This HaBO comes from Olivia, who seems to have been searching for quite a while:
So I can’t seem to find this book, I’ve looked on and off for years. I’m pretty certain it was one I read at least ten years ago when I was still checking out romance books from the library instead of buying them. Horrible for when you want to re-read something.
I believe it might have been a Regency (but who knows, cause that was back before I knew more about English history, so I paid less attention to the time periods). It starts off with the hero’s father (I believe) dying, and the heroine is younger than him, late teens possibly. After the funeral, she goes to “comfort” him; he’s totally drunk and thinks she is the woman he has been courting. Pretty sure she doesn’t know that until after the “comforting” (or she could’ve been all “whatever, he’s hot, in pain and I’m in love with him, who cares if he thinks I’m so and so”). She ends up pregnant, and he has no idea he was ever with her.
I know the child stayed in her life, either she cared for it and just stayed in the country or a family member passed it off as theirs. I can’t remember if the hero ended up marrying the woman he was courting or not. Years later, they meet again, possibly starts courting the heroine, and she starts freaking out over the secret kid, or he sees the kid (a boy) and wants to know why there’s a kid who looks just like him, and who his mother is.
I thought it might have been a Jane Feather book, but I looked at some of her older things and nothing fit. Also none of my Google-fu or keyword searches on Paperbackswap have been working, and I really want to know what this book is!
We all love a secret baby plot. Does anyone know this one?
I really hope someone know this since I’m pretty positive that I have read this also.
I hope someone knows it because I want to read it.
I thought it might be a Jo Beverley or Mary Jo Putney, but nope. Thjis is driving me crazy.
Is there also a house renovation going on that the heroine is somehow involved with? I read something like this, but she wasn’t sure the child of the bricklayer? carpenter? was hers, but the hero coming around clued her in because of the child’s mannerisms? If so, I read this in the last year and I am going to have to go find it.
Oh, I like the sound of the book Kelly describes.
This does sound so familiar–though I guess it’s a popular trope–but I can’t think of the name. I read it (not as a new release) 4-5 years ago.
I read this book!
I just have the worst memory for book names….
Could it be a Judith McNaught?
SPOILER HEAVY COMMENT!!! Kelly, I read the same book you did in the last year, too, and I don’t think it’s the one mentioned in HABO bcz the kid is not the hero’s son. The heroine lived with her stepmom and dad at her family estate, the hero had just inherited some rundown pile of potential elegance not far away, and she stepped in to do some interior decorating. Her kid had been given away to a minister and his wife after which the heroine had no contact with him, but the minister etc. died, the kid got sent to live with the bricklayer, came to work on the house, drama ensued when the heroine recognized him bcz of LEAVING OUT SPOILER HERE. Anyway, I’m going crazy trying to remember the name of this book. Would love to re-read it, and I think I need to read the HABO book, too!
Meg, that is totally the book I was thinking of and I’m sad it wasn’t the HABO, but now I want to read it again so much. I can’t find it in the list of books I’ve read in the last year, so I’ll have to delve deeper. I want to read the HABO too!
I know this one! It’s Loretta Chase. Not Quite a Lady, I think?
It’s Not Quite A Lady by Loretta Chase. I finally know one!!
Isn’t it a Grace Burrowes????
Missp and Cheryl,
That’s the one I was thinking was the HABO. Now I can read it again and hopefully someone will find the HABO because I want to read it again as well.
YES THANK YOU Missip and Cheryl! Now I can go re-read that Loretta Chase. Still want to read the HABO book, so I really hope it gets identified.
will wait for it to go on sale. Not Quite A Lady is $5.99 for the kindle and not in my library.
I have looked and though I have found similar books, nothing that really stands out as the HaBO. Grrr.
I really wanna know what this books is.
Not the book you’re talking about but it reminds me of Marry In Haste by Jane Aiken Hodge, in which a disgraced governess weds a man who needs a wife to prove he’s ‘grown up’ so he can get an increased allowance from extremely cool grandmother who controls the noble pursestrings. He takes his besotted bride off to Portugal for some diplomatic reason, gets involved in a rebellion or something and she covers for him when he’s shot escaping authorities and then they hook up and he DOES NOT REMEMBER banging his own wife and insists the kid is not his as he would never not ever have slept with her.
I love this book so hard.
I read it from the library and ended up getting a used copy because I loved it. Also the rebel heiress by the same author is really good…activist beta male hero=my catnip
@ Lora – it was reminding me of Marry in Haste too! He’s feverish, and ends up with a high fever and infection after the hooking up, so he has a decent excuse for not remembering, and she thinks his memory is going to come back and doesn’t want to upset him so she doesn’t say anything. I also love it that he does a grovel BEFORE he finds out the child is his [which he does in a way I won’t spoil], and basically not only grovels but offers a practical way of making things right, beyond just words.
I think it could be Princess Charming by Elizabeth Thornton. It has mistaken sex, secret baby and a mystery years later. Gwyn Barrie and Jason Radley meet again years later. While they try and discover who is trying to kill her, Jason discovers he is the father. Jason’s grandmother kept them apart because the family needed him to marry money but they have always loved each other.
I have not read Princess Charming, but the description specifically says that the protagonists became distant after the hero’s brother died, which sounds like the timeline of grief sex that was described.
Can it be Celest Bradley’s Scroundrel In My Dreams. Of I remember correctly it was similar to the HaBO but it’s a very long time since I’ve read it and can’t find it.
@ Stella K I thought of the Bradley too until I got to the boy part – the moppet in question in the runaway Bride series is a girl
Arg, I’m not sure if either of them are right. Bradley’s seems like it might be to recent, but could fit. I know I’ve read Thornton’s and it was a long time ago, so it could possibly be it, except the hero didn’t seem to even know the heroine was there in the beginning of the book, so they certainly weren’t in love. Smoosh the two together and it would probably be the right book, lol.
It sort of reminds me of the contemporary romance Seducing Simon by Maya Banks.