SOLVED. Heroine with PTSD kidnapped for revenge, given deadline to bed her captor or her brother will suffer. [s]

[Cassandra]

I read this book about thirty to thirty-five years ago, but it could well have been older than that. I don't believe I got it as a new book. I think it was a paperback, about the size of an old Harlequin, but I have no idea what company published it. It was probably only 200 or 250 pages at most.

I hesitate to call the male lead a "hero", but I think his name was Lazar, so that's what I'll call him instead. The heroine might have been named Claire or Clare. I'm less sure of her name, but that's the name I'm going to use anyway. I'm pretty sure Claire was English, but she might have been American. Lazar was Greek, and although the book starts in her country, most of it is set in Greece.

The set up is that the girl had been attacked by a rapist in the past. She was rescued, possibly by her brother, before she was violated, but she was left with severe insecurities. Even after she reached adulthood, her family had never left her on her own overnight.

Then her brother was given a chance for a trip to Greece. I don't remember whether their parents were dead or just off somewhere, but the brother was going to pass up his chance for the trip rather than leave his sister alone in their home for a few days. When she found out about it, she insisted that he go and convinced him that she was much better and would be fine. He finally agreed to go, and although she was scared and didn't sleep well, she managed to get through the first night or two on her own without a severe panic attack. She felt very proud of herself for that and even thought that perhaps she would be able to live on her own and have a normal life.

Then Lazar shows up at her home to tell her that her brother was hurt and that she needs to come to Greece at once to be with him. Concern for her brother overrides her usual caution, and she goes with the stranger. When she reaches his home, her brother was nowhere to be seen, and her host calmly informs her that he deceived her in order to bring her to his home.

It seems that Lazar's sister had accused Claire's brother of seducing and ruining her. Lazar has brought Claire to his home in Greece in order to take revenge by doing the same to her. She panics, jumps up, and tries to run. When he learns that she thought she was about to be raped, he explains that his sister was seduced, not raped. He had planned to seduce Claire, but after her display of panic, he tells her that now she will have to come to him, and he gives her a deadline in which to do so if she doesn't want anything bad happening to her brother. I don't think he actually threatened to kill her brother, but I think the guy was in danger of getting a severe beating and possible injuries. She was allowed to speak to her brother on the phone to verify that Lazar did have him stashed somewhere. With no idea where her brother is being held, Claire feels she has no choice but to comply. After all, she doesn't know any Greek and has no idea how to seek help from the local authorities.

And now I am going to spoil the remainder of the book.

Although Lazar had decided that she has to initiate her deflowering, he is not above courting her a bit. He takes her sightseeing, buys her a hat to protect her delicate complexion from the sun, says something in Greek, and scolds her gently for not taking his word for it when he told her that the hat looked charming on her. She blushed at having him call her charming and doesn't bother reminding him that she doesn't speak Greek.

He also sends a selection of bathing suits to her room. On her final day, she puts on the most demure selection and goes out to the beach for a swim. He joins her and teases her a bit, saying he knew she wouldn't wear the bikinis. After some more swimming/flirting, they wind up necking on the beach, and she panics and runs inside when she realizes that he's turning her on rather than horrifying and repulsing her.

I think he confronts her about her latest panic attack and she tells him about how she had been attacked before. After comforting her and calming her, he tells her that he has to leave for a few days to take care of something and that she doesn't have to worry about that deadline anymore.

The next thing she knows, she and her brother are being shipped back home. It seems that Lazar's sister accused an innocent man in the hopes that she could escape her stifling existence, but she broke down and confessed that she made up the whole thing when she learned what her brother had nearly done to a girl who had already been attacked by a rapist in her past. We aren't told whether she would have come clean to save the innocent young man being punished for something he hadn't done.

Claire goes home and tries to put the whole episode behind her. Then something (probably something her brother says) gets her to question her brother about what happened at the end of their time in Greece. Her brother says that after the misunderstanding had been cleared up, Lazar had offered to marry Claire in order to protect her reputation. Her brother had declined on her behalf and explained to Lazar that the doctors who had treated her after her attack had already explained to her family that after her trauma, she probably would be unable to be a real wife to any man.

Learning that Lazar had been willing to marry her, Claire goes out and buys a Greek/English dictionary, looks up some of the pet names he used for her, and learns that he had been calling her endearments such as beloved during her stay. Too timid to write frankly and tell him that she's in love with him, she sends him a store-bought greeting card and signs it "Love" or "With Love", hoping that he will have learned enough about her to know that she wouldn't write something like that on a card as a breezy, meaningless phrase.

She's hoping for a letter from him, but instead, he calls, asks her if she meant what she wrote on the card, and challenges her to prove it. He has already made arrangements for her to return to Greece. When she arrives, he tells her bleakly that he loves and wants to marry her but that he doesn't trust himself to be able to restrain himself from a physical display of his feelings for her. When she tells him that she is no longer afraid with him, he is afraid to believe it until he embraces her and she doesn't pull away or panic.

HEA

I think I discarded the book because of all the reasons I disliked Lazar. I couldn't forgive a man who would make his sister's life so miserable that she would accuse an innocent man of ruining her just to escape. I couldn't forgive a man who would threaten to harm a girl's brother if she didn't go to bed with him, no matter what the brother had done. I couldn't forgive how easily he believed his sister's accusations and how quickly he stopped believing her just because he became sweet on a girl. And I had a real problem with the way a girl who had been so traumatized by a near-rape was portrayed as being cured by developing the hots for the guy who was blackmailing her into sex with threats of violence against her brother.

I can't help thinking that there must have been something good in the writing for me to remember this much about the book after all these years, but the main reason I want to know which book it was is because it's the only romance novel I ever read in which a woman was attacked and suffered severe trauma long after. The fact that she suffered that way even though she wasn't actually raped makes it all the more significant. Another point that I really appreciated was that she made Lazar prove that he had learned enough about who she was as a person to take what she wrote on the card seriously.

It wasn't enough for me to overlook what I disliked in the book, but I would like to know the title and author for reference.

[ImaBookaddict]

Devil In Disguise by Jessica Steele?

[Cassandra]

Thank you so much!

That has got to be it. Same names, same plot. The first publication date is in the right time frame. That has got to be it.

I think I had the Harlequin edition. The Mills and Boon cover looks entirely unfamiliar. The Harlequin cover doesn't look familiar, but it doesn't look unfamiliar in the way the Mills and Boon cover does, if you know what I mean.

I can't believe it. Twice now, I've posted a query about a little-known book that's more than 40 years old and had the Goodreads community come through with title and author in less than 24 hours. You guys are amazing. In addition to my gratitude to ImaBookaddict for the title and author of this book, I would like to express my thanks to the people who manage this forum and made this resource available to all of us.

Anyway, I'm certain that's it and would appreciate it if this thread could be moved to the SOLVED folder.

Many thanks for the kind assistance.