Book Throwback: Penny Jordan Romance Novel “Time Fuse”

 

                                                           

I have decided to occasionally write about a book and the author that made a lasting impression on me. I am calling this segment, book throwback.

The book “Time Fuse” and the romance author who wrote it, Penny Jordan, made me love romance novels. I discovered her work while shopping in a thrift store in my teens.

 Penny Jordan died on December 31, 2011, at 65 of Cancer. She penned many romance novels and women’s fiction books. I did not read all of them but the ones I did read, I enjoyed.

 One of those books is “Time Fuse” published by Harlequin Romance. It is a book that shows what Penny Jordan did best, which was to create and build sexual tension between the hero and heroine.

In the book “Time Fuse” she did this by creating an environment of denial. The hero denies that he wants or has any feelings for the heroine while the heroine admits to having feelings, but she won’t act on them because of a secret she is keeping. This environment of denial makes for a hot and interesting read.

 Every time the hero and heroine are alone together in the book it is an opportunity to have the characters go a little bit further than they did the previous time.

First, it is a comment.

The next time, it is a kiss, but they do not have sex because of the secret the heroine is keeping, and the denial the hero is in.

There is an internal and external struggle going on with both characters.

The book opens with the heroine, who is a paralegal, gets a new job working for a prominent barrister.(The romance novel is set in England). She is introduced to his nephew who is also a barrister and works in the same office as his uncle. The nephew is totally Alpha-handsome, brilliant, and rich. She bristles upon meeting him because she does not trust animal attraction.

Later in the book, she is out at a restaurant with her former boss and his wife who recommended that she apply for the new job she has just got, and the nephew is there and asks her to dance. She rebuffs him.

Things get more tense between them.  Why won’t she just dance with him? He is suspicious, not many women say no to him. He thinks she is hiding something but what? He is attracted to her, and it is something that he dislikes. .

This one act of rebuffing the hero is so great because  it creates an emotional tension on top of the  sexual tension. Nobody likes to be rejected.

How the hero and heroine deal with these tensions it is beautiful to read, and it what makes  this romance novel so good.

When they finally come together it is an explosion of passion and heat. I have read this book repeatedly over the years, and the story never gets old.

In my own romance novels, I have never been able to replicate the amount of sexual tension that Penny Jordan manages to build in her stories, but I hope to do so one day.

It took me years to figure out something about the book; something about the hero and heroine. If you read “Time fuse” I wonder if you figured it out. It is of the taboo variety. If you know, leave a comment.