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Wendy the Super Librarian‘s review of Juggling Briefcase & Baby by Jessica Hart
Contemporary romance released by Harlequin Romance 12 Oct 10

Yes, it’s come to this.  I’ve read a book with a cutesy baby and vacant looking man on the cover.  This is what I’ve been reduced to.  But honestly, I had no choice.  Harlequin Romances are quickly becoming some of my favorites, and Jessica Hart has been my biggest discovery in that line.  On top of all that?  This latest is a sequel to Oh-So-Sensible Secretary, a book that I read and loved earlier this year.  What’s a girl to do?

Lex Gibson is now the CEO of the family business, a chain of supermarkets in England.  He’s everything you would expect from a successful businessman.  He’s intelligent, exacting, focused, driven and a workaholic.  He also has a reputation for being a cold fish.  The latest project on the table is to buy-out a chain of supermarkets in Scotland.  It’s the one area of the UK that his father could never conquer, and Lex feels that if he gets this deal done that the old man will finally be proud of him.  To that end, he’s on his way to Scotland to convince the owner that he’s the guy to sell to.  Coming with him on this trip?  Romy Morrison, a temporary employee in his acquisitions department.  The fly in the ointment?  He and Romy had a brief affair 12 years ago that ended disastrously.  So disastrously that Lex has never gotten over it.  However, that’s not the worst of it.  Because of the short notice of the trip, Romy has to cart along her infant daughter, Freya.  And Lex?  Yeah, not a baby person.

The rub, of course, is that Romy has also never gotten over Lex.  However these two are so opposite, and more importantly, want different things out of life, that a relationship is seen as impossible.  Throw in commitment and Daddy Issues for both of them?  Yeah, we got a big ol’ messy pile of conflict to work through.

What we also have is a Secret Baby where the hero isn’t the daddy.  Romy had led a fairly footloose lifestyle when she ends up pregnant.  Her reasons, such as they are, for not telling the Baby Daddy straight away just further reinforced how much I tend to loathe this plot device.  Frankly, the only “good” reasons I can think of for keeping a baby secret belong in romantic suspense novels – so Romy’s “logic” was one part annoying, two parts stupid, and three parts selfish.

Readers need to get past this early portion of the story.  I’ll admit, the big reason I kept reading is because I’ve come to trust the author.  I also tend to fall right into her stories.  Her voice just works for me.  So I kept reading, and I’m glad I did.  Because this story has a granddaddy of a pay-off.

The commitment issues, the baggage both characters have with their fathers, lead to some final chapters that left me choked up.  Let me repeat that, I was reading with a lump in my throat.  I rarely get this worked up over a story.  I rarely shed tears.  I just don’t.  So when an author can get that reaction out of me?  I forgive.  I can look past some of the heroine’s actions that drove me slightly insane.

I also loved that the author didn’t gloss over the “opposites attract” stuff.  The characters stay true to who they are.  They acknowledge their differences.  The author doesn’t morph them into pod people in order to make the happily-ever-after work.  No, the HEA works because the author makes her couple sweat blood and tears over it.

Is this story perfect?  No.  It’s not.  There were elements that annoyed me.  But toss in the author’s voice that seems to sing for me, and the emotional pay-out at the end?  I was hooked.  I slept on this story before writing up the review, and my reaction hasn’t dimmed with the dawn of a new day.  Yeah, I think it might be love.

Wendy TSLGrade: A

Summary:

Lex Gibson is…nervous. The prospect of spending a weekend working with Romy, the only woman to ever touch his legendary guarded heart, has the lion of the corporate world…unsettled.

The tension between free-spirited Romy and buttoned-up Lex simmers dangerously. To complicate things further, Romy has a tiny daughter, who has Lex confused and distracted. They say never to mix business with pleasure, but Romy’s adorable baby might just seal their very personal business deal—and change their family situation forever!

Read an excerpt.

Other books in this series: