Susan Mallery, Sizzling

Sizzling

Susan Mallory

HQN, Jan 2007, $6.99

ISBN: 0373771762

Former Major League baseball star Reid Buchanan was always a favorite of the media until recently. He had a one night stand with a reporter who wrote a nasty piece on him. Deciding to lay low until someone else is treated with scorn and knowing his injured grandmother Gloria could use help since she broke a hip, he hides in her place.

Gloria is a curmudgeon whose family cannot stand spending time with her as all she does is rip skin. Her nurse Lori Johnston feels the elderly woman would heal better if her children and grandchildren visited her as she sees beyond the acerbic tongue to the lonely person. Lori has mixed feelings on womanizing Reid moving in with her patient as he could be good for her or cause terrible harm with his seemingly uncaring ways. As the nurse and the ex-jock squabble, fuss, and fight they fall in love, but she does not trust men especially philandering "little boys" and he struggles to accept his career is over and it is time to move on.

Like his two brothers before him, Reid is Sizzling, Delicious and Irresistable except to Lori who sees his faults in spite of being in love with him. Gloria is a fascinating counterpoint to the often amusing battling lead couple as her feelings of mortality and dying alone lead to a Pygmalion Effect as none of her grandsons or other relatives wants to be near her caustic tongue and ergo in a classic cause and effect scenario she is alone. The storyline is relationship driven predominantly by Reid and Lori who provide a terrific romance in the latest Buchanan saga gender war.

Harriet Klausner