Very intense throughout the book, starting with Honor working as a relief worker in the Middle East being bombed and her fleeing across country from terrorists. Hancock rescues her but plans to turn her over to complete his mission to take down a Russian mobster. Impossible situations, alpha males and too good to be true woman.
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Beth and Todd are too opposite people who come together through Beth's friends. They need more stories like these with a woman who is single raising children. This was such a joy to read well because it brings two people together. Beth at first wants nothing to do with Todd and he does not like that so he will get close to Beth get to know her. ( )

I really liked this book a lot. I don't read very many Silhouette Special Editions (when I'm in the mood for a category, I usually pick up a Harlequin Blaze or a Silhouette Intimate Moments/Romantic Suspense). The heroine of this one, the titular Beth, is a 38-year-old widow with two children. The hero, Todd, is a millionaire playboy whom Beth's friends win her a date with at a charity auction. The date is a disaster, and at first it seems like they have nothing in common. However, Todd pursues Beth, much to her amazement, and a relationship slowly blossoms between them. I loved the way their relationship developed organically. Beth and Todd are both well-drawn characters, and Beth in particular is achingly real. So real, in fact, that when her insecurities threatened to derail her, I had to put the book down because it hit too close to home. Even though I'm only 24, and not a widow, the way she feels about her body is one of the more realistic portrayals of a woman's issues with her body that I've read in a romance. The peripheral characters (Beth's friends, her children) are weak, especially in comparison with the in-depth characterization of Beth and Todd, but that's to be expected in the length restraints of a category romance. My only major problem was with the sex scenes. My expectations are different after reading Blazes and other contemporary romances, but the sex scenes here just read to me as unbelievably cheesy and cliched. I understand not wanting to use vulgar language to describe the sex, but every time Beth referred to her "feminine place" all I could think of was a Kotex ad, and some of Todd's romantic lines made me laugh out loud. I think it would have been just about a perfect, short, sweet romance if the sex had been excluded altogether, or if it was merely alluded to by the author. Four stars. ( )