LynneC’s review of One Night, Two Heirs by Maureen Child
Contemporary Romance published by Harlequin Desire 5 Jul 11
Maureen Child has written a charming book about small town American life. But it’s not without its flaws.
Rick Pruitt, marine sergeant, has returned to his home town of Royal, Texas, to decide whether to re-enlist or not. He’s left a family ranch and oil business behind him and while he was away his mother died. But that isn’t the only thing. He gets home to discover that the woman he’d spent his last night with, Sadie Price, has suffered unforeseen circumstances. She’s had twins. Rick recognizes them the minute he sees them, so there’s no argument about paternity.
Sadie’s excuse is that his mother begged her not to tell him and she didn’t want to unnerve him when he was fighting in foreign battle zones. For me, that isn’t enough, especially given Rick’s response. He wants to marry Sadie and give his children a home and two parents. That doesn’t wash with Sadie, who wants more than duty and honor in a husband. She married before, to a man who cheated on her. This time she wants love.
I have a few problems with this setup. First, the secret babies. To me, when a woman gets pregnant and decides to have the babies, as she invariably does in Harlequin romances, then she has to put the babies first. And Sadie doesn’t do that. She knows that they would be better off with a loving father, but she won’t even consider moving in with Rick. Rick is understandably furious, and only Sadie’s brother gets it. What, surprised that nobody told you that you had children? However hard I tried, I couldn’t warm to Sadie. Not only does she refuse to think about marrying Rick, she falls into his bed at the first opportunity. And there’s no mention of protection, unless it was so brief that I missed it, so it could easily happen again. She spends the book angsting about this nebulous concept called “love,” when all the time Rick is giving it to her. She needs to hear the words, and Rick doesn’t want to give them to her.
The reason Rick doesn’t want to say the words is explained later in the book, so I won’t spoil it for you. But when I realized why, it didn’t make any more sense to me than Sadie’s ridiculous refusal to marry him. The conflict seems contrived to me, and it drags on much longer than it needs to, just to get a novel out of the story. Because if Rick has come home, and Sadie has seen reason and marries him, there wouldn’t have been much of a story.
Well, actually, there might have been, and it would have made a much more engrossing tale than the one outlined here. I want to like Sadie and Rick, I really do, but their motives didn’t ring true to me. If they’d married for the childrens’ sake, as I believe they should have done (you might not believe it, and since that’s a big stumbling block for me, you might like the story more) then work out the problem, I might have warmed to them much more.
Sadie is as rich as Rick, there’s no problem with that. They both belong to the Texas Cattlemen’s Club, so this book is part of that series. It’s not one I follow regularly, but I don’t feel I’m missing out by not reading them. Where this book excels to me is its descriptions of small town Texas life. For me, this is a treat, something so alien to my experience that I can enjoy what, to me, are the exotic locations and unfamiliar routines and habits. The vague concepts of “fighting for your country” and “love” seemed similar, things that people accept without thinking too hard about them. But this is the way these people thought, so I accept it as part of the setting. Descriptions of the club, the holidays, where Sadie stands at a stall and sells fireworks (something that wouldn’t be allowed in my country without lots of licenses, identifications, and maybe a steel barrier or two) fascinate me.
Although Rick shows Sadie nothing but love throughout the book, both of them refuse to recognize it. Sadie wants the words, which, of course, Rick refuses to give her until the end. The idealistic settings, the wealth of both participants, do verge on the sugary-sweet at times, but I recommend this one for the detailed and evocative descriptions of Texas life.
Grade: C
Summary:
Duty is his world. And upon seeing Sadie Price with twin girls, marine Rick Pruitt realizes he has some proposing to do. He never would have left Royal, Texas, if he’d known Sadie was carrying his babies.
Yet the feisty single mom has no intention of agreeing to a loveless marriage. True, she and Rick share a bond, as well as undeniable passion. But Sadie believes vows should last a lifetime, not be declared out of obligation. Making it Rick’s new mission to change her mind…
Read an excerpt.
