The Replacement Wife by Caitlin Crews

Title: The Replacement Wife

Author: Caitlin Crews

Genre: Contemporary romance

Series: Book 1 of 2 about the Whitney heiresses. Larissa’s story “Heiress Behind The Headlines” is out already in UK. Comes out in US in October 2012.

Synopsis: Becca Whitney has always lived with the knowledge that her blue-blooded family disowned her as a baby. So when she receives a summons to return to the ancestral mansion she’s intrigued.

Theo Markou Garcia needs a wife – or at least someone who looks strikingly similar to his infamous fiancée. Becca would be the perfect replacement…

The deal: masquerade as the Whitney heiress in exchange for your own true fortune – but do not fall for your husband!

Review: A thoroughly enjoyable read!

You get a clue this isn’t your average marriage deal Harlequin story in the blurb but it’s not until you read chapter 2 that you realise how raw and cold Becca’s relationship has been with her uber-wealthy aunt and uncle.

Theo is a driven guy who worked his way up from poverty to running the Whitney media empire…and he’s not about to let a comatose fiancee stop him from gaining full control.

Hate him right? You’ll fall in love with Theo right along with Becca, even as he irritates her with his focus on turning her into Larissa.

It’s Becca’s mother’s brother and sister who really make you want to pelt something at them. Unbelievable!

Knowing they’re in an impossible situation, Becca risks it all to experience passion with Theo and in the process, they fall in love.

But they can’t act on that love nor express it to each other amidst the charade for shares.

Their path to a happy ending isn’t easy but it’s worth it.

Trust me. You want to read this book and you’ll definitely be on the look-out for Larissa’s story afterward. 😀

Caitlin Crews’s www.caitlincrews.com website didn’t lie when it described her work as “passionately sensual romance”.

Grade: A+

Excerpt: “The house had not improved since she’d seen it last. It loomed over New York City’s tony Fifth Avenue like a displeased society matron, all disapproving elegance and a style that dated to the excesses of the Gilded Age. Becca Whitney sat in the vast and chilly parlor, stuffed with priceless paintings and fussy, disturbingly detailed statuary, and tried to pretend she couldn’t feel the way her two so-called relatives were glaring at her. As if her presence there, as the illegitimate daughter of their disinherited and long-disparaged late sister, polluted the very air.

Maybe it did, Becca thought. Maybe that was one reason the great hulking mansion felt like a soulless crypt.

The strained silence–that Becca refused to break, since she’d been called here this time and was thankfully no longer the supplicant–was broken suddenly, by the slight creaking sound of the ornate parlor door.

Thank God, Becca thought. She had to keep her hands tightly laced together in her lap, her teeth clenched in her jaw, to keep the bitter words she’d like to say from spilling out. Whatever this interruption was, it was a relief.

Until she looked up and saw the man who stepped inside the room. Something like warning, like anticipation, seemed to crackle over her skin, making it hum in reaction. Making her sit straighter in her chair.

“Is this the girl?” he asked, his voice a low, dark rumble, his tone brisk. Demanding.

Everything–power, focus, the strained air itself–shifted immediately. Away from the horrible aunt and uncle she’d never planned to see again and toward the man, dark and big and goose bump-raising, who moved as if he expected the world to shuffle and rearrange itself around him–and with the kind of confidence that suggested it usually did exactly that.

Becca felt her lips part slightly as their eyes met, across centuries of artifacts and the frowns of these terrible people who had tossed her mother out like so much trash twenty-six years ago. His were a rich, arresting color, an electric amber, and seared into her, making her blink. Making her wonder if she’d been scarred by the contact.

Who was he?

He was not particularly tall, not much over six feet, but he was…there. A force to be reckoned with, as if a live wire burned in him, and from him. He wore the same kind of clothes they all wore in this hermetically sealed world of wealth and privilege–expensive. Yet unlike her fussy relatives, in their suits and scarves and ostentatious accessories, everything about this man was stripped down. Lean. Powerful. Impressive. A charcoal-gray sweater that clung to his perfectly shaped torso, and dark trousers that outlined the strength of his thighs and his narrow hips. He looked elegant and elemental all at once.

He gazed at her, his head cocking slightly to one side as he considered her, and Becca knew two things with every cell in her body. The first was that he was dangerous in a way she could not quite grasp–though she could see the fierce intelligence in him, coupled with a certain ruthless intensity. And the second was that she had to get away from him. Now. Her stomach cramped and her heart pounded. Something about him just…spooked her.

“You see it, then,” Becca’s pompous uncle Bradford said in the same patronizing tone he’d used when he’d thrown Becca out of this very same house six months ago. In the very same tone he’d used to tell her that she and her sister Emily were mistakes. Embarrassments. Certainly not Whitneys. “The resemblance.”

“It is uncanny.” The man’s remarkable, disconcerting eyes narrowed, focused entirely on Becca even as he spoke to her uncle. “I thought you exaggerated.”