Back Cover:
Harriet Flint must marry before she's twenty-five if she is to claim her inheritance. She turns to sexy Roan Zandros, who agrees to a marriage in name only. Their marriage vows exchanged, Roan reveals he is a billionaire whose every demand is granted. Harriet realizes that Roan has every intention of claiming his inexperienced bride!
Spoiler Warning: All my reviews contain spoilers to some degree
Favourite Scene:
She paused. ‘And let me remind you that I’ve paid for your acquiescence, Mr Zandros, not your opinion.’
‘Perhaps you are the one who needs a reminder, Harriet mou,’ he said softly. Without warning his hands descended on her shoulders, jerking her towards him, and before she could utter any kind of protest his mouth took hers in a long, hard, and arrogantly deliberate kiss.
My Review:
The heroine needs to hire a groom in order to inherit her family homestead and business. The hero is an "artist" who the heroine thinks can be bought. I liked the dynamic between the H/h when they first meet, she's an heiress who needs to hire a groom and he's a "struggling" artist. They fight at first. He agrees to marry her when she offers to buy him and help his career as an artist (even though he knows that taking her help will mean he loses an important personal bet with his own father, which shows how taken he is with the heroine). Whew, it is steamy when he claims his wedding night, out-maneuvering her with their pre-nuptial agreement, making sure that sex is one thing that wasn't forbidden on the pre-nup. It's a steamy wedding night scene, even if it's not quite the heroine choice (but don't think it's rape, because it's really not). After their wedding night, they retreat into a kind of cold war, each not budging out of fear, wanting the other one to come to them. Great conflict and sexual tension that keeps the H/h on the edge around each other.
One icky scene: when they go to Greece, an ex-lover of the hero's managed to spoil the H/h's master bedroom: she got a portrait the hero had done of her NUDE placed on their marriage bed and her perfume sprayed all over the room... what an icky scene for the heroine to have to see. I'd really love to see the hero for once have to put up with a nasty ex-lover of the heroine's who make HIM endure shame and inadequacy for once. It's sad that all these virgin HP heroines aren't allowed to criticize the hero for his behaviour before he met the heroine, having to accept their heroes had double to triple digit lovers, while the heroes are so possessive that they demand to be the only lover of the heroine and then punish them so badly when they THINK the heroine was with someone else. The hero wasn't hypocritical here, but it still stinks to see the heroine have to endure ex-lovers like the one here.
My Rating: 3.5/5 stars, lots of emotion and conflict.
