Wild Enchantress by Anne Mather (HP 185)

She's 20 years old and an heiress, he's a friend of her father and is her guardian until she's 21.  He sends for her to leave London and join him on an island because her deceased father was worried a man would marry her for her money.  The heroine has had a crush on the hero since she was 14 and he treated her with coolness.  She now feels the need to needle him and torment him, so she lets him think she's the bad girl he thinks and that she's pregnant.  The hero is engaged and wanted out of the engagement of convenience before the heroine came onto the scene.  They torment each other and are attracted, but he fights it.  Eventually, he wants her as his, regardless of whether she's pregnant (which she isn't).  She is still under the impression he is engaged, and rejects him. 

This book was GREAT until the end.  When the hero is rejected, he goes off and becomes a recluse and doesn't bathe or shave or eat and grows weak.  No one likes a weak hero who doesn't care if he lives or dies!  (Especially since he was too weak at the end to sweep the heroine off her feet and into bed)  That bit only lasted 10 pages, so it hardly affected my enjoyment of the book. 

A favourite scene of mine was when the hero asked if she would take off her clothes for him, saying he'd like to paint her pregnant and nude, and the heroine tauntingly told him he could take the clothes off himself.  The heroine saw some sketches he made of her later on, and those were intense.  I kind of hoped the book would end with the hero painting the heroine while pregnant for real!  The sexual tension between the hero/heroine was great all the way through.  This book left the reader outside the bedroom, which isn't too surprising given it's a 1970s book! 

Rating: 4/5 stars, pretty good, high sexual tension.