ISBN 0373076789 - Christie Conan, actually Vickie Conan and Christine Pacheco writing as a team, has done the nearly impossible - written a romance novel that impressed me. Rhone has a very dangerous job - the kind that can, literally, get him killed. And he loves it, because he's never been able to watch the news, see all the terrible things in the world and just do nothing about it. The negative, though, is that the danger, and the time he spent away doing his job, destroyed his marriage to Shannen. She couldn't take it anymore and left, taking with her a secret: Rhone's unborn son. After being taken captive by Jack Norton in the jungles of Colombia, Rhone suffers from claustrophobia. The only thing that had gotten him through his captivity was memories of Shannen. He doesn't know for certain where she's gone and he doesn't know about his son, but he's going to find out soon, because Jack's brother wants revenge. Threatening to take away from Rhone someone he truly cares about, Jimmy Norton finds Shannen and Rhone races to her side, arriving to find her safe. Momentarily relieved, Rhone's about to get the good news and bad news at the same time: he has a son, but Norton has taken the boy. The two are forced to live in close proximity, waiting for a clue. They each realize that they never got divorced for a reason - they're still in love. Actually far better than the routine romance novel, which was an extremely pleasant surprise to me. Sex, all the pulsing and groping of the usual romance, doesn't really come into play until page 95. When it does, it doesn't take up a quarter of the book and isn't written in the silly, over the top way romances are known for. Best of all, the couple in this book isn't a pair who met one day and were fondling each other, deeply in love, within a week. They are people with a history, whose love doesn't bloom suddenly, but has some actual foundation. There were moments that made me laugh, not because they were funny but because they were so bad. One was when Shannen comes across her son's stuffed bear and falls to her knees, wailing "No! Dear God, no!". The other, near the end, was Rhone's speech about his son - "Nicholas is going to grow up with parents who love him, who'll encourage him to be himself, who'll pick him up and dust him off when he falls." - which ran counter to his "tough guy, show no emotions" character throughout the book. Those aside, a good suspense story with the romance secondary. This is what more romance novels ought to be.
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