Review: Sweet, if a little dated, story about making a family
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 18, 2011
This is another of Greene's backlist reissues from when she wrote as Jeanne Grant for Berkley in the 1980's which she's been updating as they roll out and I think she's done a fairly thoughtful job here, even with a couple of anachronisms here and there.Nunnish, plain Leigh has just finished up a huge accounting project for Brian's firm and approaches him at a company party afterwards.  The handsome playboy had been the subject of a gushing write-up in a social column listing him as a perfect genetic specimen and she wants to pay him ten grand to be the father of her baby.  She has no interest in having sex with him or having any contact with him after the baby's born, but before she can explain what she really wants, he starts taking apart her bland exterior, revealing a very attractive woman under some ugly clothes.  When she gets around to shoving him off of her and telling him why she approached him, he tells her he would want to be involved with the baby and he'll have to think about it.He finally decides and the two set out their terms: they'll marry before they start the in-vitro process, Leigh won't be required to have sex with Brian, he'll be free to keep seeing his mistresses discreetly, she'll handle the public hostess/wifely duties that do along with his professional life and they'll live at her estate.  Neither turns out to be what the other expected though and romance blooms between the two, definitely against Leigh's plans.Both Brian and Leigh were easy to like.  Because of her family past, Leigh had horribly low self-esteem and honestly never expected a single thing from Brian beyond his swimmers.  She was fiercely protective of the people in her life that she loved and she wanted this baby so badly she was willing to come out of her self-imposed shell to ask for Brian's help.  When she started accepting that she was liked and needed for who she was, she was able to open up to Brian and tell him about her past.Brian was what I like to call a Harlequin Playboy.  He wasn't really as much of a male tramp as people thought and as soon as the ring slid on his finger, he never touched another woman even if it looked like he did.  He wanted to be a good, loving parent as much as Leigh did, but he wasn't going to settle for a platonic relationship with her to go along with it.  At times he came off as a little bit arrogant and he tended to tell Leigh what to do a lot, but that's one of those anachronisms I think.  That stuff wouldn't have been out of place in a 1980's-ish book.  If I remember right, it would have been swooned over.While the subject matter of this book is a little dated and there are a few things in it that might make a contemporary reader cringe a little, underneath is all is a nice little story about a couple falling in love and starting a family, just in reverse order.  This is one of Greene's nicer re-issues so far.