Review: Can’t Buy Me Love – Molly O’Keefe

Can’t Buy Me Love by Molly O’Keefe
Series:
Release Date:  June 26, 2012
Publisher:  Random House Publishing Group
Source:  Edelweiss
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In Molly O’Keefe’s captivating new contemporary romance, a woman with a past and a man without a future struggle to find a place where they belong.

A girl from the wrong side of the tracks, Tara Jean Sweet knows that opportunity will never knock; she’ll have to seize it. Elderly Texas rancher Lyle Baker has a dying request: He will give Tara Jean a stake in his leather business in exchange for a little family subterfuge. All Tara Jean has to do is play the part of a gold-digging fiancée to lure Lyle’s estranged children home. The mission is soon accomplished.

Now Lyle’s gone—and his ridiculously handsome son, Luc, an ice hockey superstar sidelined by injuries, is the new owner of Crooked Creek ranch. He’s also Tara Jean’s boss. But being so close to sinfully sweet Tara Jean does crazy things to Luc’s priorities, like make him want to pry her deepest secrets from those irresistible lips. But when Tara Jean’s past demands a dirty showdown, will Luc stay and fight?

Reviewer’s Thoughts:

Tara Jean has spent the past four years trying to run from her past.  She thought she was just about the get everything she wanted when she agreed to pretend to be the gold digging fiancee of rich Texas rancher, Lyle Baker.  For her role in the scheme to bring his children back home, she would get a 40% stake in Baker Leather, a company she helped pull from bankruptcy.  But it seems the only thing Lyle Baker was really good at was screwing the people who love him.

Luc Baker wanted nothing to do with the father that verbally and physically abused him as a child.  He had more important things to deal with, like the brain injuries he’s received which now put his hockey playing days in serious jeopardy.  But he’d do anything for his half sister, Victoria, and she’s hell bent on getting to Texas to make sure that gold-digger their father was marrying wouldn’t be running off with her portion of the inheritance.

You can imagine what happens when Luc and Victoria get to Texas.  Nothing is as it seems, including Tara Jean, and they all find themselves reeling from the stipulations Lyle put in his will.  They are now forced to deal with each other if they have any hope of getting what they want.

I had a hard time liking any of the characters in this book.  They were all self-absorbed about their own issues and couldn’t be bothered to see how the events may have effected the other people involved.  Luc tended to be the only who tried to “fix” things to make everyone happy, but even then in the end he ended up doing what was maybe best for one person and not everyone involved.

I will say Luc and Tara were good together, once they stopped thinking of just themselves.  I love good verbal sparring and these two had it going on.  But they did spend more time fighting than loving.  That’s one thing I would have liked to see more of.