Under the Covers with Paul Marron: On the Rebound!

OK, a little time has passed, and we've been able to gain a little perspective. When last we saw our hero Paul Marron, everything was fine in the lower latitudes: the curving thighs, the narrow waist, the neat little stack of abs, the bulging biceps, the deliciously rounded shoulders, that cut-glass chin and smoldering pout, those protractor cheekbones, and the sultry, piercing eyes - check, check, and check. The problem came just north of all that: in a madcap and heedless decision, our hero got his perfectly-feathered sandy-brown hair dyed blond. No doubt it seemed a good idea at the time, but no amount of Regency epaulettes, cowboy spurs, or spaceman armor could justify it in the unforgiving light of the morning after, and a young man as fashionable as Paulie must have seen that better than anybody. Friendly cousins can be blond; well-meaning village curates can be blond. But rakes and billionaires and werewolves? Let's face it: peril and peroxide don't mix. Marronites may have wondered if a shining career could possible recover - or what Paul would do next.

Turns out he did what comes naturally: to lick his wounds (and wait for that color to wash out), he returned to his jet-setting secretary-impregnating old haunt, Harlequin Books, whose always-reliable stable of loose-floozy writers has been titillating and entertaining the American book-buying public for decade after tastefully torrid decade. After being welcomed back into the fold (perhaps with some teary hugs in the office? With everybody trying hard not to look at that color?), Paul threw himself into the realms of international high finance, taking on the name Nicolas Dupre and becoming a powerful theater impresario in Australia in the wonderful Miranda Lee's novel A Night, A Secret ... a Child. Nicholas is on top of the world when he receives a card from his tiny home-town, where he was, we're told, Mr. Popularity:

Not that the girls weren't after him; they were. At eighteen, Nicholas had been tall and handsome, with wavy blond hair and Nordic-blue ...

Oh no!

Obviously, Paul moved on.

His next port of call was broiling-hot Athens, where he called himself Talos Xenakis (surely a cry for help?) and busied himself impregnating beautiful young American Eve Craig - indeed, impregnating her so thoroughly she promptly lost her memory. This concoction was called Bought: The Greek's Baby and was served up at breakneck pace by the delightful and hilarious Jennie Lucas, who's no stranger to having Paul parade around on her covers (did he seek her out? Did he plead with her - in that honking Brooklyn accent - "Jennie, you have to help me!"?), and she falls to her appointed task like a trooper:

How was it possible for a man to be at once so masculine - and so beautiful? His black hair brushed the top of his ears. He had the face of an angel. Of a warrior. His Roman nose had been broken at least once, from the tiny imperfection of the angle. He had a full, sensual mouth, with a twist of his lip that revealed arrogance and perhaps more - cruelty?

Black hair! How Paul fans must have leapt for joy! Could it be? Could their long, national nightmare be over at last? With trembling anticipation they may have turned to The Melendez Forgotten Marriage by our old friend, the winning and elegant Melanie Milburne, in which our boy has switched passports yet again and is now calling himself Javier Melendez. We find him wooing delicate little Emelia - who's also having trouble remembering things (what is it with these girls? After all, are they ever going to do anything more memorable in their lives than romp in the sack with Paul Marron? Geez):

A tall raven-haired stranger with coal-black deep set eyes stood at the end of the bed. There was nothing that was even vaguely familiar about him. She studied his face for endless seconds, her bruised brain struggling to place him. She didn't recognise any one of his dark, classically handsome features. Not his tanned, intelligent-looking forehead or his dark thick brows over amazingly bottomless eyes or that not short, not long raven-black hair that looked as if it had last been groomed with his fingers. She didn't recognise that prominent blade of a nose, and neither did she recognise that heavily shadowed jaw that looked as if it had an uncompromising set to it ...

Uncompromising indeed - now that some essential lessons had been learned: coal black, dark, raven-black, raven-haired ... surely the world got the hint? This was a new Paul - or rather, the return of the old Paul, and his rise would be higher and longer than ever before! We'll begin to come to grips with it, in our next episode!

Under the Covers with Paul Marron: Playboy Boss, Live-In Mistress!

A glance – a lingering, smoldering glance – at the cover of Kelly Hunter's 2008 “Harlequin Presents” romance Playboy Boss, Live-In Mistress will be enough to tip off expert Paul-watchers that our broodingly sexy hero is still learning the ropes in this volume (not literally, the tease, but we can always hope): he's still fully clothed.

True, it's snug clothing in sleek whites and grays, suitable for highlighting his muscular little body. And true, the young business woman (equally sleekly outfitted) on the cover is doing what any sensible person would do in such a situation: she's holding Paul's discreetly feathered mullet firmly with one hand while she starts to unbutton him with the other. By contrast, he seems almost shy: his left hand (the one with the expensive watch) is merely touching her thigh, and his right hand (where all the action is, as it were) is MIA. In terms of a Paul Marron cover, it's virtually chaste. Yes, we're still in apprenticeship days here.

Some other things haven't changed either: Paul – this time he's Alexander Wentworth, ruthless young corporate takeover expert – is still filthy rich as well as being menacingly good-looking, and he's still characterized, at least in the story's beginning, as, well, a bit materialistic:

If an eight-knot wind was blowing north-north-east off the Cornwall coast, and he had no place to be but on his yacht and nothing to do but set a course and peel a diamond-encrusted bikini off a beautiful woman, Lex could be very patient indeed. Journeys of seduction were meant to be savoured and savour them he did. Frequently.

The object of his desire in this book is his personal assistant Sienna Raleigh, who's no slouch in the looks department herself and has known Paul his entire life. She's only filling in for the PA job, really: Paul lost his last one (something about motherhood), and since nobody knows him better than Sienna, she's keeping his life in order until a proper search can be conducted. She's also the voice of the conscience she knows he has, reminding him that instead of stepping in at the last minute to gut failing companies, he could try to save them instead.

But the shift in their relationship – from long-time friends and virtual siblings to boss and biddable underling – acts tectonically, allowing pent-up magma to boil to the surface. Suddenly all that comfort and security between them turns to white-hot desire. Suddenly for Sienna, anyway – in this book as in all books, white-hot desire seems to be Paul's default setting. He must have the metabolism of a bunny rabbit.

Soon, the passionate love-making starts, and some of it – well, let's just say Paul's technique sometimes seems to have wandered in from another kind of romance altogether:

Lex shot out from beneath her, cursing, half laughing, as he rolled her over and pinned her face down against the bed, one hand on the small of her back as he half straddled her to stop her from turning over and reaching for him again. Better, much better, as he slid her silky hair to one side and nipped the back of her neck. Sienna moaned and tried to turn around but he wasn't having that. There was the small matter of control. Lex had it. He was keeping it.

What ensues is a battle of wills on many levels: will Sienna surrender to passions she didn't even know she felt? Will Paul allow her to awaken the good-guy buried deep in his corporate shark heart (some ill-timed mentions of the “sub-prime housing market” might make some readers want to rip that heart right out of his pillowy chest and put it in a blender)?

Readers will keep turning pages to find out – Kelly Hunter is a bit of a sleek professional herself: there's not an ounce of fat anywhere in this novel. She wrote it in 2008 (originally for the apparently burgeoning Australian romance market? Who would have guessed Australian men, of all people, were leaving their women-folk with enough extra energy to read romantic fantasies? What international stereotype will be the next to fall? An Irishman saying, “well, you know me – one drink's my limit!”? A Frenchman saying, “Without my warm, soapy morning's shower, I just don't feel clean!”?), and when it was brought out by Harlequin in 2009 it was festooned with provocative banners - “Kept For His Pleassure” and “She's his mistress on demand!” - which is a bit of a shame, since whoever tacked on those labels didn't read the book. We're not talking Proust here, granted, but still: Sienna is hardly kept for Paul's pleasure or his mistress on demand – there's more, yes, subtlety here than that.

More subtlety, but decidedly not more of Paul's bare torso! Back in 2008 he was still a shy, journeyman cover-model wearing button-down shirts and pants and everything. But will he always remain so? Tune in next time and find out!