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Hey, subscribers and non-subscribers!
I’m springing a kind of fun newsletter on you this week. The entry below started as a running list in my phone’s notes app and somehow bloomed into a whole post. It’s a tad bit lengthy due to book excerpts, so I’m just going to let you all dive right in—or back right out. (Why wouldn’t you keep reading? I mean, you have to find out why the preview image is an old-timey wheeled cart, don’t you?)
Teal Deer (TL; DR)
Wait a Second: When the Supporting Pairings Steal the Show
Most of my more popular work zeroes in on one couple—like Trucker and Pinky in Tikka Chance on Me—but I was raised on soap operas and their sprawling canvasses and multiple love stories, so I love me a good secondary pairing as well. When I started out publishing romance, I had the multiple couple mess that was Spice and Smoke, Shaw and Sunny in Spice and Secrets, and Kamal and Ashu’s chaste, tentative beginnings in Bollywood and the Beast. (Still one of my favorite pairs that I’ve written, btw, even though they barely touch hands.) Fast-forward a few years and there’s Danny and Yulia in Big Bad Wolf and the Grace/Finian/Nate arc that spans that book and Pretty Little Lion. If there’s room in a story, I like to fill it with extra love!
So, it’s no surprise that many of the romances I enjoy rereading or have on my Keeper Shelf have memorable secondary love stories that run parallel to that of the main characters. Whether it’s soaps or my romance novels, I’ve learned from the best! Here are a few of my longtime favorites.
Tessa & Leo, the London’s Greatest Lovers series by Lorraine Heath — Tessa is the widowed mother of the titular Greatest Lovers, and her three-book arc with her younger, live-in lover Leo never fails to tug at my heart. Her sons wholeheartedly and scandalously approve of Leo because their father was a colossal shithead. They and Leo think she deserves happiness after that marriage—which is why Leo’s willing to give her up if he has to. When Tessa finally realizes that she can’t live without him, it’s just as satisfying as Ainsley and Jayne’s HEA in the same book. (And Waking Up With the Duke is one of my favorite historical romances of all time!) |  |
Joanna & Adrian, Hidden Honor by Anne Stuart — He’s an honorable knight pretending to be a monk on a pilgrimage, she’s an older, retired courtesan pondering joining a convent. How could they not be perfect for each other? She gets off for the first time in her life while pressed beneath him during a bumpy cart ride. It’s kind of amazing. But their emotional arc is even better.
Playing the part of husband in front of an audience would give him the perfect excuse to touch her, to kiss her.
But it would be a lie, with her thinking him a celibate monk, and it would cause her nothing but pain. He’d touched her, kissed her, as much as he could dare allow himself. From now until they reached the Shrine of St. Anne he must remember he was truly Brother Adrian, a gentle monk, and not a knight bent on making his way in the world. A knight pretending to be a monk pretending to be a peasant. A man in love pretending to be a celibate monk pretending to be a tender husband.
If they didn’t arrive at the shrine soon he might very well go mad. Not with the lies and confusion. But with the wanting of what he must not have.
Faith & Wade, Carolina Moon by Nora Roberts — She’s a spoiled wild child and he’s a sweet veterinarian, and they’ve been hooking up since they were teenagers. I am a sucker for any sort of bad girl/good guy pairing, and this one fits that bill so perfectly. Wade has loved Faith for half his life and he knows he shouldn’t let her keep using him for sex, but he can’t turn her away. Watching Faith realize just what she has in him, and then open up enough to finally stay, is such a satisfying arc. And she doesn’t change who she is! She’s still a spoiled wild child at the end of the book, but one who has accepted Wade’s love. |  |
April & Jack, Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips — Second-chance secondary romance is like double the gold and, in a rare move, this one involves the male lead’s parents! I love it, because they’re both older and somewhat wiser after making huge mistakes. Once a professional groupie, clean and sober April just wants to move forward with her life. Jack, still a famous rock musician, doesn’t quite trust her but is enthralled by this mature version of the wild girl he knew. They’re so prickly before they get their shit together!
It was a deep, dreamy kiss, far more arousing than their long-ago drunken ones. When they finally separated, the question in his eyes cut through her dreamy state. She shook her head.
“Why?” he whispered, stroking her hair.
“I don’t do one-night stands anymore.”
“I promise it’ll be more than one night.” He caressed her temple with his thumb. “You have to wonder what it would be like.”
More than he could imagine. “I wonder about a lot of things that aren’t good for me.”
“Are you sure? We’re not kids.”
She pushed away. “I don’t put out for good-looking rockers anymore.”
Caterina & Lorenzo, The Wind Dancer by Iris Johansen — This one’s a Renaissance-era tragedy—and in a very problematic book—but it still makes my list because it’s so exquisitely angsty. Lorenzo Vasaro is an assassin who’s been warming the bed of Caterina, mistress of the city-state of Mandara, for years. She values her independence, can’t admit to weakness, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. After she dies, he leaves his estate to her descendants—predicated on a daughter in each generation inheriting it and carrying on her name and his. Which is why a Catherine Vasaro and Caitlin Vasaro feature in the second and third book. How goddamn romantic is that? |  |
Sam & McCord, Someone to Watch Over Me by Judith McNaught — McNaught herself has an author’s note about McCord almost stealing the book, and once you read it you can see why. He’s a tightly-controlled, brilliant agent and Samantha is a young newly minted detective who leads with her gut and her heart. For as oddly matched as they seem, they both kind of know from the get-go that there’s something bigger between them and the tension grows and grows until…
“First, I’m going to pull that band out of your hair and let it loose so that I can shove my fingers into it and find out whether it actually feels like satin or like silk. I’ve been dying to do that for weeks.”
Sam’s arms uncrossed and fell limply to her sides as she gaped at him.
“Soon after I do that,” he continued in a husky voice she hadn’t heard before. “I’m going to start kissing you, and at some point before I leave, I’m going to turn you into this wall—” He tipped his head to the wall right next to the door. “And then I am going to do everything I possibly can to imprint my body on yours.”
I’m currently reading Can’t Get Enough by Kennedy Ryan, so I have to shout out Bolt and Skipper, who are fricking hilarious and also hot. They’re the assistants of the main characters, Maverick and Hendrix, and it’s lusty loathing on first sight. They’re constantly hate-banging and I can’t wait to see if it turns into more! |  |
Was this departure from my long-winded musings entertaining? Gosh, I hope so! Please subscribe if you haven’t already, and do keep an eye out for book updates in the near future!
-Suleikha
