One Week As Lovers Book

One Week as Lovers really managed to surprise me. First of all, I hatehatehate tortured heroes. I'm probably in the minority, but I don't care. Horror stories about damaged men don't get my juices flowing...sue me. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that Nick (Viscount Lancaster) would be considered a tortured hero. He has certain issues about being touched during sex, because when he was a young man he was raped by this awful monster, Richmond.We are led to believe he tried to commit suicide because of it. This is where the first surprise came in. I really enjoyed the story. Normally, I don't want to read about this stuff in my romance novel. Not because I'm a truly heartless person, but because I read these silly things to escape, not to be reminded that there are horrible people out there just waiting to pounce on my children. However, Dahl managed to write about this subject in a way that kept me interested without totally turning my stomach sour. Maybe it was because so many of the romance writers depict male victims of rape as abusive, distant, and cold (not to say that isn't what happens in some cases), whereas Dahl made Nick a kind and generous person. At any rate, whatever she did worked for me.
I also loved Cynthia. She was spunky, funny, sexy, and she had been in love with Nick since they were children together. Her bastard step-father tried to force her to marry Richmond (yes, the same asshole who raped Nick) just to pay off his gambling debts. Here was the second surprise for me. Cyn doesn't just lay down and take it. She can tell that something is veryveryvery wrong with this guy, and she knows she will end up dead if she marries him. So what does she do? She fakes her own death. I immediately liked this girl.
Cyn and Nick are thrown back together when hears of her 'death' and decides to return to his boyhood home to pay his respects to her family. Also, he recently walked in on his fiancee doing the nasty with some other guy, so now seems like a good time to take a vacation. Poor guy, even though he doesn't love his fiancee, he still has to marry her because she is an heiress, and his family is in desperate need of the funds.
Unfortunately, Cyn has been using his home as her hideout...stay with me here...while she searches for this lost treasure that she read about in one of her old relative's diary. Ok. Yeah, that part was kinda cheesy. But I was still rooting for those two crazy kids to find it! If they just had the treasure then all of their problems would be solved, right? Cyn could pay off her step-father's debt, and Nick could afford to marry her and not the skanky heiress! Yay!
Alas, it was not to be. Oh, they found the treasure all right. But it wasn't nearly enough to help either one of them. Awwwww. So sad.
And here was where I was in for my final surprise. I feel I'm getting fairly well-versed in romance novels at this point, so I've heard the we-can't-marry-for-financial-reasons story line before. Usually, at the end of the book, the money falls out of the sky like manna from heaven. An old (but wealthy) uncle croaks and leaves his fortune to the impoverished (but titled) hero. Thereby affording him the chance to marry his true love. Or something of that nature. Like I said, Dahl surprised me. Viscount Lancaster did something that I have never seen before in a historical romance...he got a job! Alright, it wasn't like he decided to be a street sweeper, but I was still shocked. He called in a favor from the Duke of Somerhart (who some of you may remember from A Rake's Guide To Pleasure), and went to work for the duke's company.
See? Now, that was a happy ending. Why? 'Cause ya gotta love a man who can hold down a job.