Dinca’s review of Private Affairs by Tori Carrington
Contemporary Romance published by Harlequin Blaze 01 Nov 10
There is more excitement to be had in the town of Earnest, Washington. And the gossip vine tells all. So sit back and hang onto your seat as the tongues wag and the heat sizzles you down to your core. Tori Carrington (Tony and Lori) are at it again.
Penelope Weaver is the small-town girl who lives with her grandmother and great aunt. She is the sole proprietor of Penelope’s Possessions or Penelope’s Café, as it now known because of the town’s demise over the past few years. After hearing her long-lost love has returned to town, her dreams turn into red-hot fantasies. If losing your first love is hard to handle, try living through it again and again. Penelope Weaver stayed behind when the love of her life left their hometown to go east to make a name for himself. Fifteen years later she’s face to face with him again. One look, one touch and she is back in his lap. Do they have a second chance at happily ever after? Especially after the bombshell news she drops on him?
Palmer DeVoe never thought he’d be back in Earnest. But hopefully, now that he’s here, he can make things better for his hometown and reconnect with his father, which was his mother’s dying wish. Both tasks prove harder than anything he’s to accomplish in the last fifteen years. Little does he know that his business partner’s, Manolis Philippidis, greatest wish is to make a ghost town out of Earnest. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” unless you are a very rich, scorned man known as Manolis Philippidis.
Palmer has a reputation of flying solo, so much so one of his friends asks him if he’s gay, something that happened in the previous book, Private Sessions. That notion goes out the window when the county sheriff finds him covered by his old flame in a parked car at the local make-out place. Still joined – not at the hip – they both stare straight into the sheriff’s shocked face. The very sheriff that refers to himself as “Penelope’s boyfriend.”
The gossip vine in Earnest is fascinated with every move Palmer makes,none of which goes unreported. Penelope can’t take a breath without someone telling her what Palmer has done now, when all she wants to do is forget he has left town again and this time without saying goodbye. She didn’t even get a chance to tell him her secret.
I really enjoyed the sizzling story of Palmer and Penelope and I hope you will too. I can’t wait for the next book to be out in December, Private Parts. I hope they all have a hand in getting Manolis Philippidis once and for all. He is turning out to be a vengeful, crazy, self-possessed old coot. Once again Tori Carrington creators have done a wonderful job. It would be interesting to know if they tried out that scene with the steering wheel in the way. LOL
Grade: A
Summary:
Subject: Palmer DeVoe. Small-town boy turned successful—and still wildly hot—businessman. Conquering hero who returns to his hometown…and the one woman he never forgot!Object: Penelope Weaver. Successful in her own right. And owner of a heart that only one man can truly claim….
Situation: Filled with overwhelming sexual tension…and hush-hush trysts that leave them both gasping for more! But you know that saying, you can’t go home again? It’s true!
Unexpected maneuver: Because Penelope has a secret—a big one! The kind that threatens to tear them apart forever. Unless Palmer is willing to give up everything for another chance at “what might have been”….
Read an excerpt.
Other books in this series:
