There are a lot of billionaires out there, and while they might not be looking for romance, they seem to have a knack for finding it. Or perhaps romance finds them.
Britt Mandeville has renovated an old Southern mansion on the Mississippi River not far from New Orleans. He has just proposed to his girlfriend Crystal, who has no intention of living in the place and prefers for him to take his money and move to New York, where she works as a model. They break off the relationship.
Melody de Lyon owns and operates a book shop in the New Orleans French Quarter. A hurricane is coming, and she’s with her aging grandmother, who is seriously ill with what looks like pneumonia. The water is rising, and Melody and her grandmother are evacuated by a rescue boat. She gets her grandmother to a hospital but needs to find a place to stay. Her grandmother whispers “go to White Castle,” her old home sold long ago. But that’s where Melody goes, and that’s where she meets Britt. It’s an instant attraction, and looks like a clear-sailing romance, until they both discover that the former girlfriend Crystal is Melody’s sister.
The Owner’s Secret by Kimberley Montpetit is a romance of ongoing coincidences in the lives of Britt and Melody. The reader has to make a decision – suspend belief and accept the story for what it is or frown at coincidences and grumble at the almost overpowering sentiment. My advice: accept the story for what it is and have an escapist moment reading it.
In A Christmas Worth Billions by Jaclyn Hardy, David is a New York City entrepreneur trying, and generally failing, to get past the death of his wife in an automobile accident. He’s moved to a small town out from the city to get away from the memories. Lily is the mother of two children, raising them herself after the abandonment by and death of their father. Finances are worse than tight; she’s going to lose the diner she operates and there’s no money to buy the kids winter coats and Christmas presents or pay the electricity bill.
The local church pastor suggests to David that he get involved in serving others, and a good way to start is ringing the bells in the church tower. He first sees Lily at church, and then he meets her at the diner. He’s getting smitten, while she’s trying to resist his offers of help. The story follows the lines of her eventual surrender to his help and his eventual surrender to a new relationship.
Blind Date with a Billionaire Single Dad by Evangeline Kelly doesn’t exactly turn on a blind date, although there is one eventually involved. Seth Wellington is a billionaire living in a gated community. He’s recovering from an automobile accident in which both his arms were broken. His nurse needs help, and so he hires a caregiver, Emery Chase. She looks vaguely familiar but can’t quite place her. She looks and is dressed more like a punk rock star than a caregiver. He hires her, and Seth soon learns she doesn’t put up with his grumpiness and he young son Zac is wild about her.
What Seth doesn’t know, but Emery does, is that she’s the mother of Zac. She was 15 when she gave birth, and she briefly met the adoptive parents. What she doesn’t know is what happened to Seth’s wife, and whether he’s a decent father. Her conscience is bothered by not telling him the truth; a Christian friend keeps encouraging her to do exactly that. But she delays, and eventually a reckoning will come.
It’s a sweet story about a mother’s heart, the walls built by a father, and how faith heals old hurts and disappointments.
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