REVIEW: The Billionaire’s Bidding by Barbara Dunlop

The Billionaire’s Bid­ding by Bar­bara Dun­lop, Sil.Desire #1793, copy­right 2007, 192 pages. The Billionaire’s Bid­ding by Dun­lop was recently a #1 best­seller on eHar​le​quin​.com so I was curi­ous. So I bought it. And loved it. Story was excel­lent and a lot of fun. Here is the back blurb for your perusal:

Scram­bling to save her family’s com­pany, Emma McKin­ley was shocked when bil­lion­aire hotel mag­nate Alex Gar­ri­son tossed her a life­line — baited with an heir­loom engage­ment ring and a pre-nup an inch thick.� It was a text­book mar­riage of con­ve­nience:  he calls off her cred­i­tors; she gives him half her company.

But the elab­o­rate game of make-believe soon became more intox­i­cat­ing than either of them expected.� Could a mar­riage built on a lie with­stand the test of true passion?

This was a�fun and quick�read. I enjoyed every page, every word. I’ve never read Barbara�Dunlop before but I will be keep­ing up if she con­tin­ues to write for who­ever. Mar­riage of con­ve­nience sto­ries are a favorite of mine. The author kind of tweaked the theme some­what where by the time the cou­ple were�married, feel­ings had already been estab­lished. The hero, Alex comes across at first as a cold hearted busi­ness­man but the reader soon sees another side to him. A more gen­tler side. Emma is smart but has low self-confidence when it comes to her looks. Com­pared to her sis­ter Katie, Emma is the plain Jane.

Alex man­ages to see beyond the sur­face with Emma, see her for what she truly is: a beau­ti­ful woman. Soon he admires and respects her. I have a cou­ple of favorite scenes. Well, more than a cou­ple. I book­marked quite a few. One is where Emma is allowed to see this gen­tler side to Alex when she vis­its him at his home and meets his house­keeper, the for­mi­da­ble Mrs. Nash, dur­ing wed­ding prepa­ra­tions. In this scene, Mrs. Nash chides Emma for giv­ing in so quickly to Alex:

“I said no to the pro­posal at first.”

Mrs. Nash fussed with the rib­bons on her shoul­der. “But you said yes eventually.”

“I did.”

“And Alex got his own way again.”

Does he get his own way often?”

“He’s a bil­lion­aire. He gets his own way pretty much when­ever he wants to.”

“But not with you?” Emma guessed.

Mrs. Nash gave her a sharp-eyed look. “Never with me.”

The scene goes on fur­ther, funny stuff:

“I bet he appre­ci­ates that. Some­body keep­ing him grounded, I mean.”

“He hates it. So did his father. But his mother wouldn’t let the man fire me.”

Emma attempted to shift the con­ver­sa­tion to the pos­i­tive. “She obvi­ously val­ued your help.”

Mrs. Nash straighted. “No. She did it to spite him.”

Emma hon­estly didn’t know what to say to that.

This book was fun, fun, fun. I enjoyed it and was enter­tained and you can’t ask for more than that. You had a sound plot with a pretty rea­son­able con­flict that crops up later that gets resolved in nice HEA kind of way. Sec­ondary char­ac­ters help move the plot along and added to�a few scenes that made them stand out. A nice sub­tle chem­istry devel­ops between Alex and Emma that was nice. The rela­tion­ship was prob­a­ble in the way the author han­dles the roman­tic rela­tion­ship that started with two strangers to friends to lovers. Emma and Alex had some great witty, ban­ter back and forth that was fun to read. I love good ban­ter. Alas, I won’t quote more. You’ll just have to read the book. There is a con­flict that threat­ens their new found love but the author por­trays her char­ac­ters as adults, who with some prod­ding from fam­ily, can work things out with­out drag­ging it out forever.

The only com­plaint was that there wasn’t enough heat. I had to look at what I was read­ing again: A Sil­hou­ette Desire. This is their pas­sion line? I’d say the sen­su­al­ity in here was warm. How­ever, if you enjoy inti­macy, the author gives you plenty of that which was nice. There’s a nice scene after the wed­ding where Alex and Emma are on a secluded beach about to open their hearts to each other but — each thinks or Emma thinks that Alex’s feel­ings are not real. I mean it’s a valid point con­sid­er­ing that Alex was more con­cerned about his image than his feel­ings for Emma but lucky for her, that changes. If I had to say one thing that annoyed me it would be the con­stant ques­tion of feel­ings espe­cially since both started out pre­tend­ing with each other. Inter­nal rep­e­ti­tion is not a favorite of mine, but that’s part of the story, no?

In the end, I debated about the grade. An A? Or a B+? I was enter­tained. If there were flaws I didn’t notice them. No book is per­fect, sure. This one came close. My grade, A. Ms. Dun­lop you have my atten­tion, ma’am. Keep writ­ing like this, you’ll have a new fan.