The Sheriff and the Impostor Bride

Follow That Baby #3

by Elizabeth Bevarly

HER PREGNANT TWIN WAS MISSING!

Suddenly it was up to Rachel Jensen, the sister most likely to land in a sticky situation, to save her beloved twin from a hotbed of trouble. But Rachel hadn't counted on strapping Oklahoma sheriff Riley Hunter. The darkly exotic temptation in a tan uniform was convinced she was the missing mom-to-be. And now Rachel was torn between continuing the charade to protect her family or confiding in this honorable lawman who'd captured her heart...

Genres: Romance, Harlequin, Fiction

192 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 23, 1998

About the author

Elizabeth Bevarly was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky and earned her BA with honors in English from the University of Louisville in 1983. Although she can’t recall ever wanting to be anything but a novelist-oh, all right, she toyed briefly with becoming an archaeologist, until she realized how awful she looked in khaki and flannel, and there was a brief fling with the interior decorator thing, until she realized she had trouble distinguishing chintz from moiré, and… (Where was I? Oh, yeah. My brilliant career.) Anyway, her career side trips before making the leap to writing included stints working as a bartender, a waitress, a movie theater cashier, a soap-hawker for Crabtree & Evelyn, an apparel-hawker for The Limited, and a bridal registry consultant for a major department store. She also did time as an editorial assistant for a medical journal, where she learned the correct spellings and meanings of a variety of words (like microscopy and histological) which, with any luck at all, she will never use again in this life.

She wrote her first novel when she was twelve years old. It was 32 pages long-and that was with college rule notebook paper-and featured three girls named Liz, Marianne and Cheryl, who explored the mysteries of a haunted house. Her friends Marianne and Cheryl proclaimed it “Brilliant! Spellbinding! Kept me up past dinnertime reading!” Those rave reviews only kindled the fire inside her to write more.

Since sixth grade, Elizabeth has gone on to complete more than 60 works of contemporary romance. Her novels regularly appear on the USA Today and Waldenbooks bestseller lists, and The Thing About Men was a New York Times Extended List bestseller. She’s been nominated for the prestigious RITA Award, has won the coveted National Readers’ Choice Award, and Romantic Times magazine has seen fit to honor her with two-count ‘em TWO-Career Achievement Awards. Her books have been translated into two dozen languages and published in three dozen countries, and there are more than ten million copies in print worldwide. She has claimed as residences Washington, DC, northern Virginia, southern New Jersey and Puerto Rico, but she now resides back in her native Kentucky with her husband and son and two very troubled cats where she fully intends to remain.

Reviews

[TINNGG · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 actually.

I finished this because I felt weird about dnfing two in a row by the same author.

So who do I root for here - the h who comes across as somewhere between a total ditz and TSTL, or the H with what looks to be dodgy ethics?

And then there's the backstory which really is important but is mostly given in bits and pieces.

The h has an identical twin sister, you see. And this sister formed a relationship with the oldest son? of a prominent family, and got knocked up. Of course, the father to be got killed, and something caused her to decide someone was out to get her, so she ran. She called the h the day before the story began, asking her to come to this one-horse town. Then she bolted. The h showed up, got a panicky phone call from her, eventually telling her to go home. The H, meanwhile, has finally received a description of the missing person AKA the h's sister.

You know, if someone knocked on the door right after I'd received that phone call, I would not have answered the door. Cop or no cop (which the H is). But, the h answers, and proceeds to lie through her teeth, though not in any convincing way, and in such a manner as to make no sense whatsoever.

He requests she come to the station later. Instead of bolting, she does. Then he takes her car keys.

Eventually, he figures out she's not who she claims to be, storms in, and kicks the door down. (rental unit, btw).

Ok, this isn't a criminal here; it's a missing person. His constant demands for her to go in for questioning is...well, if she's missing in the first place, she must have a good reason. Why would a cop be confronting her like that? Especially if he thinks she's pregnant. And in any case, I don't think a missing persons report can be filed by just anyone, so what's the deal?

[Sylvia · Rating 3 out of 5]

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