The good news at reaching the end of The Millionaire's Indecent Proposal was immediately tempered with the bad news that we had only completed one of our first ever Desire 2-in-1's. How would the second compare, thematically and possibly otherwise? After all, Emilie Rose had given us a timid heroine, an arrogant millionaire, poorly-written sex scenes, misogyny, a deluded interpretation of prostitution, an exotic coastal location, and countless supporting characters for endless spin-off value. What to expect from Under the Millionaire's Influence by Catherine Mann? Would there at least be a millionaire? Well, impatient reader, your wait is over. Thank you for waiting.
There is indeed a millionaire in Under the Millionaire's Influence, and his name is David Hamilton-Reis. David is back to his exotic coastally-located home to look after his ailing mother's health. His family, the Hamilton-Reis's, are as wealthy a clan as many a Harlequin family, but David has not merely resorted to inheriting from his father and helping the business to flourish while secretly yearning to pursue his real passion of bedding virgins with matriarchal neuroses. No, David has chosen an entirely less well-paid career, as your run-of-the-mill super agent spy. Now he spends his days gallivanting across the globe, saving nations from themselves, killing undesirables, filing reports and wandering glamorous locales, shirtless and effortlessly gorgeous.
Like all millionaire families, of course, the Hamilton-Reis' live in a large, beachside mansion next door to a home for troubled youths. One such troubled youth is the inexplicably-named Starr Cimino. Starr was saved from her itinerant family of murderous gypsies and sent to live with kind Aunt Libby, although Libby was no aunt, but rather an aunt in the sense that Uncle Bewildered Heart is an uncle. There Starr met other troubled orphans, the responsible Claire, who had her romantic tale told already, and the young, intelligent accountant Ashley, who had her own novel shortly thereafter. Together the three step-sisters run Beachcombers, a beach-side restaurant and hotel. Starr lives behind the restaurant in a carriage house and harbours dreams of being an artist, making her a terrible choice for restaurateur and hotel owner.
Unfortunately for Starr and her aspirations for a life of sexless regret, her thieving travellers of parents, uncles and aunts have turned up in their RVs with mischief on their minds and David has returned to try to have sex with her, as is their custom. As teenagers Starr and David had enjoyed a serious, explicit relationship they never recovered from, emotionally and possibly otherwise. Naturally, David's mother disapproved, as any mother would of a girl named Starr Cimino, but this only fuelled the young lover's fervour. However, a life-time of wedded bliss and being sexy was not on the cards for the couple. David wanted to experience the world as the United States' least secretive secret agent spy, but Starr was tired of nomadic slaughter, having had her fill from her folks, and wanted to settle down in wherever Under the Millionaire's Influence is supposed to be set.
Yes, once again there is that classic story we have grown so sick of reading, where the woman wants a home to call her own and the man wants to shoot people for his government and sleep with beautiful ladies in fancy hotels. No amount of physical attraction and emotional retardation can overcome such stubborn personalities wanting different things and Starr and David have become no longer synonymous with each other, but rather memories in their respective back stories. That was until one year ago, though, when reuniting for vague reasons, they enjoyed a weekend of 'incredible, heart-searing sex (author's words)' until the weekend ended and they returned to their understandings of what a relationship entails. Still, no amount of physical attraction, love and emotional retardation can make David and Starr an item that will promise marriage to one another at the book's conclusion?
Yet is it possible there is a specified amount? There are only two ways to find out, reading on or not reading on. There are downsides to the preferable option of not reading on, however. How shall Starr and David contrive a way to rid the beach of Starr's family, and just what are Frederick and Gita up to? Another scam involving herbal remedies and flower-trampling, or have their ambitions grown to actual ambition and do they have something dramatic planned, because the novel could use someone doing something dramatic. What will happen with Ashley, returned from college, now Claire's husband's cousin, Seth, has also turned up to build a business and house with his bare hands, out of sheer willpower and masculinity? According to Rich Man's Fake Fiancée, not a thing.
Those Bewildered Heart loyalists, such as Bewildered Heart, may recall an encounter with one Jill Shalvis last year. By all accounts it was not a satisfactory experience, and Roughing It With Ryan had until now remained something of a novelty Mills & Boon example. However, with Catherine Mann's 2008 Desire the author has abandoned any pretence of quality and the first three chapters contain numerous unwarranted attempts at Shalvis-style eloquence, with the littering of darns and damns throughout the prose to give it a chatty, informal air. Mann does not stop there, and ineptly adds long-winded sentences where a simple description of a sand dune becomes a prompt to mention Starr's tragic childhood or sexual past with David. The reader is constantly reminded of character history, implying the majority of the action took place before Chapter One, and there is little to read about in the present. This is a typical fault of the genre, where the lovers previously shared a brief fling, a marriage, or a one night stand that resulted in pregnancy and the billionaire returning to his Greek palace.
Here David and Starr cannot be in each other's company without wanting to touch each other, believing this will inevitably lead to inappropriate public displays of pornography, which they both want, but cannot have for reasons they have no intention of knowing. Mann cleverly uses this to suggest sexual tension, as Starr's blonde, curly hair harkens back to that time David laid her on the golden sands and made love to her. Furthermore, when Starr stands in a room she cannot help but think of the time she and David made love in a room, and when fantasising about having sex with him she immediately recalls all the times she had sex with him. If this sounds hopelessly bombastic and one-note, then you share Bewildered Heart's trepidation of reading the remaining eight chapters.
The question of whether this pair can turn their mutual passion and lack of emotional depth into a successful union seems easily resolved with either David agreeing to stop travelling the world spying enigmatically, or Starr agreeing to tolerate him travelling the world spying enigmatically. This difference of opinion appears to be their only stumbling block, as it was when they were youths when the story should have taken place. How Starr's estranged relatives figure into the plotting is a mystery. Surely they cannot have resolved to change their wicked ways, and presumably they will not have the desired effect on Starr's aversion to travelling the world enigmatically, and therefore they exist solely as a complication for David to fix using willpower and masculinity, proving to Starr he is the upstanding, noble hero she has always known him to be.
This leaves us with one final issue. Will Mann continue to swear non-threateningly, and relate everything to the two central issues of the narrative without any semblance of literary expertise? You can surely bet your bottom damn dollar, damn her, that Mann won't be able to resist gossiping unceremoniously for the rest of the novel, even when she describes Starr and David making love, like all the times previously they'd made love, like that time on the bathroom sink, that had helped Starr forget all those times her parents had betrayed her and left her for dead in the back of that car with the windows rolled up on a sunny day, as sunny as when David and Starr had made love on the beach having gone for a drive, in a car, with the windows rolled down when they were mere teenagers and this loving each other conundrum was a breeze.
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