"Golden oldie that's fun"

Jayne Ann Krentz wrote under several names early in her career and still does, with her Amanda Quick Historicals and Jayne Castle Paranormals. Her Stephanie James wrote for Temptation, Candlelight Ecstasy Supreme and several others back ages ago. A few really have suffered dating badly, but most come through as a bright delight of a writer coming into her power. This is one of the Stephanie GEMS written twenty-one years ago.

Amy Shannon shows up on the out of the way island. Instantly, ex-patriot, islander Jase Lassiter spots her as not belonging in the seedy bar he runs on an isle with a rough character. Jase has seen tourists out looking for a bit of the wild side of life before, but Amy doesn't strike him as that sort of a lady. Just what sort she is causes him too much worry. Jase will play a bit macho for today's reader, but not too much so they cannot enjoy the early JAK work, and her characters have always been quite adept of putting any man in their place.

To Jase, Amy was such a puzzle sitting, waiting for some mysterious stranger. She won't tell him why she is waiting for Dirk Haley. At first, Jase thinks he will bed her and then send her on her way, but within a few minutes he finds that's not going to be the case. The feisty lady won't let him play his typical games. After he returns her to her hotel room, they find it wrecked, Jase thumps his chests and hauls Amy home so he can protect her from this Dirk, and whatever business Amy insists she has with Haley.

It's a fun tale that shows JAK as she was evolving into the talent she is today.

Reviewed by DeborahAnne MacGillivray
Posted December 24, 2004

Summary

Amy Shannon met Jase Lassiter at a seedy bar called The Serpent, and she should have heeded the warning in the name. At first he offered her paradise—nights of love and days of sheer delight—but the taste of honey turned to ashes on her tongue when she thought she'd been abandoned. Now only Jase's return can satisfy Amy's hunger for promises of love. Will his words take her to paradise, or exile her forever?
(originally published under Silhouette in 1983 w/a Stephanie James)