Release Date: 18 November 2013
Laurel will do anything to save her Santorini inn from the powerful Damon family, and that includes manipulating Andrew Damon, the man they’ve sent to get her off the property. Andrew might have a reputation for being irresistible to women, but she won’t have any problem resisting him. This is war, after all, and the Damons drew their weapons first.
Andrew has spent most of his life chasing women and wasting time, but he’s determined to do his duty by his family, even if that means ousting an infuriating (and gorgeous) widow from the inn that legally belongs to the Damons. He doesn’t expect to fall for her. And he definitely doesn’t expect to discover that he’s been played.
My Opinion 4 STARS
**ARC Provided by Netgalley and Noelle Adams for an honest review**
Laurel owns a little inn in Santorini which the Damon family have now claimed they own. The inn was a gift from her now deceased husband as a wedding present.
Laurel has lived her life knowing she can only rely on herself to keep things going. Even her husband had money problems that he didn't tell her about until it was too late. She has had to bring herself up from the age of 17 where she worked in a strip club to earn money before she was married. She was often looked at and even harassed by the local sheriff as she would not give him a chance.
Andrew Damon is the playboy of the family and they are used to him not completing anything he starts and his relationships only last a few weeks at most. With his brother taking time off to start his fledgling relationship with Marietta Andrew is now in charge with sorting out the inn problem in Santorini.
A day early he has flown to the island where he finds a stemming woman in trouble with her car and two old men arguing. He swiftly dispatches the old men and helps the woman with her flat tire. Her comes from a family with manners after all.
The attraction starts from the moment they see each other, she knows who he is, but not the other way round. She has a plan and starts on it but in the end cannot complete it that day or ever. She has always had trouble flirting.
The next day Andrew goes to meet the lady at the in and finds Laurel there. Not that he knew her name. Laurel is both pleasant and harsh towards him and he finds she works very long hard hours for her business. Not at all the trophy wife he thought her to be. She works so long and hard that she often has back problems.
They both see the truth of the other person, Andrews hidden caring nature and Laurels hard working truthfulness, but they still have to settle the issue of who really owns the inn.
After an accident with one of her dogs and both slipping up in their attraction, they go through all the documents that she has in regards to the inn. They eventually find a document claiming the her late-husbands grandfather had paid off his debts.
A trip to France and his brothers skills soon find out however that the paperwork was forged and therefore the true owner of the inn are the Damons and their company. This leaves Laurel homeless and penniless. Other issues arose in which she does not defend herself and she is a ken back to Santorini to gather her things and leave.
A very upset Andrew goes back to his family home leaving Laurel behind. He can't believe that he had her pegged all wrong, his sense of people has never been wrong before. He ends up going out to the tree house that he had started as a kid and spends the next few days building until he has finished the tree house. Something he knew he would have loved as a child. His brother turns up as he finishes saying her was asked to come back early as he was told Andrew was having a breakdown of some kind.
They have a small chat and Andrew says that he will be finishing the Santorini case. He needs the closure. But his brother also says that perhaps there is a bigger picture and maybe they jumped the gun on what Laurel was really like.
Andrew goes back to the inn and finds Laurel is no longer there, that she has hardly taken anything even clothes and has had to leave the dogs behind for now. He finds her working in a local tavern working double shifts, in pain and no longer smiling. Know-one else sees her pain or that she is unhappy.
He stays at the tavern and stays until her shift is ended then helps her hobble back to her very tiny rented room to rest her back and provide her with painkillers.
The next day in the best suit she has Laurel goes back to the inn and gives Andrew her resume asking if she can apply for the managers position at the hotel. She can't do the tavern work any longer. She tells his the painful truth about her. He takes her round the inn showing her the plans that he has for updating the inn and she sees that he has put in many of the changes that she had told him that she would have liked to do. He has even purchased the noisy properly next door.
But he tells her she cannot be the manager of the inn as he plans to take that position himself. But that he would like her to be his equal, he knows nothing about the daily running of the inn. He plans to stay there and he wants her t be a part of it with him.
Its a sweet books and I'm glad that Andrew found his happiness, but we know by the end of the book that the third book in the series is going to feature on the Damon that is in America and the third Damon cousin.
A good read.
No comments:
Post a Comment