Guide to Vertebrate Development Book

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The story is that Flynn Challoner and Angie Torres's families were linked together centuries ago. There was a piece of land both families wanted and the men all got together and decided that the way to solve their dilemma was for one of the Challoner men to marry one of the Torres daughters. The daughter got no say in this whatsoever. Family lore says that the daughter brought a certain valuable Torres family heirloom dagger to her marriage bed on her wedding night. No one knows what transpired after that, but both the daughter and her husband were alive the next day and went on to have seven children. The dagger hung in the family home for generations and the families prospered but it was ultimately "lost" in the early 20th century and the family luck petered out along with it.

Our story opens with Angie in Mexico awaiting a meeting with a certain enigmatic rich man who owns his own island and currently possesses the dagger. Her uncle has arranged to buy it from the rich man but got sick and sent Angie in his place. While she awaits the meeting, she is approached by Flynn who carefully insinuates himself into her good graces. When the story opens, Angie is attracted to Flynn but unsure how he feels about her because he hasn't made a move on her. She's also under the impression that he's a mercenary but deliberately doesn't confirm that suspicion because she doesn't really want to know if it's true. She does trust him though, after only 2 days acquaintance, and when she finally gets word about the meeting with the rich guy she asks Flynn to go with her because she's nervous about traveling to the remote island fortress by herself. He agrees and asks her to tell him more about the dagger. When she relays the story about the daughter being forced to marry against her will, Flynn says a lot of chauvinistic things about how the daughter was just being a typical woman, irrational and headstrong, and how he believes that the reason she didn't end up using the dagger on her husband was because the husband took her to bed and "taught her how to be a proper wife."

Flynn, meanwhile, has been carefully calculating and manipulating their every interaction specifically with the hope of being asked to go to the dagger meeting. He desires Angie but has evaluated her character and decided that she'd trust him more easily if he was patient and didn't come on too strongly. When she does ask him to go with her, though, his control slips a bit and he tries to seduce her. Because this is a Jayne Ann Krentz book, obviously they can't sleep together this first time, that's against the formula, so he only gets to second base before she calls a halt. They meet the rich guy and get the dagger without any issues.

That night Angie asks Flynn if he'd like to accompany her back to California. She still feels a bit uneasy about the dagger situation but, more importantly, feels a strong attraction to Flynn and doesn't quite want things to end yet. He agrees and they go to their separate hotel rooms. Angie wakes up to find someone in her room rifling through her stuff. She assumes it's a burglar after her cash and lays still, pretending to sleep in the hopes that he'll take what he wants and leave. He does leave and she leaps out of bed and goes charging down to Flynn's room to have hysterics. Flynn was remarkably unaffected by the idea that Angie was just in danger. He goes to her room and sees that her purse, wallet, passport, etc. are all still there and suggests that maybe Angie just imagined the intruder. He was ridiculously patronizing about the whole thing, acting like she was freaking out over nothing and even making a few comments about how this was typical of women, what with their hormones and emotions.

Angie demands to leave and head back to the states immediately and Flynn reluctantly gives in, though he makes it very clear that he thinks she's being a ridiculous female overreacting about something she probably dreamed up in her empty little female brain. They can't get a rental car at 4 am and Angie refuses to wait so they strike a deal with the hotel clerk to hire his cousin's boat for the trip to Cancun. Then they collect the dagger from the hotel safe and leave. Once they get out to sea the cousin pulls a gun on them and says he's under orders to take them back to the rich guy's island compound. Angie distracts the guy long enough for Flynn to use some kind of karate chop to disarm him and they drop him off on a random beach before continuing on with his boat.

Once back in the states they check into a hotel with adjoining rooms and Angie falls into bed. In the middle of the night she wakes up to find Flynn getting into her bed. He says he'll leave if she wants him to but she's all too willing to have him there. They have a night of passion and Flynn keeps assuring Angie that this is "right". The next morning Angie wakes up to find Flynn already showered, shaved and dressed while she's still naked under the covers. He says that they need to talk and reveals that he's actually been deliberately concealing his true identity from her all along. He's a descendant of the Challoners from the dagger story she told. He'd given her his middle name instead of his last name to keep her from putting it together, and he's been after the dagger for years.

He goes on to explain that he actually deliberately slept with her BEFORE telling her the truth because he knew she'd be upset and wanted to solidify their bond before putting it to that test. When she says that he'd deliberately used sex to manipulate her emotions he got upset and insisted that wasn't the case....except it is. That's exactly what he just admitted to doing, just said another way. Angie asks him when he plans to try to steal the dagger from her since he obviously wants it enough to have seduced and manipulated her in order to get it. He gets extremely pissed at her and demands SHE apologize to HIM! And she actually does it! It was such a ridiculous conversation. "Yeah, I lied to you and gave you a false name and slept with you as a manipulation tactic but how dare you accuse me of being a thief!"

He says many more chauvinistic things about how he expected her to throw a tantrum and yell and cry because, after all, she's a woman and that's what silly little women do. He says all this like she doesn't have grounds for being truly upset. Even after he admits that if he were in her place, he'd be extremely upset, he still patronizingly justifies his behavior as being all okay because he'd been searching for the dagger for so long that he wasn't about to just give it up because she and her uncle had gotten there first.

Flynn says a lot of things about history and family and how important it is to remember their roots, hence why the dagger is so important to him. How he plans to found a new dynasty and feels that getting the dagger back in his family is an important part of that. Angie basically says he's full of crap, that the dagger doesn't have magic powers and doesn't justify his deception. Then for reasons that make no sense, she still allows him to follow her to her uncle's house. I mean, at this stage she probably couldn't have stopped him from going since he knew where the uncle lived, but there was no reason they had to travel together. After the unbelievable breach of trust that's occurred (that Flynn never apologized for) she should have packed up her things and continued on her own. Let him rent a car and drive himself if he wants to see the uncle.

When they get to the uncle's house, he immediately sides with Flynn on everything. He totally understands why Flynn wouldn't have wanted to just walk away after searching for the dagger so hard. Angie basically sits there not saying anything while the uncle and Flynn get all chummy and the uncle invites Flynn to stay as their guest for as long as he likes. Flynn decides to give Angie space for a few days and she is cold and distant during that time but cordial whenever they speak. After 3 days of this behavior, Flynn asks her to marry him. He cites all these BS reasons about them having a lot in common (which is patently untrue because they haven't agreed on a single thing the whole book) and how family and tradition are super important so it just makes sense for a Torres woman to marry him, a Challoner man just like in the family story.

Angie gets upset at this businesslike proposal and accuses him of just wanting the dagger. The uncle hasn't agreed to sell it to Flynn yet. He feels both families have an equally strong claim on it and while he understand's Flynn's desire to own it, the uncle is the one who actually shelled out a small fortune to buy it from the rich guy. Flynn can't afford to even match the amount he paid for it. Angie thinks Flynn feels that by marrying her, he'll finally be able to lay claim to his precious dagger. He denies it but to prove it to him she grabs the case it's in and throws the case off a cliff into the ocean, then asks if he still wants to marry her. She's hidden the dagger up her sleeve and just did this to try to get Flynn to admit his real feelings. I think she's got a valid point on this one. He's done nothing the whole book to indicate he actually cares about her as a person but has talked A LOT about this darn dagger. He gets upset and asks if she really hates him so much that she'd destroy hundreds of years of family history out of spite.

Right about here Angie loses what little backbone she had. She's suddenly horrified that she played such a cruel trick on him and falls all over herself apologizing. Then says her answer to the marriage proposal is no and runs away. He follows her and they have sex......huh? Where did that come from? A minute ago she was super pissed at him, and rightfully so! Why is she suddenly meekly falling into bed with him? Oh, because she's decided that she's in love with him. Again, HUH? How can that possibly be? They've known each other a total of 6 days, half of which he spent lying to her and the other half she spent being hurt and ignoring him. How on Earth does that translate into love?

The next morning Angie decides that she will marry him. Nothing about their situation has changed but through the power of his magical prowess in bed, she's decided to make a lifelong commitment to a lying manipulator who works as a freaking mercenary for a living. Yep, good call. Flynn is very happy and immediately starts planning the wedding while not allowing her to have any say. He makes all the decisions and only occasionally asks her opinion to patronizingly make her feel included. And she allows this to happen. Throughout the week leading up to the wedding Flynn has this vague feeling that something isn't right, but he can't figure out what it is so he just shrugs and continues.

The story wraps up with the bad guy who searched her hotel room coming back to try to steal the dagger. Flynn defeats him and then he and Angie get married. Afterward Flynn finally figures out what has been bothering him. It's that he doesn't want Angie to marry him for all the BS reasons he gave when he proposed. He wants her to love him. He says that he loves her and will work tirelessly to make her learn to love him back. She admits that she already does and that's the end of the book.
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