Dixie Browning, First Time Home

First Time Home

Dixie Browning

Signature Saga, Sep 2005, $5.99

ISBN: 0373770588

In New York City, federal agents question public relations specialist Laurel Lawless on what she knows about the finances of the firm she works for, J. Blessing Associates; she knows nothing. Her boss and lover Jerry Blessing asks her to sit tight and gives her a water color he insists his mother painted to hold for him. Meanwhile with the agency closed and no prospect for employment, Laurel goes to look at the North Carolina property she inherited from her late father, whom she rarely seen.

Laurel meets two cousins she never knew with one arranging temporary quarters on the Outer Banks' Hatteris Island in a neighbor's house that needs roofing. That neighbor Cody Morningstar arrives with his reticent eight years old daughter Becky and her dog BooBoo while his former wife heads to Paris with her new spouse. As Jerry's partner Kirk makes dangerous demands, Becky acts as a matchmaker between her father and Laurel. Starting with a fender bender and feuding that turns to beach fun with his child, the adults fall in love, but danger is coming south from New York and the ex is returning for Becky.

FIRST TIME HOME is a terrific contemporary romance with an additional suspense subplot that feels extraneous to the prime well written theme of an emotionally wounded child unconsciously matchmaking her father with the new neighbor. The story line is at its delightful best when the trio interacts even when the caricature of the nasty unfeeling ex-wife intercedes while the Blessing criminal scenario seems off kilter with so much family drama in the Outer banks. Still fans will still appreciate this strong tale of the human need to belong.

Harriet Klausner