Holly Jacobs, Here with Me

Here with Me

Holly Jacobs

Silhouette, Jul 2006, $4.25

ISBN: 037319825

Lee Singer loves living in Presque Isle, Pennsylvania when her worrisome mom calls at the same time a hunk enters her store, Singer's Treasures. She hangs up quickly; the customer offers to pay rent for a month to live in a cottage she owns. The next day, New York businessman Adam Benton and his toddler cousin that he is guardian of, move into the cottage. Adam reflects how his parents died when he was young; he went into fostering until Uncle Paul rescued him. Now Paul and his wife Cathie just died and though mourning his loss, he needs to decide what to do with their daughter Jessie.

Adam remembers Lee as Mary Eileen Singer when they played together as children in Presque Isle. Lee recognizes that Adam Benton is her childhood pal Matty Benton. As the duo works together to raise a faster than a locomotive (not Amtrak) infant, they fall in love, but she is small town while he is urban. Even with her parents moving into the backyard and playing matchmaker, this pair seems destined to separate just as they did when they were children.

HERE WITH ME is an amusing contemporary romance starring a likable cast. Lee and Adam are an amiable pair with flaws and desires that may prove love is not strong enough to survive their needs. The secondary characters add humorous trouble to the mix as her parents arrive in town to find her a husband and the baby acts like a one year old (thankfully avoiding the common error of a precocious wise matchmaker belying her age). Fans of warm romances will want to read HERE WITH ME hoping to see a family of three.

Harriet Klausner