A Kiss is just a Kiss
By: by Sandra Clark.
Publisher: Mills & Boon; Harlequin Mills & Boon
Published: 1985
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 190
Description: After years of unhappiness trapped in a disastrous marriage with a wife basher, finally ending in a fatal accident, Amaryllis - Lis - is left free, but now must provide for herself and her small daughter.

Her dead husband's sister Mandy, a spoiled, selfish jet setter, married to an up and coming businessman, offers Lis and her 8-year old daughter Tammy, a couple of months in Switzerland, where Lis can be temporary nanny to Mandy's 7-year old twins, while also looking after Tammy.

When Lis arrives at the castle where Mandy is a guest of the owner of the firm her husband works for - the supercilious, arrogant Jamie McTarrant - Mandy, unwilling to introduce Lis as her sister-in-law, relegates her to servant status as 'Mary' the twins nanny.

When Lis accidentally enters Jamie's private bathroom, which is close to her own and the children's quarters, on their first night in the castle, finding him totally naked and about to take a shower, he gets completely the wrong idea of Lis's morals and thinks she was deliberately trying to entice him....!!

When he later finds out the 3rd child is Lis's own daughter, he is convinced she is an unmarried mother, who spreads it about with all and sundry and treats her abominably every chance he gets, slut-shaming her and sexually harassing her at every turn.

The only 'romance' in the whole book is Jamie's constant sexual harassment, which borders on near violence and almost rape.

His lukewarm apologies for his behaviour at the end, don't come across as too convincing, going by his appalling treatment of Lis beforehand - would have been a better ending if she kneed him in the groin and clobbered him to boot - though this would make the book a bit more realistic and therefore, NOT a HEA M&B.....unfortunately.