This is the first short story review from the Harlequin magazine I posted about a few days ago. Written by Lynne Graham, The Greek Tycoon’s Baby is one of those novella stories that Harlequin publishes every month (actually I don’t know the rotation of their books in bookstores, but it seems to happen a lot).
At first glance, the stepback/cover for the story shows us a pale, red-haired woman in an alluring red dress, swept up in the arms of a swarthy, sexy gentleman. This is typical of most romance novel covers. Our two lead characters are Susie Marshall and Leos Kiriakos. Susie has a “topflight marketing degree” and “is fluent in French and Spanish.” Wise words from the man himself. Leos has become the new owner of Devlin Systems, the place where Susie works.
Surprise! The two used to date each other up until fourteen months ago, when Susie dumped him because she was insecure about their relationship. Leos had no idea that Susie worked there, and was equally shocked to find that his former paramour currently works as a receptionist. With his “new owner of the company” power, he immediately promotes her to his social secretary, with the intent on having her becoming an executive somewhere down the line.
Double-surprise: She secretly carried and gave birth to his baby. Now, Susie is a single mom in the modern world of today. Everyone in the company knows this, except Leos. Suddenly, speculation arises that her child looks just like Leos–so what exactly was their relationship together?
When Leos finally finds out that he has a son, he is furious at Susie for not telling him. Immediately he decides to “do the right thing,” and insist that they marry. Oh, and don’t forget–she’ll no longer have to work anymore. What I don’t like is that while this is a modern story, and she’s a single mom with a career, Leos decides that she no longer needs it anymore, even though she has a marketing degree and is trilingual. Of course her promotions are due to the fact that he’s the boss.
The main problem here is that Susie dearest has a communication issue with her “tawny golden-eyed” beau (he is literally described this way over and over). She suspects him of cheating on her and subsequently dropping her those fourteen months ago, without actually asking him or talking about her problems. And Leos can’t read her mind, but he knows there’s still a spark between the two of them! He originally assumes that she was cheating on him instead with another man, not even thinking for a second that her baby is also his (who, by now, is six months old and was born prematurely).
There is no raunchy, steamy lovemaking in this short story, which isn’t a problem, per se. It just fast-forwards to the wedding with the cheesy cliches of love and hope for the future, and multiple residences where they can jet-set off to and live happily-ever-after!
Here are the issues I have with the story:
- Why would a guy who’s admittedly a Greek God fall for some girl named “Susie”?
- Whirlwind romance starts out because she worked for him as a temp.
- Susie automatically assumes things that ruin her relationship with Leos. These include…
- the fact that he didn’t like a friend marrying someone who was pregnant in order to entrap him for his money for the next twenty years–this prevented her from telling him she was pregnant
- because her mother died, he distanced himself from her in order to give her some space–in which she assumes he dropped her
- The cheating thing? His sister-in-law and his brother were staying at Leos’ apartment (and Susie found the half-naked blonde in the bedroom, screaming at her for invading her space)
- And she thought he was sleeping with his interior decorator.
- Susie, as social secretary, had been given “menial tasks” to plan for a large reception party. (Is that not part of a secretary’s duties though? And she’s directly working for the boss)
- She threw a temper tantrum because of that (and he questions why he’d never seen that attitude from her before)
- He likes her tastes and asks her to buy a piece of jewelry for “Brigitte.” Automatically Susie thinks Leos has taken on a new girlfriend and is appalled to be buying a piece for her.
- I don’t understand Leos’ Greek expressions.
- The repeated “tawny” description.
I mean I could go on and on, but I do have to admit the story has its good points as well. It’s a fantasy, overall. Who doesn’t love a good fantasy? But I do have a rating scale to the books I read, and this one unfortunately did not run high on my list.
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