The title, Good Girl or Gold Dig­ger?, caught my eye, and since it’s by Kate Hardy, into the cart it went.  It’s not the stan­dard HP descrip­tive title, à la The Billionaire’s Vir­gin Mis­tress Sec­re­tary, so I noticed it even more.  How can you not want to know if she’s a good girl or a gold dig­ger? Maybe she’ll turn out to be both.

Daisy Bell works with her Uncle Bill at a liv­ing museum.  Their fam­ily used to cre­ate and build steam-powered amuse­ment park rides, but that busi­ness folded.  First Bill, and now Daisy, began to col­lect, repair, and run a fair­ground fea­tur­ing the rides cre­ated by Bells.  Daisy also serves as the chief mechanic of the park.

Upon arriv­ing for work one morn­ing, Daisy dis­cov­ers that the park has been van­dal­ized: rides defaced and dam­aged, and win­dows bro­ken, along with evi­dence of a wild party.  Bill learns that their insur­ance pol­icy no longer cov­ers van­dal­ism and both he and Daisy know they lack the cash reserves to keep the park closed, pay work­ers, and make repairs.  Their best shot at keep­ing the park going seems to be find­ing a hands-off sponsor/investor to help with expenses.

In Lon­don, Felix Gis­bourne is mak­ing his PA a cup of cof­fee when he sees that she is cry­ing over a news­pa­per arti­cle.  Mina used to visit Bells as a child, and read­ing about the dam­age just gets to her.  Felix muses over the photo of a glum Daisy and won­ders what she looks like when she smiles, and instructs Mina to find the con­tact infor­ma­tion for Bells.  Felix is taken aback when he finds Daisy under­neath a hunk of machin­ery, but he’s also charmed by her pur­ple boots sport­ing white daisies.  Daisy finds Felix a lit­tle too clean-shaven and full of ideas.  She does accept his invi­ta­tion to din­ner, how­ever, and wows him with her glam appear­ance and bor­rowed finery.

Daisy and Felix come with issues; it wouldn’t be a Har­le­quin Presents if they didn’t.  Daisy’s fam­ily are all engi­neers of one kind or another, but she wanted to be a mechanic.  Her ex-boyfriends didn’t have prob­lems with Daisy the Mechanic until she became Daisy the Girl­friend, then it all turned into “Daisy, why can’t you wear a dress/makeup/heels more often?” leav­ing her to believe that no man really wants her as she is.  She’s under­stand­able leery when Felix puts the moves on her.

Felix has a type – tall, blonde, leggy – and the only time he went for a woman out­side of that type – short, brunette, short – he over­heard her telling her friends how dull she thought he was but that his money made up for it.  Hurt and embar­rassed, Felix sim­ply told every­one that he got cold feet.  Now a short brunette is in his life again, and he’s not so sure that dat­ing her is the best thing to do, but he’s will­ing if she is.

Daisy and Felix aren’t all about the drama.  They go out to din­ner, see shows, and talk.  They have cute habits – Daisy sings while work­ing, Felix nick­names her “Boots”, and human frail­ties – Felix is very inse­cure about him­self and how oth­ers see him.  They also haven’t begun to let go of their bag­gage.  Daisy freaks out when Felix buys her a dress, and Felix blows up when Daisy sug­gests that the fair­ground isn’t doing as well as they had hoped finan­cially.  Felix doesn’t attempt to crush Daisy’s fam­ily when she breaks up with him, and Daisy doesn’t have a secret baby while liv­ing in dire poverty.  They talk it out, admit fault, and work it out they way we like to think that nor­mal peo­ple do.

Grade: B

This is a May 2010 Har­le­quin Presents Extra.  Avail­able at eHar­le­quin, Sony eBook­store, Ama­zon, and wher­ever else you buy books.