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It was love for 17-year-old Leah; from the moment she first laid eyes on 25-year-old Nik Andreakis. She’s shamed when she discovers her father has offered shares in his shipping lines as a dowry for Nik to marry her. And when they marry shortly after her 17th birthday, Nik immediately sets her up in a London townhouse and proceeds to ignore her, continuing on with his life as if she doesn’t exist; their marriage unconsummated. Five years later when Leah’s father passes away, Nik reveals that there were no shipping shares, that he had been blackmailed into marrying her and he is determined to find the evidence that threatens his family. When Leah’s interest in another man comes to his attention, Nik refuses to grant her a divorce and decides it’s time for their marriage to become real.

The circumstances that forced their marriage were intolerable for Nik, and this made him understandably bitter. And yet somehow he thought that when he was ready to start their marriage, Leah’s innocent love would still be there. What an awakening! Ms. Graham writes Leah as an naive woman who is finally seeing her own naiveté and who quickly learns to hold her own. She becomes a woman to be reckoned with. The confrontations are heated; the love scenes are passionate; and Nik is adorable when he is eating crow

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Once her father dies she finally finds out the truth behind her marriage, her husband was blackmailed into it. Nick (the husband) is not particularly pleasant when he tells her the truth. The result is that she realizes that there is no reason for her to stay and she can finally leave and be with a man that actually loves her. Before she has an opportunity to tell her husband he overhears her on the phone with her boyfriend and freaks out. What follows is the story of a man too afraid to say how he really feels as his wife struggles to leave him. Essentially he emotionally blackmails her into staying with him and uses an untimely bout of flu as an excuse to basically kidnap her. She in turn starts to feel for him again but is too weary to take anything he says or does at face value.

Some people felt the end was rushed but since this is a Harlequin they only had so much space to use and I thought it was a well written emotionally charged scene with some well earned begging thrown in.

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For those of you haven’t read the Unfaithful Wife – STEER CLEAR – i can’t see anything redeeming about this book, the heroine is a candidate for a Women’s Refuge..

- the H had slept with other women when he married the h, he basically left her in exile to live an empty life with him for five years, during this time she had to put up with snide looks from colleagues at his dinners and she didn’t know what she had done. When she actually thinks she’s in love with someone else (of course she isn’t and doesn’t sleep with him) – he forces her into a physical relationship – now that he (His Lordship) is ready to be married to her. There is no grovelling from him (even though i still wouldn’t have liked him) he constantly tells her he knows she loves him and still treats her like crap – at the end she finds out it was because her father had blackmailed him into it. His excuse for sleeping with other women and not her – well – he didn’t want to sleep with her and cheat on her. He never even spoke to her about why he was that way with her and the author just created a wimp for him to use as a bashing board.

An opinion you may have is that because they didn’t consumate their marriage it wasn’t really infidelity on his part – (the marriage taking place wasn’t enough….) now okay fine the ’sleeping with other women’ is enough to put me off in itself but the fact that he put the woman he so-called loved (during all that time) in a position where she had to take the humiliation and innuendos from his guests during those five LONG years – makes it even worse (is this a man you could like? can he really be that cruel and not see it?) and then this H had the gall to feel enraged when pictures of her and this other man were nearly printed in the paper. The author then tries to give the impression that his affairs were discreet and just hinted at by his guests, he doesn’t even so much as open his mouth to grovel for her at the end – and then the author or Harlequin – rub salt on the wound by friggin thinking of THAT TITLE!

– it really was the most awful book – just in case i didn’t give you that idea..!

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Won’t insult your intelligence, like some films in this genre. Suspenseful.