This HaBO request comes from Blair, who is looking for a very scandalous that she can’t seem to remember:
I’m looking for a book I read years ago. I’ve looked everywhere and for the life of me cannot find any hint of this book. I would appreciate any help since it’s driving me crazy!
Here are the things I remember:
-The main character was wealthy woman that was recently widowed. She didn’t love her dead husband who was older and possibly cruel.
-A man that claims he’s entitled to the fortune arrives and seduces her.
-There’s a sex scene where he pleasures her with a string of pearls and tells her if she ever wants him to wear them. Later in the book, she wears them and they have sex in a stairwell.
-The end of the book reveals that the man was a spy all along (and I believe that he had been watching her from afar for a while before ever meeting her and loved her).
Well now that I will never look at jewelry the same way again, does anyone know this book? Help a Bitch out!
Ugh… this sounds so so familiar and I have no idea what the title is either. Now I’m going to be trying to figure it out for the rest of the day. If we are thinking about the same book then I remember said pearl scene took place in a carriage and that it was his “signature move” and that there were a number of women in Regency London going around wearing his pearls. Maybe that will tweak someone’s brain?
It kind of sounds like In too deep by Cherry Adair. It has the pearls and the spy, but she wasn’t widowed, it was her father who was wealthy.
I’m sure I’ve read this … I just can’t remember its name !!!. It sounds like one of Thea Devine’s books, or Robin Schone … but she doesn’t do spys. Oh well, off to the bookcases to see if it’s in my Old Skool bottom shelves .
This might be ‘Seductive’, by Thea Devine.
http://amazon.com/Seductive-Thea-Devine-ebook/dp/B00TNBLXN0/ref=la_B001ITVPSI_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1438100768&sr=1-1
I think Maria might have it. It certainly sounds like a Thea Devine type book. Or could it be one of Susan Johnson’s? Also known for sexy time jewelry. There was one with something to be worn… inside… with a pearl dangle. The problem with 40 years of romance reading is they all start to mingle in your brain.
Oh, if this is a historical, and the “pleasuring” occurred in a carriage, it’s somewhere in my Goodreads “read” list…and it’s going to drive me batty now.
What is it with pearls as sex beads? There was another HaBo with the same, uh, plot device, but it turned out to be a contemporary (by Cherry Adair iirc).
http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2012/08/s-habo-day-string-of-pearls-no-not-like-that/
Milly– I’m (almost) certain that the rampant distribution of pearl necklaces was from an early book in Alexandria Hawkins’ recent series where the guys all had convenient nicknames derived from their titles (Reign, Frost, Saint, etc.). I recall the carriage scene, but that heroine was a TERV (typical English Regency virgin). Maybe I’m forgetting a stairwell scene in that, but my vote is for Thea Devine or Susan Johnson.
I am 99-percent sure that this is a Susan Johnson novel, because I distinctly remember reading the pearl necklace part and saying “What? WHAT?” out loud ten or twelve times, because I was a very innocent twenty-something at the time. I also remember that her dead husband was a horrible human being; he was molesting their sons. I cannot for the life of me remember the title–it was a single word, like “Wicked” or “Sensual” or “Temptation”, and the cover was all pink petals, very symbolic.
Tempting by Susan Johnson has a heroine with two sons, but it doesn’t mention that she is widowed
I have no idea which book this is as it doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever read. Just wanted to say, sex in a stairwell? Does Not Appeal.
@Betsy – yes! You are right! Mine is a Hawkins book! Couldn’t look at a strand of pearls the same way after that! No spy in my suggestion
Seductive by Thea Devine
Betsy,
Is it All Night with a Rogue, right? And one of Sin’s friends points out, after she’s seen wearing the pearls, that he gives them to every woman he’s slept with.
Sorry for the tangent, Blair! It seems there are a lot of pearls going around…
The Susan Johnson book with the pearls scene is definitely Tempting. Not all of the other details match with Blair’s memories though. The husband is cruel but very much alive for most of the book. I want to say that he later dies falling down a mountain ravine but I could totally be making that up. The hero is not a spy as far as I recall. At the beginning of the book the repressed princess heroine watches through a door as he has sex with her friend. The friend then offers him up to her and all the crazy ensues. There might be something about an inheritance or money – I feel like there is a reason the husband won’t let her go and he uses their kids to force her to return to the marriage. Sorry I don’t remember more it is at least a decade since I read it but it was pretty much the first romance book I had read outside M&B or very tame Harlequin and I had a pretty similar reaction to the Pearl scene as Lara previously commented.