Wow. Girl for a Millionaire is good! The emotions and plot are complex and I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. Overall it is a story of faith and the simple question of how much to believe in someone else.

Roberta Leigh gives us not one but two romances. The main story with Laurel and Nicholas builds slowly, starting as two people make a pact to get through a cruise without compromising their principles. They spend time together, have the inevitable lying other woman, pass through a violent scene, separation, misunderstanding and lies, then finally into love. The second romance is sweet, touching and refreshingly normal as Laurel’s doctor friend Lewis falls for Laurel’s 40-something boss Bunty; they court then marry.

Laurel and Nicholas have a difficult road to loving happiness. They meet when Laurel is asked to join a small group of people on Tony Minelli’s yacht; Laurel thinks she’s to chaperone Tony’s girlfriend but Tony and everyone else knows she’s there to um, “entertain” Tony’s guest Nicholas. Laurel doesn’t figure this out until the yacht is well off shore and Tony refuses to return to let her off. Instead she makes friends with Nicholas who is also there under pretense; he wants a contract with Tony and has to be friendly to get it, but he’s not interested in a girl brought onboard for him. They agree to pretend to be romantic in order to keep the other guests from making Laurel miserable or costing Nicholas his contract. The first two days together Nicholas thinks she knew the score and simply chickened out, that she’s welshing on the deal. As he gets to know her they get along great and by the second week of the cruise Nicholas is actively courting Laurel and she’s falling in love.

At Monte Carlo Nicholas and Laurel spend the day the day together happy, then in the evening a lady and her lovely daughter Gillian join them. The girl’s mother tells Laurel that Gillian and Nicholas are engaged, that he is waiting only for his company prospects to improve so he can support the girl. There doesn’t seem any reason to doubt her, so broken hearted, Laurel decides she needs to leave now, to get away from Nicholas before she listens to any more lies. She gets her passport but once more the yacht is moved off the harbor, she needs transport to get back to land and the crewman she asks demands 100 pounds. She has only 10 and decides to borrow from Nicholas.

Now here is where we get into trouble. Laurel doesn’t want to tell Nicholas she’s leaving – pride apparently – and she takes the money, then just as she’s sitting down to write an IOU and farewell note, Nicholas comes in drunk and furious. He got the contract and the crewman told him that Laurel is leaving and that she’s in his cabin stealing his money. (Apparently no one ever closes drapes and he could see through the porthole.) Nicholas furiously tells Laurel that he didn’t think she was a thief but now knows she’s not only a thief but a liar and grabbing her, he’s going to get his back now. They have a knock down fight where he accidentally throws Laurel into the wall before she manages to conk his head with a vase. She comes back to consciousness before Nicholas, gets off the boat and flies back to London. She has a terrible headache and nausea which doesn’t go away.

After months of missteps Laurel and Nicholas clear up their misunderstandings and marry. It’s the path to that understanding that makes Girl for a Millionaire so good.

Both Laurel and Nick have problems with faith. Laurel expects Nick to have faith in her to realize she’s honest and not a thief or sleep around. Nick expects Laurel to have faith that his courtship was honest.

Laurel has three main problems:

1. Laurel expects Nicholas – if he loves her – to know her well enough to realize her integrity. She forgets they only knew each other for two weeks, and even with love one can have doubts.
2. She is proud. Laurel lets her pride dictate how she responds when Nicholas says he loves her. Between expecting Nicholas to know her better and being too proud to say anything, Laurel does not tell him why she’s leaving (he’s engaged) and even the next time they meet she still doesn’t tell him.
3. Laurel believes Nicholas is engaged, thus his courtship was a lie and she thinks she is out of his class.

Nicholas has three main problems:

1. He expects Laurel to know him well enough to believe he is in earnest when he courts her, and to believe him when he says he loves her. (Same problem as Laurel’s #1!)
2. He’s got a niggling doubt about Laurel; he loves her, he doesn’t think she’s really a good-time girl or a thief, but finding her with his cash infuriates him.
3. He’s aggressive. In business this is why he’s on the yacht and in personal affairs it’s why he acts as if he’s going to rape Laurel when he finds she took his money.

Somehow they both must reconcile their unrealistic expectation that the other will somehow automatically know them well enough to bury all doubts, and open themselves up to rejection, to bury pride and connect now for the rest of their lives.

In contrast, Lewis Freed courts Bunty by dating, by talking, by visiting, by kissing, by marriage. He’s not afraid of rejection and he doesn’t let pride or some utopian belief in the power of love keep him from claiming his bride. Eventually Nicholas follows suit, convincing Laurel that he loved her enough to have faith without another’s testimony.

I liked Girl for a Millionaire for the dual romance and the emotional insights. Laurel was not willing to allow Nicholas to believe her based solely on someone else’s word, she knew that if he couldn’t believe her based on his own knowledge of her character that they would have many incidents of distrust in the future. She had to eventually believe that Freed only helped cement Nick’s own faith.

Nicholas shows greater faith and perseverance than Laurel. He tracks her down twice to apologize and restate his faith and love and it’s only the second time, when he states Freed simply precipitated the meeting, that Laurel believes him.

I enjoyed Girl for a Millionaire immensely. I loved seeing Nick and Laurel stumble their way past distrust and fear through forgiveness to faith and love. I liked seeing Lewis convince Bunty that they would be happy together. And I was very pleased that Nick and Laurel are off to get married at the end.

5 Stars

I got my paperback copy on eBay. Amazon has copies in stock; Thriftbooks does not at this moment.

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