Present Danger by Susan Anderson (Zebra, 1993)

STATS:

Landlord of the building that Aunie Franklin chooses to make her home after leaving her abusive husband. James wants to stay away from any woman with problems and looking to be saved. The moment he meets Aunie he knows she’s in need of a hero, but no matter how hard he tries to stay away, he can’t resist this tiny, big on-attitude Southerner he calls “Magnolia Blossom.”

THE LOOK:

“He had the go-to-hell eyes of someone who’d seen it all and soft, pale blond hair that receded slightly from his high forehead and was pulled straight back into a short ponytail…the style seemed to suit this one’s face, which was all strong planes and angles….His cheekbones were flat and angular, his teeth were white, and slashing lines cut from the corners of those rebel eyes clear into his lean cheeks.”

LEADING LADY:

All her life, Aunie has been coveted for her good looks. Now she wants to prove there’s more to her than that. She’s left her abusive husband, is going back to school, and isn’t afraid of getting her hands dirty. 

One Favorite Scene:

There are tons of sexy love scenes in this book, but one of my favorites is when Aunie and James are pushed to their emotional breaking point:

““What did you call me?” His hands wrapped around her hips and picked her up and stood her on the couch so their eyes were on a more even level.

If he thought she was going to back down, he was crazy. Aunie’s chin jutted toward the ceiling. “A lily-livered…”

“No, after that.” His eyes ran over her from head to foot, taking in everything, missing nothing: her bright eyes, her flushed cheeks, the long, white neck, that T-shirt that had taunted him all afternoon….”Say it to my face.”

“I said it to your face the first time, you big blond baboon. You think you’re a stud, but you’re only a…umm…”

James’s long fingers had tangled in her hair and his mouth cut off her words. He wanted to force her to eat her words, literally, but then he tasted her mouth under his, felt her bare arms wrap around his neck, felt her body plaster itself up against his, and his brain short-circuited, all coherent thought erased.”

BOTTOM LINE:

James and Aunie are complete opposites in background, personality, and physical characteristics. The journey they take before realizing they are meant to be with one another is one of the sexiest and most heart-warming stories I’ve read.

When Aunie is threatened by the return of her ex-husband, James decides he’s going to “take her in hand”—by installing a security system in her apartment and teaching her how to take care of herself. The whole time, he tries to keep his hands off her, afraid that he’s not good enough for her. Aunie has other ideas. She taunts him until he can’t resist her, but when he wakes in the morning to find her covered with hickeys and splotchy red scrapes from his heavy morning beard, he’s sure it proves he’s “a slum-born animal, incapable of the finer graces she no doubt expected from a man.” The beauty of Anderson’s characters is that each one is capable of so much more than they think they are, and it’s through their relationship they discover this.

QUESTION OF THE DAY?

What do you think of hickeys? Tacky or sexy?

 /  Just an aside before you read today’s profile (Virna’s skipping her column this week)… I’m soon to live in the south [Texas, though, not Georgia] and I’m here now house-hunting, totally stressed as we work out contract details, missing my kids, and reading Gone With the Wind for book club.  Please forgive yet another reference to my favorite book, but how could I not write about a Southern hero?  And one that I love so much! And now, with no further adieu… 

Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell, Scribner, 1936)  Rhett Butler: Bad Boy/Charmer/Swashbuckler Rhett Butler might well be one of the original bad boys/charmers/swashbucklers of the south.  He’s the quintessential scoundrel–a blockader during the Civil War and a man who is not received in Atlanta or in Charleston.  Despite his bad reputation [in a time when reputation is everything], he’s full of charisma and heavy on charm.   In Rhett’s own words, however, he describes himself thusly: “…I’m a damned rascal and no gentleman…”    No wonder he’s so loved by women everywhere!  

STATS:   35 years old to Scarlett’s 18 [remember, these were the days of the Civil War] and over 6 feet tall.  Black hair, black eyes, a slightly black soul, and connected with “something pleasantly scandalous” but lovable nonetheless.  

THE LOOK: “He was a tall man and powerfully built.  Scarlett thought she had never seen a man with such wide shoulders, so heavy with muscles, almost too heavy for gentility.  When her eye caught his, he smiled, showing animal-white teeth below a close-clipped black mustache.  He was dark of face, swarthy as a pirate, and his eyes were as bold and black as any pirate’s appraising a galleon to be scuttled or a maiden to be ravished.  There was a cool recklessness in his face and a cynical humor in his mouth as he smiled at her, and Scarlett caught her breath.   She felt that she should be insulted by such a look and was annoyed with herself because she did not feel insulted.  She did not know who he could be, but there was undeniably a look of good blood in his dark face.  It showed in the thin hawk nose over the full red lips, the high forehead  and the wide-set eyes.” “There was mockery in everything he said.  [Scarlett] disliked him heartily, lounging there against the booth.  But there was something stimulating about him, something warm and vital and electric.”   

LEADING LADY: “All that was Irish in her rose to the challenge of his black eyes.  She decided she was going to take this man down a notch or two.  His knowledge of her secret gave him an advantage over her that was exasperating, so she would have to change that by putting him at a disadvantage somehow.  She stifled her impulse to tell him exactly what she thought of him.  Sugar always caught more flies than vinegar, as Mammy often said, and she was going to catch and subdue this fly, so he could never again have her at his mercy.” Rhett’s thoughts on Scarlett:  “On the occasion of our first eventful meeting I thought to myself that I had at last met a girl who was not only beautiful but who had courage…When I first met you, I thought: There is a girl in a million.  She isn’t like these other silly fools who believe everything their mammas tell them and act on it, no matter how they feel.  And conceal all their feelings and desires and little heartbreaks behind a lot of sweet words.  I thought: Miss O’Hara is a girl of rare spirit.  She knows what she wants and she doesn’t mind speaking her mind–or throwing vases.” At one point in Gone With the Wind, Rhett, who says more than once that he’s not the marrying kind, proposes that Scarlett become his mistress.  Ever the pragmatic, Scarlett’s response is that she’ll get nothing out of that arrangement other than a passel of brats.  So much for propriety and a ladylike upbringing.   But then Rhett likes Scarlett’s lack of propriety and unladylike behavior. He says that he never does anything with a specific purpose and he never gives anything without expecting something in return.  He “always gets paid”.  He tells her that her beaux have treated her with far too much respect and that she needs kissing by someone who knows how to kiss.  Ahhh… The question is, has he met his match in Scarlett O’Hara? 

BOTTOM LINE: Rhett Bulter is like Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.  He’s an original and he’s larger than life.  He comes from a different time and just as Ashley Wilkes, Rhett’s gentlemanly counterpart, represents all that is refined and idealistic in the Civil War south, so Rhett Butler represents all that is scandalous and daring and pushes us to think about the southerners who knew that “our Southern way of living is as antiquated as the feudal system of the Middle Ages.”  He refuses to “fight to uphold the system that cast [him] out.”   Just like Scarlett, Rhett isn’t afraid to say exactly what he thinks and feels, even if it goes against the conventional wisdom or the beliefs of the time.  He’s one of my all-time favorite heroes and he always will be.  

QUESTION OF THE DAY: Create your own analogy along the lines of “Rhett Butler being just like Mr. Darcy”.  Who are two larger than life heroes to you, either from past literature or from contemporary fiction? AND/OR Who is your all-time favorite hero from the past?   

One for the Money, Janet Evanovich (Scribner, 2001)

Let me just put it out there. Joe Morelli or Ranger? Most women I’ve talked to fall into either one camp or the other. Love Joe, or think he’s no good for Steph. Hot for Ranger, or think he’s just plain scary.

Today let’s look at Joe.

STATS:

A cop in Trenton, NJ and the on-again, off-again boyfriend of bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. He started out as the wild one in Stephanie’s life, taking her to play “train” in his garage when she was six and only letting her be the tunnel, but has settled into the stabilizing force. He’s “street tough and dangerously alluring” on the outside, “a sexy guy with a toaster” on the inside.

Rival to Ranger, a camo-wearing, ponytailed, man who’s like smoke in Stephanie’s life—blowing in and out without warning and messing with Joe in the process.

Calls Steph ‘cupcake’, and other assorted terms of endearment.

THE LOOK:

Frightening in a spending-time-on-the-dark-side kind of way. Yet he owns a quaint little house, and as mentioned above, a toaster.

Six feet, lean and mean and muscled. Olive skin tones, black hair with a touch of curls at his neck, and brown eyes that turn to liquid when he’s turned on. “He had an eagle tattooed on his chest, a tight-assed, narrow-hipped swagger, and a reputation for having fast hands and clever fingers.”

“Stay away from those Morelli boys,” [her] mother had warned [Stephanie]. “They’re wild. I hear stories about the things they do to girls when they get them alone.”

“What kind of things,” [Stephanie] eagerly ask.

“You don’t want to know,” [her] mother had answered. “Terrible things. Things that aren’t nice.”

From that moment on, [Stephanie] viewed Joseph Morelli with a combination of terror and prurient curiosity that bordered on awe.

LEADING LADY:

Stephanie Plum, the woman Joe ‘had’ behind the eclair counter at the Tasty Pasty bakery where she worked when they were in high school.

Stephanie Plum, the woman who, a few years later, ran him over outside the meat market while driving her father’s Buick.

Stephanie Plum, bounty hunter extraordinaire—or not—and the woman who has Joe’s rival, Ranger, breathing fire.

Stephanie and Joe do a little dance, have a little fun, then cool off. It’s their pattern. Is Stephanie the one for Joe? I guess we’ll have to wait until J.E. gives us another book and takes us on another adventure with the hot cop and the bounty hunter.

BOTTOM LINE:

Joe Morelli is a good guy, even if he’s rough around the edges. He has a dog named Bob. He’s in the habit of trying to protect Stephanie when she gets herself into trouble. He may not be ‘smoke’, but he’s certainly hot and a good match for Stephanie Plum.

And he has a toaster.

And he indulges Stephanie’s Grandma Mazur and the rest of the wacky characters in Steph’s family. Not to mention his own spooky grandmother.

Whether Joe ends up with Stephanie is anybody’s guess, and, as stated above, there are a lot of people rooting for Ranger in that arena.

But me? I’m rooting for Joe.

QUESTION OF THE DAY:

Are you a Ranger or Joe fan?

One Summer by Karen Robards (Dell, 1993) We’ve had a couple of posts on motorcycles and whether a hero who rides one should automatically be labeled a bad boy. There’s no question that Johnny Harris is a bad boy, and the fact that he rides a motorcycle is actually just icing on the cake.

STATS:

Johnny has been in prison for ten years for a murder he didn’t commit. When he returns to the scene of the crime-his home town-the only person willing to give him a chance is his former English teacher, Rachel Grant, whom he’d always had “the hots” for.

THE LOOK:

Scuffed cowboy boots, beat up jeans, and a white t-shirt. Wide shoulders. “The sullenly handsome boy she remembered was still sullen, still handsome, but no longer a boy. He had matured into a dangerous-looking man.”

LEADING LADY:

Rachel Grant is a well-respected woman who takes on the disdain of the town by giving Johnny both a job and a place to stay-the apartment over her store. She believes in his innocence and remembers him as one of her “success stories” as a teacher. She’s loyal, making sure that her ailing father is taken care of, and hates injustice, which she proves when she drags Johnny back to a restaurant that refused to serve him.

The Bad Boy With A Heart:

There are several instances when Johnny Harris shows he has a heart. One of the most dramatic is when he goes to see his abusive father and sees a dog. At first glance, all he saw was a “mangy cur like all the other mangy curs, a little bigger than most. Underfed, bred for meanness, probably dangerous.” But then Johnny realizes the dog is his beloved pet, Wolf, the one he missed so much while in prison. He’s so overwhelmed to see him that he weeps.

The first time he’s able to get really close to Rachel is when they’re out for the night (separately) and he teaches her that she can enjoy dancing. “He shimmied with her, turned her, dipped her back and pulled her up into his arms. All the while the friction of his leg moving between hers stole away the last vestiges of her good sense.” He ends the dance with one statement-”You can run, teacher, but you can’t hide.”

Finally, Johnny telegraphs his love for Rachel loud and clear when he recites a poem by Robert Burns, one he memorized long ago because it had been her favorite.

BOTTOM LINE:

This book has great suspense, great passion, and a message of tolerance, forgiveness, and bucking the odds. Johnny is the younger bad boy coming back to claim the slightly older woman he’s always loved, and the reader cheers when he finally gets Rachel on his bike with the promise that she’ll “love it.”

QUESTION OF THE DAY:

Have you ever dated a younger man? What is the maximum age difference that you would be comfortable with and why?