Customer Reviews

Time Fuse

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This is actually one of the better Harlequin Presents I've read -- I can tire pretty quickly of Penny Jordan's shy, shrinking virginal heroines and her alpha-male domineering heroes. BUT, in TIME FUSE there is a pretty good story to keep things simmering.

Selina is the illegitimate daughter of a lawyer. Her mother was a woman with her eye on the main chance, who kept Selina apart from her father for no good reason, and only became pregnant in the first place in an attempt to get her lover to leave his wife. Selina is the opposite of her mother; she works hard and becomes a qualified legal assistant. When she hears of a job opening she goes to work for her father (who doesn't realize he's hired his daughter). They establish a relationship of liking and respect, though it kills Selina to be around her father and not let him know who she is. The nephew, Piers, is the alpha-male hero but is not too bad for all that. He's suspicious of Selina from day one, which is partly due to his overwhelming attraction to her. Little by little Selina keeps getting drawn into her father's family and into a relationship with Piers.

The tension is well maintained and Selina is a pretty good heroine, she has honest conflicts in her psyche and for once, she's a Harlequin heroine who snaps back when the hero tries to put her down, at least most of the time. Piers is a bit more than 50% alpha male and raises my hackles a little therefore, but he's less so than the ordinary Penny Jordan hero, and I think the realistic & sympathetic elements in the story line (particularly the pathos of Selina trying to get to know her father) help keep things on an even keel. A good read.

Description from the book back cover:

Past actions have a way of forming future ones. But it was the actions of her parents that had formed Selina's character, and had brought her to this point in time -- applying for a job with the father she had never met. But the explosion from the fuse she lit then came, not from her father, but his nephew -- the darkly handsome Piers Gresham, who made no secret of his desire - and contempt - for her!