"interesting contemporary romance"

In California Mia Marcelli is used to sleeping alone ever since her beloved Diego died several years ago. So when she awakens to find a man in her bed she threatens to harm him as her brother is a SEAL. Her two grandmothers charge into the room with Grandma Tessa holding a fire poker and Grammy M a rolling pin. He says to her let us talk over breakfast insisting he is alive and is Rafael, Crown Prince of Calandria.

He explains his death was a fake but he also hides the reason for his reappearance from her and her Marcelli clan because he knows they will strongly object that he has come to take home their offspring Danny, his four year old second in line to the throne. He even pretends not knowing he sired a son with her when she was in Calandria. If he gets the kid back to his kingdom, Mia has no legal rights there unlike here in California. As he continues his sham, he falls in love with the commoner making his duty feel shameful.

The final Marcelli tale is an interesting contemporary romance starring a likable courageous heroine and a royal with an agenda that makes him seem despicable. Thus the audience will dislike Rafael for staging his death though he has good cause to do so and for his efforts to abduct the child. Still this is a well written contemporary tale in which the audience will be spellbound as the Prince must choose between love and duty.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted November 2, 2007

Summary

A smart, independent woman with a gorgeous four-year-old son, Mia Marcelli lost her one true love. Four years ago, while working undercover for the CIA, she watched Diego, the father of her unborn child, perish before her very eyes—crumbling the world around her. But one morning she awakens to find Diego lying next to her, alive and well with an unbelievable confession: he is really Rafael, Prince of Calandria, and he had been working covertly on the same mission when they met—his death had been staged. Utterly stunned, Mia is wary and delighted—she may have suffered a broken heart, but her breathtakingly handsome lover is back to reignite the passion that existed between them. Little does she know that Rafael has returned to give his newfound son a proper upbringing back in Calandria—even if it means seducing Mia into marriage. But when Rafael finds himself truly falling for this luscious beauty, he must decide between his royal duties and the woman who has claimed his heart.