Lovers’ Knot

by Hayton Monteith

The last man society beauty Valentina Gilmartin ever expected to fall in love with was Danilo Cravick. Yet in seven short months the rugged Titan quarterback and notorious womanizer had become part of her life. Everything about Dan, from the velvet steel of his voice to the hungry passion of his kisses, told her that life without him could never be the same.

Val had always put her career before her heart. Now a San Francisco TV station made her the kind of offer that comes along once in a lifetime. Married or not, she wanted something from Dan - something she could keep and cherish. But how could she tell him that she wanted to bear his child, when soon they might be three thousand miles apart?

192 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1984

Reviews

[Naksed · Rating 3 out of 5]

A career-driven, commitment-weary journalist meets an equally commitment-phobe football star and the sizzle is scorching and instant. They adore each other and try their best to make a life together but they are both too insecure as well as ambitious to make compromises or even confess their love for each other, so they end up into these fiery arguments and then inevitably make up with another hot session in bed.

It takes their well-meaning, interfering, respective family members and friends (including a millionaire named Binkey), as well as a couple of cute pets, Gato the cat and Perro the dog, to push them towards matrimonial bliss.

Kudos to the author for making her heroine older than the hero (albeit only by two years but still, a very welcome novelty in a fictional romance world filled with May-December romances). I also thought it hilarious that the heroine frets over her stretch marks and she is a highly sexed pregnant lady and not at all fazed by it. When was the last time a romance heroine lathered her stretch marks up with a special salve? lol

But I didn't like that, at the beginning of the story, the heroine was surreptitiously stopping taking her pills and trying to get pregnant unbeknownst to her partner. The reason? He said he wasn't into marriage or babies, and she felt both her biological clock and their relationship were running out. That was just a crap reasoning on her part.

Still, he was a lot less likable and lacking in dimension. I never got the feeling he got over his commitment-phobia and he probably wouldn't have proposed to the heroine without the interference of his mom. (Another rarity in Harlequin universe: a manipulative mother-in-law who uses her powers to bring h and H together not apart.)

I REALLY didn't like that his eyes kept roaming to the available groupies and partying with his buddies even after they were married with a family. I don't think he actually physically cheated but I definitely get the feeling he came close to the line.

He just didn't think that his lifestyle ought to change, even after marriage and babies. I am glad that the heroine showed him she wouldn't sit meekly by the hearth coddling their babes while he was out carousing and he better watch himself.

But still, without the commitment coming from his heart and soul, I don't really see a stable happy ending for these two. Let's just say it is a happy for now, until the next time he gets photographed in the tabloids canoodling with a hot babe, and they bicker about it again for the thousandth time or she finally leaves him, babies, cat and dog in tow.

Overall a lighthearted romp rather than a draining angst-fest. I enjoyed it on the whole, thanks to the laughs and a heroine with a backbone.

[Lynn Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable read. Great chemistry between the characters. Slightly older woman (2 years) and younger man.