Flirting with Trouble

Thoroughbred Legacy #1

by Elizabeth Bevarly

Publicist Marnie Roberts knows bad days—and today is the worst. A ruined suit, a broken heel… and her client just shot a man. Even the victim is the father of a man Marnie knows a little too well.…

Eight years ago Marnie experienced seven days of bliss with Australian horse trainer Daniel Whittleson. But after good times, hot sex and what she thought was true love, Daniel disappeared without a goodbye. Now Marnie is going Down Under to defend her trigger-happy client…and finally confront the man she's never been able to forget.

Genres: Romance, Contemporary

256 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 1, 2008

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

[Darlene Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Publicist Marnie Roberts knows bad days--and today is the worst. A ruined suit, a broken heel... and her client just shot a man. Even worse: the victim is the father of a man Marnie knows a little too well....
Eight years ago Marnie experienced seven days of bliss with Australian horse trainer Daniel Whittleson. But after good times, hot sex and what she thought was true love, Daniel disappeared without a goodbye. Now Marnie is going Down Under to defend her trigger-happy client...and finally confront the man she's never been able to forget.

[Ann (Noumena12) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughbred Legacy #1

I wish publishers would put better covers on their books. This book was way better than the cover would lead me to believe.

The Preston Family is building a thoroughbred racing dynasty in Kentucky and Australia. However, disaster seems to be striking at every turn and the family's legacy may be about to crumble…unless they can find out who is targeting the family and their horses. This series has characters that made me care. It also had mystery, intrigue and, of course, romance. I plowed through this series quickly….dying to find out what would happen next. My only disappointment is that there isn't a 13th book to the series. I really want the surprise hero in The Secret Heiress to find his own happiness.

I have to admit that I'm something of a book cover snob. I would never have picked up these books in a bookstore. However, Flirting with Trouble, the first book in the series, is by an author I enjoy. Because I stumbled across it as an ebook and downloaded it, I didn't actually see the cover until I opened the book on my iPod ebook reader. Good thing!!! I would have been disappointed to miss out on the Thoroughbred Legacy series.

The series consists of the following books:
(1) Flirting with Trouble by Elizabeth Bevarly
(2) Biding Her Time by Wendy Warren
(3) Picture of Perfection by Kristin Gabriel
(4) Something to Talk About by Joanne Rock
(5) Millions to Spare by Barbara Dunlop
(6) Courting Disaster by Kathleen O'Reilly
(7) Who's Cheatin' Who by Maggie Price
(8) A Lady's Luck by Ken Casper
(9) Darci's Pride by Jenna Mills
(10) Breaking Free by Loreth Anne White
(11) An Indecent Proposal by Margot Early
(12) The Secret Heiress by Bethany Campbell

[TINNGG · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

I don't like long separations. At least she didn't fall over with her legs in the air. And they did eventually work things out. Still...

Our H met the h while in town for a big race. And...in his immaturity, he failed at time management. He missed the big race, the horse lost, and he got fired. So he left a letter in her mailbox and skipped town. Nice.

8 years later, he runs into her after a client at the PR firm she works with shoots his father. He shows animosity (uh...), she puts him in his place. Eventually, she gets everything straightened out, then gets caught kissing him and gets fired.

He finally got his crap together, and admitted that he was a coward before, apologized, etc.

Things of note regarding the TB industry, it would be danged hard for something like that to happen. DNA testing isn't done with blood but with hair follicles. And the sire would have to be a TB as a first gen. outcross wouldn't be competitive. Also, the TB is so inbred that at this point, they likely wouldn't be able to say for sure which stallion. That actually happened a while back - a coming 2 year old dropped a surprise load and the only thing they could say for sure was that the sire of the surprise filly was one of the colts at the training barn. They ruled that the filly could be raced but not used for breeding.

[Jen]

3.5