Dory Lambert has had a crush since childhood on the family chauffeur's son, Chase McKay. She and her gorgeous older sister Jill are part of a wealthy banking family living in Missouri. When Dory was fifteen, she caught Chase and Jill groping each other and tattled on them. Chase was hustled away to start college early and Jill is only heartbroken for a short time. Dory (our heroine) grows up and makes her father proud with her intelligence and financial savvy and joins the family business, Lambert Bank and Trust Company. But a scandal rocks the family when a distant relation employed at the bank embezzles millions but the FBI relentlessly focuses their investigations on Dory's father who has disappeared around the same time as the money.

The plot was rather convoluted, but I really liked Dory. She is a very strong character and I enjoyed how she wrestles with her family's financial problems with initiative and creativity to keep them together and retain their beautiful home. Chase (the alleged hero) finally returns home to convince his father, Charles, to retire and ends up insulting Dory badly. He's rich now and offers her money to force Charles to retire. Chase is a real ass and never redeems himself. Dory is still in love with him, but he still has the hots for Jill and constantly pants after her through most of the story. Jill is no picnic either. Although Jill has a secret love interest, she comes up with this plan to marry Chase for his money. She has no intension of consumating the marriage and plans to divorce him quickly. Nice piece of work, huh? So they marry and lo and behold shortly after the ceremony, Chase realizes he's really in love with Dory. Jill gets drunk from the wedding champagne and Chase confronts Dory. She reveals Jill's plot, but he doesn't care. He wants Dory and they have sex (mind you, he's still married, it's the SAME night as the wedding). OK, that sound you're hearing is me screaming and tearing my hair out! Stupid, stupid, stupid!

What follows is not even worth writing about. But I did finish the book because I wanted to see if anything could be redeemed from all this. The writing style is light and fluffy with snappy dialogue and was a very fast read. There are lots of funny, quirky characters I liked too. Michaels makes a stab at redeeming Chase but I just didn't want to buy it. Note to author: adultery in this situation is NOT romantic. I'm not overly moralistic, really. Sometimes an author can make adultery work for me :) Like when the heroine or hero truly believe that their spouse is dead and they proceed to mess around until they find out otherwise. Some readers hate this situation too, but heh it works for me.

It was hard for me to grade this book. The writing style and most of the characters were a plus, but the horrid hero and stupid plot device were a negative. (Grade: C-) ( )