This HaBO is from Elle and I swear the request isn’t as naughty as the title makes it seem:
I would like to submit a request to the Bitchery for help regarding a book I stole from my mom as a teen.
In this book a woman goes to her mother’s house/store to clean it out after her passing. While there, she wears some of her mom’s dresses and jewelry.
The hero in the book later gifts her a pearl necklace. His name might be Philip? Also, he might be a spy, FBI/CIA agent, or possibly under cover.
I think I stole this book in the mid-late 90s. I think the hero is looking for something hidden in the store/house that the heroine doesn’t know about.
It might be by Nora Roberts, but I couldn’t find this book in her catalog. Can someone help me out?
We’ve had a slew of Phillips in HaBOs lately, haven’t we?
This feels like it might be a Susan Isaacs? It feels quite familiar to me.
A Linda Howard book, Kill and Tell fits some elements of this but it’s been a while since I’ve read it so I’m not sure if there is a pearl necklace. The hero is a cop, there is a secondary character who is a spy and it was more romantic suspense than straight romance.
There are some general similarities to Kill and Tell, but there’s no pearl necklace/wearing mom’s things.
It’s been a really long time since I read it, but there are similarities with Nora Roberts’ “Sweet Revenge.” Hero’s named Philip. I think an Interpol agent? And there’s something about stollen jewelry
I agree this sounds like Sweet Revenge. Philip the hero is a thief-turned-Interpol-asset and the heroine is the daughter of a former actress and a Middle Eastern royal. He was abusive to her mother, and she wants her mother’s necklace back from him as revenge for how she was treated. If I remember this right, the mother’s necklace has a giant pearl and a giant diamond, so it could be the jewelry you recall.
I just re-read Sweet Revenge about a month ago, and while some of the details are correct, I’m not sure it’s the one the OP is looking for, because some of the major plot points in Sweet Revenge are missing from the above blurb.
In Sweet Revenge, the heroine and hero are both jewel thieves – he’s retired and now works for Interpol, and he’s trying to catch her. She is planning to go back to the middle east and steal the diamond/pearl necklace from her father (the abusive middle eastern royal). Once he figures out what she’s planning, he comes along with her, mostly to protect her, because by then, he’s fallen in love with her. There’s a lot in the book about how they plan to steal that necklace together.
This reminds me of a book by Cherry Adair called In Too Deep it was a T-Flack series and I think the hero was a Navy man who Maybe got injured and lost his sight and he went to this island to avenge the guy who injured him and it turned out to be this girl’s dad who had given her a pearl necklace on her 21st birthday or (or some birthday)