it turns out that the driver of this car is Sloan Garfield who just so happens to be visiting Emma, the result of which is that Emma is moving back to Vins Doux on the Cape, and offering to hire Teri on as a companion.
Teri accepts, thinking this might be just the thing to help her sister get back to health (their parents died in a boating accident not long ago), and she even buys dresses with Emma's money as Emma insists. But when they get to the vineyard, Sloan is there and seems to scorn her when he thinks Jill is her daughter, so Teri convinces Emma not to let him know Jill is her sister. They are sort of thrown together quite a bit, with sparks and tempers flying. Things come to a head when Emma's niece Virginia and nephew Bruce show up and Emma announces the estate is to be spilt 4 ways between them; and then Bruce starts cozying up to Teri! Will Sloan ever believe that Teri isn't the immoral gold-digger she seems?
I liked this book and am really pleased with how Teri was depicted, not as a martyr or Mary Sue as can often happen to heroines in these sorts of situations, but as a realistic woman acting out of spite. She's kind enough to be getting groceries and books for a woman she just met in a grocery store, but self centered (and realistic) enough to not notice when a woman who is kind to her at the vineyard is feeling troubled. Sloan too, unlike some heros in this sort of misunderstanding, isn't just being cruel when he pursues Teri, although some further insight into his character along the way would've been appreciated. I have to admit I love books where the hero misunderstands the heroine, causing her pain, while his expressions make it clear that he's suffering all the more too. Also, this book being set when I was even younger than Jill makes it fun to read about things like automatic windows in cars being so novel to Teri that she doesn't even know how to use them!
This book is from 1983, and I just want to note briefly that it seems like while South Africa was a popular enough setting for HP's back in the apartheid days (most HP's are still set somewhere in the British Commonwealth although Italy and Greece are pretty popular too), since then it seems to have all but disappeared. Also, one thing that bothers me about the apartheid era books are the almost total absence of black people being mentioned, making me suspicious that this setting has disappeared more due to racisim than anything else. HP authors should be challenged to write more diverse characters and in more diverse places. Wouldn't South Africa make a great setting for an interracial romance; couldn't you see the popularity of a beautiful biracial heroine? Harlequin should challenge its authors and throw out some suggestions like this.
