Author Jacqueline Baird manages to tie 3 Harlequin Presents topes – Revenge, Second Chance, Secret Baby – into one excellent and enjoyable story. Guilty Passion succeeds despite a nutty backstory because the characters show themselves and drive the plot. There is very little introspection or mental whining; the heroine gets up and takes care of things.
Plot Synopsis – Click to Skip Spoilers
Benedict pursued and won Rebecca for revenge because she supposedly had rejected his younger brother Gordon who then drove off a cliff in despair. Rebecca met Gordon when she was 18 and had fun with him that summer with no talk of marriage. The papers painted her as a heartless Lolita who drove Gordon to suicide, but the autopsy and inquest showed Gordon had an inoperable brain tumor and accidentally hit reverse instead of drive. It was not suicide, although Gordon’s mother convinced herself it was after she read Gordon’s diary entry that he loved Rebecca.
Benedict was pursuing his anthropology hobby when he was hurt and spent a few years with Indians in the Amazon jungle. His family thought he was dead. While he was gone his father and then his brother died, and when he returned he believed his mother’s version of Gordon’s death even though his uncle told him it was an accident.
Four years after Gordon died Rebecca goes with Rupert, the Oxford professor who employs her as a part time researcher, to Benedict’s lecture about his time in Brazil. Rebecca has a double first and wants to be a teacher; her father died and she lives with Rupert and his wife Mary who were her dad’s good friends. Rebecca is entranced with Benedict. At first he’s uninterested until Rupert introduces her with her last name, then he is extremely interested in her and they spend quite a bit of time together after the lecture and the next few weeks. Rebecca is in love and thinks Benedict loves her. He gives her an inexpensive garnet ring and she is thrilled and starry-eyed about being engaged, although Benedict never actually proposes.
Rebecca goes shopping in London, stops by Benedict’s house. She’s surprised he has such an expensive home. They sleep together and it is everything Rebecca dreamt, right until Benedict is furious afterwards that she had been a virgin, that she cheated Gordon, that she’s nothing but a heartless gold digger. He frightens Rebecca because she doesn’t know what he is talking about, why he is so angry that she hadn’t slept with Gordon, why he is accusing her. Benedict explains Gordon was his half brother, that Rebecca dumped him and caused his death, and that he never had any intention to marry her. And on and on. Rebecca is desolated and furious. She takes her shopping, dumps the ring and leaves. Benedict drives her to the train station and she goes back to Rupert and Mary’s home and tells them the engagement is broken.
They meet again when Rupert and Mary have their baby baptized and they both are godparents, but Rebecca refuses to have anything to do with Benedict. She later discovers she is pregnant. She has the baby, gets her teaching certification and starts teaching older kids. She has a little money from her dad and has good friends who help and she does not tell Benedict about their son Daniel because she knows he despises her. There’s a bit of payback here too.
Five years later we are in the present. Rebecca is chaperoning a bunch of students in France with two other teachers (who are no help) when Benedict spots her. Rebecca is tiny, very pretty with good figure, and fearless. Her students do what she tells them. Benedict takes her to dinner one night, then inveigles himself to help drive the kids’ bus (this would never happen nowadays) and Rebecca feels like maybe she ought to tell Benedict about Daniel. They are together when Rebecca buys a bottle of cognac for Josh; it’s a thank you for taking care of Daniel while she was in France but Benedict assumes Josh is her lover. The last evening Benedict breaks a date with her because the lady Rebecca thinks is the Other Woman called. Rebecca is glad she didn’t say anything.
She goes home, picks Daniel up from her friends, and is doing the laundry when Benedict arrives. He’s furious. He realized that if Rebecca calls herself Mrs. then she probably has a child, and he hired an investigator who found that indeed Daniel is just the right age to be his son. Benedict demands she either marry him or he will seek full custody in court. He states right off that he probably couldn’t win on the merits, but he’s got a lot of money and can tie her up for years. Plus Daniel bonds with him immediately. He tells her to dump Josh, doesn’t listen when she tries to tell him who Josh is, gets her school to release her from her contract, takes her and Daniel off to his country home.
They marry. At the reception Daniel mentions Josh which infuriates Benedict and he drags Rebecca back home to consummate the marriage immediately. Finally he listens to Rebecca and believes her that she had no lovers, Josh and his wife are good friends and no, she never got his apology letter and yes, she loves him. He loves her too. The final scene has little Daniel coming in their bedroom banging on a drum his uncle gave him. (Obviously the uncle has sadistic tendencies.) Happy Ever After.
Characters Make This Work
How does the author pull this hodgepodge of crazy plot and nutty backstory and over the top problems into a believable story? Characters are excellent. Jacqueline Baird uses dialogue and events to show the people and drive the plot, she does not rely on introspection or self pity.
Rebecca Rebecca is consistent throughout the story. She Is warm, loving, emotional, loyal to friends. She trusts almost everybody – at first any way, until they prove they cannot be trusted – and then she will remember that distrust even while she looks for mitigating reasons. Benedict hurt Rebecca terribly when he turned on her after they made love, accused her of wanting his money, of leading Gordon on and cruelly dumping him, claims he never proposed (true, he simply gave her a ring and seemed to agree they were engaged).
When Rebecca learned she was pregnant with a child by a father she couldn’t trust she didn’t waste time whining or feeling miserable or plotting revenge. She got on with things, got her teaching certificate, had the baby, bought a place to live, found day care and took care of her child, got a job and taught.
Rebecca is wary when she meets Benedict 5 years later yet she is willing to spend time with him, to listen to him, to get to know him. She plans to tell Benedict about Jonathon when he casually breaks their last date and she realizes that she is still not important to him.
Benedict calls Rebecca a firecracker. She is physically tiny, beautiful, with an outgoing, sunny personality, high energy and strong will. She keeps the teenagers in her student group under control and deftly manages the other teachers who are less assertive even though the teens are all much larger than she and full of the usual teen mischief.
She knows what she wants and works to get it. Rebecca turned down a lucrative banking job in the US because she wanted to teach. She teaches at a big school in London – apparently kids around 16, not small children. She wanted a decent place for Jonathon to live; she invested her small inheritance in a place with a small garden (aka yard for us Americans) and she furnished it to be comfortable and private. Even Benedict is impressed despite himself when he comes there.
Rebecca stands on her own yet is not too proud to accept help from friends, such as when Josh and his wife take care of Jonathon while she is with her students in France. Rebecca takes good care of her son, is careful not to spoil him and is careful with the money she has. She is smart, and moreover, rather wise. She doesn’t date and isn’t interested in guys after Benedict.
Benedict seems to veer crazily emotionally, swinging from berating Rebecca and acting hateful to quickly regretting his behavior. After he turned on her when they made love he insisted to take her to the train station, then watched the train leave and ran after it. His whole emotional responses to Rebecca is like this; he loves her despite not wanting to do so and is at constant loggerheads with himself, despising her, then despising himself for loving her then despising himself for rejecting her.
He felt terribly guilty when he learned the truth about Gordon and tried to apologize to Rebecca but he didn’t try very hard. He sent a letter but did not follow up when he got no response. My inference is that he regretted his behavior and felt guilty, wanted to make amends but was relieved when he could let it drop while telling himself Rebecca didn’t want anything to do with him.
Benedict acts the same way 5 years later when he finds out about Jonathon. He is initially furious, then he realizes he still wants Rebecca (still won’t admit he loves her), realizes she had some good reasons to keep away from him. He tells her with some self-righteousness that she owed it to tell him about their, after all he had tried to apologize, etc., etc. Later when he calms down Benedict knows he was just as much to blame if not more so than Rebecca.
I foresee a somewhat stormy future for these two strong-willed people!
Overall
It’s somewhat off putting to read Benedict’s constant disparagement that runs in parallel with his constant attempts to sleep with Rebecca. We see the turmoil in his heart all though the story. Rebecca is steadier but she too has a temper and a strong will. These two play off each other and make the story. Author Jacqueline Baird is wise to skip over the struggle that Rebecca must have faced as a single mother, especially since she had not gotten her teaching certificate before she got pregnant. Instead she shows the emotional swings both Benedict and Rebecca endure.
On the down side, the putative Other Woman stirs the pot for no discernable reason. From Benedict’s perspective the OW has no reason to feel jealous because she is simply an employee, but she nonetheless is nasty to Rebecca and tells her that Benedict will dump her the minute Jonathon no longer needs her. There doesn’t seem to be a good reason for the OW to be in the story.
Guilty Passion is believable despite the trope mash ups and thus
4 Stars
I got my copy from Thriftbooks and you can likely find copies on other used sites and on Amazon or eBay.
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