Emily Fairfax (who is 24) and Anton Diaz (37) first meet in a deluxe London hotel at a costume ball for charity. In the days afterwards, Anton takes an interest in Emily. He asks her out, sends her flowers, and eventually proposes marriage. But Emily doesn't know that Anton is out for revenge on the Fairfax family since Emily's late father supposedly wronged Anton's half-sister, Suki, many years ago...

This book started out well. Anton did a lot of stupid, arrogant things, but it was obvious he was crazy about Emily (even though it took him awhile to admit it to himself). He was a jealous and possessive hero, which I love. Emily was a freelance marine archaeologist. She loved Anton and was mad/disappointed when she found out the reason he married her. She wanted to make him see he was wrong about her father. My major complaint about this book was Emily...she keeps getting mad over Anton marrying her for revenge, him being high-handed, angry over her job, etc., but she caves in and makes love to him every time he touches her, every chance she gets. And this happened way too often, over and over. It was hard reading about her outrage when in two seconds she was back in bed with him. And because of this, it started to slow the book down and made me bored.

The end of the book got interesting when Emily goes looking for a sunken pirate ship with a bunch of treasure hunters, while there is hurricane warnings in the area, which causes Anton to worry.

A so-so read. ( )

3 stars of 5Anton Diaz is very much an HP alpha male - he's arrogant, rich, and bossy as hell. He's also a little on the clueless side when it comes to his own (or anyone else's) emotions and motivations. Emily is a pretty strong heroine, if only because she's too darn stubborn to let go of her own hurt feelings to make some sort of compromise with her husband when things go sour. Of course, hubby doesn't offer a compromise either, as such - just sort of pushes their differences aside and decides to go on as if nothing is wrong. But even that seems more positive than Emily's constant focus on their troubles. Maybe I'm in a minority here, but I just think things could have resolved themselves much easier and sooner had she not been so bent on keeping the angst going.Anton marries Emily with revenge in mind - revenge against a wrong her father allegedly did his family years before Emily was even born. After they marry, Anton decides that, while he doesn't love his wife, that he does like her enough not to go on with his scheming. However, he lets the cat out of the bag during an argument and from then on Emily gives him the cold shoulder. He does make some nasty threats to her during this argument, but nothing he does or says for the rest of the book really reinforces any of those threats. He makes no move to take over her family's company, nor does he tell her family about the secret he knows about her father. The two of them continue to angst and argue and have lots and lots of sex every chance they get. Meanwhile, Anton notices that his wife is emotionally absent from him - unlike how sweet and loving she was before his revenge scheme came up - so he just sort of goes along with it, trying to make the most of what they do have. Emily accuses him of cheating at almost every turn, but then she turns around and encourages him to cheat because she has this idea that if she can just catch him cheating then she can divorce him and take all his money. I don't think either character acts terribly well at times. I suppose I felt more forgiving of Anton's behavior than Emily's because Anton seemed more willing to let bygones be bygones - even if he didn't say it in so many words.There were a number of things that were a tad aggravating about the book, namely the mega angst factor and Emily's own ideas of revenge. I agree that she'd been terribly wronged, but I thought her holding onto her hurt for such a long time was the main cause of strife later in her marriage. I liked that we got a lot of the story from Anton's POV - so many of these "bent on revenge" reads only tell the story from the heroine's viewpoint, so you get a very biased idea of things, which always makes the confession of love at the end that much less believable. When that bit of the story does come around, though, Anton feels real remorse for his actions and apologizes without it sounding too much like a HEA maneuver.I'd recommend this to anyone who likes an emotionally angsty read told from both the main characters' POV's.http://iheartpaperbacks.com ( )

Enoyed but not a keeper! ( )