Isabel Sharpe, Before I Melt Away

Before I Melt Away

Isabel Sharpe

Harlequin Blaze, Dec 2004, $4.75, 248 pp.

ISBN: 0373791666

In Milwaukee, workaholic, Chef Tonight personal chef and owner Annabel Brightman never has time for fun as she spends seemingly all her time catering dinners for her clients. Annabel's brother John, teaching at Rollins College, Florida, worries about his sibling. He asks his friend Quinn Garrett, in town on business, to look up his sister. Quinn spent the best year of his life as an exchange student living with the Brightmans sixteen years ago; he had a crush on Annabel, but did nothing about it.

Now Quinn has built a computer company in California that makes the highly-regarded, top-selling holoscope. When Quinn sees Annabel for the first in all these years, he knows his crush still exists, but he is no longer the shy, foreign, high school student. He plans to court Annabel in hopes she will love him as much as he loves her. However, first he has to fit into her schedule.

BEFORE I MELT AWAY is a delightful, contemporary romance starring two wonderful, hard working and hard loving individuals who bring to life Milwaukee. Fans will enjoy the antics of Quinn as he uses his business acumen and his PC skills to enable him to court Annabel, whose schedule will tire the audience as she seems as if she is on call 24/7. Together she and Quinn provide a blazing in a sense second chance at love tale.

Harriet Klausner