Another short gem from Lissa Matthews.
This one involves Jane (the owner of a candy business) and Graham (hunky freelance travel writer). It starts out with Jane making a delivery of her homemade truffles. Usually her business partner/roommate/gay BFF, Edward, makes the deliveries - but today - he insisted she make this one delivery herself. She gets there and meets hunky Graham. And when she tries to give him his truffles, he tells her that he didn't order any. She immediately gets mad, thinking Edward had played a joke on her. She insisted he take them anyway - which he did - only if she would come in for a few minutes and get warmed up. (They're in Denver - and it's winter.) So - as they're sitting on the couch - Graham opens the box of truffles and laughs when he realizes it's a box of rocks. Now Jane is pissed. She had a feeling that maybe Edward wasn't playing a joke but trying to set her up on a weird sort of blind date with Graham. Graham denies knowing anything about a set up or Edward or anything. They share a hot kiss.....but Jane leaves in a huff and goes home to talk to Edward.
Turns out, Edward met Graham at a bar and thought he would be a good match for Jane. See - Jane got her heart broken pretty bad a while back - and she's sort of just given in to moping around and not exactly making an effort to get over her ex. Edward said he just wanted her to smile again. (Awwww.)
Later that night, as Edward rushes out for a "date" and insists that he will be out all night.....Jane sort of figures that something is up. And sure enough.....Graham shows up a few hours later wanting to take Jane out to dinner. Jane ain't havin' it. She makes him leave when she just REALLY wants him to stay. He does leave, only to come back a while later with pizza and beer. If she can't go out to dinner, he'll bring the dinner to her.
And of course - the night ends in sex. HOT sex.
The next morning - after Edward comes back home and realizes that Graham has spent the night......they begin to talk. Jane wakes up and walks in on the tail end of a conversation and takes some words out of context and ends up thinking that Edward made Graham ask her out and that the last evening didn't mean anything to Graham. Furious and somewhat heartbroken - she kicks Graham out again.
Here's what I love about this book - Jane's character. She's a bigger girl who has a lot of self esteem issues, mostly because of the ex that broke her heart. He used to tell her she needed to diet and lose weight....that she wasn't pretty enough....that she needed to change her job.....blah blah blah. And Jane's self esteem suffered because she started to believe him. I've been in very similar situations - where I went into a relationship feeling pretty damn good about myself, but I let the guy's insecurities rub off on me in the form of him telling me that I have the problems - issues - flaws (and not him) and that I'm the one that needs to change (and not him). Believe me - that fucks with a person's head. So in this case, I could relate to Jane on so many levels that it was just scary. And I loved Graham. How can you NOT love a hot ass guy that loves your curves and doesn't want you to be a boney ass poster child for bulimia.
You know there's going to be a HEA. And I must say - I LOVED the chance encounter with her ex-boyfriend and the possible reveal about him. (And just so ya know.....I have those same suspicions about my last ex-boyfriend! I think that's why he was such a miserable bastard and why he tried to break me down so much.....because he couldn't accept who he REALLY was so he felt like he needed to try to make me hate who I was.)
Gah. I'm going from book review to personal diatribe of my bitter love life. Anyway....
Solid 4 stars! I can't wait to read everything that this author comes out with!
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