LynneC’s review of An After-Hours Affair by Barbara Dunlop
Contemporary Romance published by Harlequin Desire 6 Sep 11

This is a makeover book about a woman who has been in love with her boss for years, but he’s never noticed her. Until her best friend gives her a makeover. There is an intrinsic problem with this trope—that the man is a superficial one who only goes by looks, but Dunlop takes this trope and runs with it to give a pleasant read.

Jenny is PA to Mitch Hayward, football quarterback out for a year with a shoulder injury. Mitch is currently president of the Texas Cattlemen’s Club, a kind of Almack’s to the rich crowd in Texas. It’s a yearly contract, and he’s using his year off from his sport to fulfill the job, which he’s doing very well. Jenny is dowdy, and unfortunately we do have a repeat of the glasses trope. But after a reference to her glasses and the fact that she finds contacts uncomfortable early, it’s never referred to again, so we have another miraculous cure story. As a lifelong glasses-wearer, I find that annoying. Either deal with it realistically or leave it out. But Dorothy Parker’s adage has been disproved time and time again. You can actually look sexy wearing glasses, or so I’ve been told.

So Jenny appears at a wedding sporting a burgundy mini dress and contact lenses, and although Mitch doesn’t notice at first, he does take notice later. I like that Mitch didn’t notice, it seems to confirm that it’s the woman inside he likes.

Mitch is determinedly superficial, preferring interchangeable blonde bimbos to women who might mean something to him. I’d say that since Mitch is handsome, rich and intelligent, that didn’t seem likely, but we see it all too often in real life. So yeah, Mitch likes that part of his life uncomplicated. But he’s getting older, and he faces a possible change of career, as his injury stubbornly refuses to heal properly or enough to take him back onto the football field.

It goes on from there in fairly predictable lines. There is a secondary romance between Jenny’s best friend Emily and Mitch’s friend Cole, and I find myself wishing the roles were reversed with Cole and Emily as the hero and heroine. I find their characters and their story more interesting than Mitch and Jenny, and I want to read more about them.

Emily persists in calling Cole “short,” even though he’s five-eleven and she’s five-six, but he takes the jibes with humour and persists in his courtship of her. He has a lively, sympathetic personality, and after Mitch says something extremely hurtful to Jenny, he takes her side and helps her out in a crisis.

It is that statement that put me off Mitch. He says it in public and there isn’t at that part in the story any real motivation for him to be so cruel. He is scared of his own feelings and Jenny’s, but had he said that to me, I would have given him the finger. To do her justice, Jenny doesn’t take the insult lying down, but there isn’t really a good grovel scene to make up for the cruelty, and after that, I start to get more interested in Emily and Cole and less in Jenny and Mitch.

Nevertheless, it’s a competent, pleasant read, and there are some revelations about Mitch and Jenny later that helps to colour their characters. I would have liked more hints about them earlier, and I think the treatment of Mitch’s injury might have been brought in earlier and played more into his behaviour in the book.

Grade: C+

Summary:

Texas Cattleman’s Club Rule #3: Do the Right Thing

With no warning, Mitch Hayward’s superefficient, self–effacing assistant has done a complete 180—becoming captivating before his very eyes. And on one very special night, the interim club president gives in to this brand–new temptation. Instinct takes control.

But protecting Jenny Watson’s heart from his own bachelor ways is the only right thing to do. If he has to, he’ll even set up the lovely Jenny with someone more suited to her hearth–and–home desires. And then he’ll pretend that he’s not jealous of her every look, her every touch…

Read an excerpt.