Kate Hoffman, Legally Mine

Legally Mine

Kate Hoffman

Harlequin Temptation, Feb 2004, $4.25, 219 pp.

ISBN: 0373691637

After being dumped, hunk Will McCaffrey talks to his neighbor Jane Singleton how he hurts and that if he is not married by the time he is thirty he will propose to her. Jane loves her friend, but hides her feelings from him because a stud like Will would never date let alone wed a plain Jane like her. Only Breakfast at Tiffany's serves as her sole romantic adventure and her personal George Pepperd (pre A-Team), Will, does not know how she feels about him and never will proposal or not.

Several years later Will informs Jane he was not joking when he told her he would marry her. Though she expects to be shattered she agrees to move in with him on a trial basis if he provides an engagement ring. He does, but she never expected him to want her in his bed too. To test him, Jane makes dishes that a normal person would avoid like the plague, but Will eats every bite and then devours Jane next. Finally she so feminizes his home, no male would want to stay there; but he tells her he loves her.

LEGALLY MINE is an amusing contemporary romance starring two charming lead protagonists. Though the four year gap seems weird (wild oats?), fans will enjoy the antics of Jane applying the Pygmalion Effect to prove her theory that a hunk at Pepperd's level would never remain with anyone less than an Audrey Hepburn. This is a fine time for the contemporary crowd with this romantic romp.

Harriet Klausner