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 HaBO comes to us from Lindsay, who wants to find a romantic suspense-ish sounding romance:
Hey ladies! Long time reader, first time caller here. I am desperately seeking the first romance novel I ever read (at age, like, 10, yikes) but I can’t remember the title, and so I turn to you. This would have been roughly 20 years ago in the late 80s or early 90s.
My mother received this book as a birthday present from one of the mothers of the children in her daycare. It had a distinctive pink cover with flowers on it, and the title and author written in some kind of scripty font, and being the precious wee I was, I snatched it from her and started paging through it one day when she wasn’t looking.
The plot, I think was that the heroine is kidnapped and ends up falling for her kidnapper while they both try to avoid being killed. The part I remember in detail that’s stuck with me for two decades (and has probably informed a lot of my favorite tropes) is the hero and heroine (who don’t initially like one another, probably because he’s kidnapped her) end up in a cabin on their own. One thing leads to another and they have sex on the rug in front of the fire place and the hero realizes she’s a virgin; I believe because she tells him after the fact. He curses himself for taking her virginity on a rug instead of the bed and at that point, my mom caught me with the contraband and I never saw the book again.
I want to say the author was Danielle Steele, but I don’t know if that’s correct. I’d love to re-read this now that I’m old enough to understand what’s going on, so any leads would be lovely!
I hope that rug was soft and plush and not itchy and threadbare.
Maybe Perfect by Judith McNaught? Movie star falsely convicted of murder escapes from prison, kidnaps virgin heroine. They end up in a cabin. Zach and Julie I think are the characters.
This sounds a bit like Judith McNaught’s Perfect (which is AMAZING). Here’s the original cover: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1401363.Perfect
Contemporary or historical? Cause there are sooo many historicals were I’ve seen this…so I’m probably not going to be any help.
OMG PERFECT IS IT I recognize the cover!! Thank you so much! Now to find it on Amazon!!
Also memory tells me that it was some kind of fur rug, I think bear, so. Threadbare and itchy.
I was going to say Perfect as well. I hated that book so much, even though it seems to be on a lot of people’s “Best Romance of All Time EVAH” lists. I don’t think a kidnap victim has any agency or can give truly informed consent. In fairness, I threw the book away before I finished it because i was so furious with the plot, so I may have missed something that redeemed everyone close to the end. I just couldn’t take another page of it.