Bonnie K. Winn, Rules of Engagement

Rules of Engagement

Bonnie K. Winn

Harlequin SuperRomance, Oct 2005, $5.50

ISBN: 0373713053

When Army Reservist David Spencer was called to active duty, he told his sister Tess not to worry. Not long after he died in Iraq and had a military funeral back home in Texas. Since her brother's sacrifice, she no longer believes in the Iraq War, nor much else patriotic.

Six months later Army Reservist Cole Harrington has returned from a year of service in Iraq, to find his software company run into the ground. Most of the designs he developed before his deployment are lost, and Cole's laptop is missing.

At an auction Tess buys a desk for her family's Spencer Restaurants, that contains a laptop inside. She opens the file marked letters and finds commentaries so different from the cheerful notes her brother sent home. This Cole Harrington was a captain struggling with the deaths of his young soldiers. Tess feels an urge to give his family his letters, as she assumes he died. Cole is cold and offers money, so Tess walks out on him. Though his designs remain missing, Cole finds Tess at a Spencer Restaurant and apologizes. As they begin seeing one another, they fall in love, but he still believes in the noble cause, while she objects to the deaths of the young by the privileged.

This is an intriguing military romance, though Cole is back as a civilian as the Iraq War serves as a matchmaker and divider. Tess is a delight condemning chicken hawks sending the young of others to die; Cole on the other hand believes in the wars cause, but detests the sound bites that hide the horrors of war. The software issue takes a back seat to the superb warring romance.

Harriet Klausner