This HaBO comes from Kim. She’s looking for a romance she bought through Columbia House quite a while ago:
She’s a virginal beauty with flowing raven black curls, violet eyes, and a tiny waist that accentuated the “flare of her hips.” She’s an apprentice to a very old famous painter, known for getting a little “inspiration” from his muses, if ya know what I mean.
The lead is tall, has tawny hair, a broad chest, chiseled features, business man of sorts who has a past, including a beautiful crazy wife, described as having doll-like features.
The leads don’t like each other at first, but then eventually the sexual tension builds. Deflowering ensues.
It’s revealed that the old artist she’s apprenticing with is her father – one of the models he slept with is the mother. There is a plot of some sort to acquire a fortune, involving the male leads wife, and another male figure trying to seduce the beautiful young apprentice. The climax ends with a battle between the two men and the apprentice fighting off the crazy ex-wife. As per usual, all ends dramatically, but well.
If anyone has a clue, I’d be grateful. I read this book somewhere around 1990. I ordered it through the book version of Columbia House.
This book sounds bonkers and I know several of you MUST HAVE IT!
I know I’ve read this. Is it an old Anne Stuart title?
Wow I’m having a bad day at work and I read this as Art Apprentice Realizes Her Mentor is Fat.
@Bronte There is an Anne Stuart with a woman who was a famous artists muse, but the famous artist was her (much older) ex husband and he is murdered or dies at the beginning of the novel.
I’ve never heard of this book, but I kind of want to read it LOL
Could it be Mistral’s daughter by Judith Krantz?
I don’t really remember the business man and the crazy wife, but there is a painter that slept with the heroines mother (and grandmother, I believe)
sounds bizarre enough that I’d like to read it.
Doesn’t sound like Mistral’s Daughter at all, to me. I don’t think I’ve read it but I watched the mioniseries.
Here’s the description form Amazon: They were three generations of magnificent red-haired beauties born to scandal, bred to success, bound to a single extraordinary man–Julien Mistral, the painter, the genius, the lover whose passions had seared them all. Maggy–Flamboyant mistress of Mistral’s youth, the toast of Paris in the ’20s. Her luminous flesh was immortalized in the paintings that made Mistral legendary. Teddy–Maggy’s daughter, the incomparable cover girl who lived fast and left as her legacy Mistral’s dazzling love child. Fauve–Mistral’s daughter, the headstrong, fearless glory girl whose one dark secret drove her to rule the world of high fashion and to risk everything in a feverish search for love. From the ’20s Paris of Chanel, Colette, Picasso and Matisse to New York’s sizzling new modeling agencies of the ’50s, to the model ward of the ’70s, Mistral’s Daughter captures the explosive glamour of life at the top of the worlds of art and high fashion. Judith Krantz has given us a glittering international tale as spellbinding as her other celebrated best-sellers,
Gah, I looked up Anne Sturt and Judith Krantz titles and no luck. I’ll know it when I see the cover, since it has that classic bodice ripper cover art with the male lead dramatically holding the female lead, with her long black curly hair blowing in the wind. Alas, the search continues…