Office Romance: His Girl Friday by Diana Palmer

Brace your­selves. I’m actu­ally read­ing the cat­e­gories I bought sev­eral years ago. This is not a reread. If you have read this book and have fond mem­o­ries of it, then hit the back but­ton because you’ve been warned.

I’ve only read _one_ other Diana Palmer and it was Coltrain’s Pro­posal. It was such a good read that I went out and did a glom of sorts. “His Girl Fri­day” was the result of said glom. How did I like it? Read on.

Well, to pre­pare myself, I real­ize that Palmer has a style. Her heroes tend to be “alpha” and her hero­ines tend to be young inno­cent vir­gins. Also, “His Girl Fri­day” was writ­ten in 1989 and it’s an “office romance.” Not a favorite. Lastly, I was curi­ous to know if the themes of the late 1980’s were still res­o­nant today.

Cabe Rit­ter comes from a fam­ily of oil men. He runs his own busi­ness that sells parts to oil rigs. Danetta Marist, his sec­re­tary of two years, is some­one he never glanced at twice. Cabe uses the mas­cu­line form of her name, “Dan” to keep his dis­tance and often treats her like a kid brother.

Due to some fam­ily drama, Cabe and his father, Eugene, don’t get along well. Eugene insults the women Cabe dates because he finds none of them suit­able. He throws Danetta’s name into the hat of pos­si­ble suit­ors for his son and even tells Cabe that she might have a crush on him.

Cabe con­fronts Danetta, in a round about way, hedg­ing and then ask­ing her if she’s inter­ested and she gives him an answer that he doesn’t nec­ces­sar­ily like. Any­way, he starts tak­ing per­sonal notice of her attire and per­sonal appear­ance. He even asks her to dress a bit more sexy.

Danetta is not a “lib­er­ated woman.” She shares an apart­ment with her beau­ti­ful cousin Jenny, who is hardly ever there and has a iguana as a pet for com­pany. And she’s in love with her boss who chain smokes and is a wom­an­izer. The two have a lot of heated exchanges & close encoun­ters. Mainly Cabe’s yelling at Danetta for mak­ing moon eyes at him and she’s eas­ily crushed when­ever he throws other women in her face.

Then the story goes on, into the famil­iar path of the mat­ing dance. The con­flict is a clas­sic one: no sex before mar­riage. Danetta wants a ring on her fin­ger first, baby. But does she wait for it or not? Of course, as men are wont to do, Cabe tries to wear down her defenses with his hard kisses and shar­ing with her his uncon­trol­lable lust-filled thoughts.

There’s two side-plots where one involves cousin Jenny. Seems like her job, work­ing for Cabe’s father makes her out to be a tar­get of some secret agents. Jenny does some kind of secret work with geol­o­gists who search for strate­gic met­als. Jenny of course shares some info with Danetta who in turn tells a third party who then bur­glars her home. This prompts Cabe and Danetta to spend even more time together.

Then the other side­plot shows how Danetta helps Cabe resolve his fam­ily issues. Cabe resents his father for remar­ry­ing so quickly after his mother’s death. He even resents his half-brother, Nicky, who adores him. Then the story ends with a quick, behind the scenes sting oper­a­tion and then, mer­ci­fully, it’s over.

How did I like this story? Well, I didn’t. Sorry kids but this one doesn’t hold up well. Unless you don’t mind mousy vir­gins who are stub­born, unbe­liev­ably naïve and who get drunk after one glass of white wine, hey, go for it. Some of the dia­logue is laugh­able, no, really, as evidenced,

“I didn’t know how beau­ti­ful a woman could be until now,” he whis­pered softly. “I’ve never had a vir­gin, Danetta,” he breathed as his mouth smoothed with exquis­ite ten­der­ness over her high breasts. “I don’t know if I can live through the plea­sure of hav­ing you…”

or this one,

[snip]“I don’t know a lot about vir­gins and I’ve never had to hold any­thing back.” His eyes held hers. “Restraint is dif­fi­cult for a man after a long dry spell, you see.” His hands con­tracted. “That’s what it’s going to mean if we have each other,” he said curtly. “I’ll have to hurt you. Delib­er­ately. You under­stand?” He sighed roughly. “I don’t know if I can.”

There’s more and it’s painful to read. Cabe is sup­posed to be a play­boy but we later learn that he’s actu­ally not. It’s all a façade. He just doesn’t want to be in a com­mit­ted rela­tion­ship and finds that it’s eas­ier just to date some­one who doesn’t want a rela­tion­ship either. Until he meets Dani.

What’s sad is that the story started off promis­ing with the light humor and the oil rig­ging busi­ness set as the back-drop. But once Cabe decided to pur­sue then avoid then pur­sue Danetta, the romance ran off the track, crashed and burned. So, no, this one I won’t be keep­ing. If they ever repack­age this one, avoid. F.

Cur­rently read­ing Jen­nifer Crusie’s Trust Me On This from Loveswept #843, dated 1997. Can’t wait to see how well this one holds up con­sid­er­ing that the pub­lisher is repack­ag­ing this one in 2010. Mean­while, for read­ers who are inter­ested in His Girl Fri­day, it is SD#528 and it’s OOP.

For Fur­ther Reading

• REVIEW: The Bil­lion­aire Who Bought Christ­mas by Bar­bara Dunlop
• Ain’t Mis­be­hav­ing, Jeanne Grant
• The Wrong Man For Her, Kathryn Shay [Guest Review]
• Ōoku: The Inner Cham­bers, Fumi Yoshinaga
• Vam­pire Knight Story & Art by Mat­suri Hino
• REVIEW: Rain­wa­ter by San­dra Brown
• “When Love Isn’t Enough” by Kath­leen Gilles Seidel
• REVIEW: Ten Ways To Win Her Man by Bev­erly Bird
• REVIEW: Trust Me On This by Jen­nifer Crusie
• REVIEW: Make Me Yours by Betina Krahn

Tagged as: boss and secretary trope, diana palmer, Romance, Silhouette Desire