HaBO: Contemporary Revenge Romance in the Beach House

You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!

This Help a Bitch Out request comes from Mara, who found this book long ago in a vacation rental: 

I've recently discovered your site and countless posts laters, I'm hooked! I've only started exploring the romance genre this year, but I'm having a lot of fun figuring out what works for me. This exploration had made me want to go back to the first romance I ever read when I was a teenager to see how it holds up. There was a group of us in a beach rental, and we would scour the mass markets that were kept in the house and giggle at the sex scenes. This would have been in the early to mid 2000s.

I remember the plot quite well but none of the names involved, so I'm hoping you can help this bitch out…

Okay, so I'm pretty sure that it's a Harlequin Presents, because I remember the white cover with the red border. I feel like the main characters had vaguely weird names (maybe his was Jace? Or Azure? Something unusual) and I remember that it was set in England, because to 16 year old me that meant it was FANCY.

So the heroine is the daughter of a Mean Business Tycoon (seriously, he seemed like Scrooge McDuck) who dies and leaves her the business. Alas, because she has a vagina, she cannot hope to successfully keep the business going and the board tells her she needs a man to help her. What can save her?

Only marrying her ex-fiance who she caught cheating on her! Because of course!

Backstory is that her mom died when she was little and she grew up kind of sheltered and awkward. She always had a crush on the hero, who was older and I think in her social circle. Once she turns 18, out of nowhere he starts courting her. She's all googly eyed and excited, but wants to hold off on the sex until they get married because she's young and shy and figures it will all be okay after they're married. Alas, once they're engaged, somebody (maybe Mean Business Tycoon? Maybe hero's spiteful ex?) tells her that he's only marrying her so that he can become the heir-apparent to Mean Business Tycoon's empire. She's devastated and goes to confront him, only to find him drunk with some half-naked bimbo at his apartment.

She breaks it off… but what she doesn't know is that hero guy has always had a (completely inappropriate, jail-baity) crush on her and snatched her off the market at the first given opportunity.

BUT THEN Mean Business Tycoon tells him that she's only marrying him out of a sense of duty to the business and that's why she's withholding the sex. He gets drunk and picks up the bimbo but can't get it up so nothing actually happened. He's devastated and retreats to America to lick his wounds.

I don't remember what excuse he gives as to why he'll help her, but in his POV it's clear that screwing her is on his bucket list and this is how he will get the ultimate revenge on her – penis revenge. They get married and she thinks it's in name only, but hero has other ideas. He takes her back to his house (maybe there's a Mrs. Danvers-esque housekeeper? I might be making that up, since I did read Rebecca around this time) and gives her a separate room. Only, PSYCH, he snatches her out of bed, hauls her back to his lair, and has his wicked way with her. I think he's surprised she's a virgin and I remember her being resentful that she can't even hate him for hurting her when he pops her cherry- his dick is that magical.

However, despite the orgasmic bliss that he lavishes on her, she shows great fortitude, lays as still as possible, and freezes him out. The next day, however, he meets her at her former apartment where her ex-boyfriend tries to kiss her into leaving the hero (I'm realizing that there's a lot of forced affection in this book…).

As punishment, the hero goes down on her (that'll show her) and she can't pretend that it isn't amazing. She relents and shows appropriate appreciation of his hot, hot lovin' — he then commands her to never freeze him out again.

There's a lot of sex and furtive pining after this. He realizes he can't bear to fuck her when he loves her so much but she hates him, so he decides to leave.

After 200 pages, he tells her that he's going back to America and she flings herself on him and his magic wang and begs them not to go. They have a 5 minute adult conversation where they sort out their previous misunderstandings, declare their mutual love, and have sex on the leather chair in the library. *curtains*

Does anyone know this book? Thank you thank you! 

LIBRARY ! Sorry, I got all excited for a minute.

Do you recognize this book? I'm pretty sure the retelling of it here may be better than the book itself, but here's hoping that this book is completely epic awesome.