Dangerous Grounds by Shelli Stevens

Madison is thrilled to have her beloved brother home from Iraq and looking forward to the grand opening of her espresso bar Ooo La Latte. Things would be great if it weren't for the fact that her boyfriend just dumped her. The dumping wasn't a total surprise since they hadn't had sex in months, but Madison's pride is hurt. In order to get past the break up she decides to have a fling, and sexy cop Gabe seems like the perfect man for the job. Gabe is attracted to Maddie, but has an issue with the fact that she's his best friend's little sister. More importantly, he doesn't think he's a good candidate for a relationship with anyone, so he turns her down. The two are thrown back together when the Epsresso Bandit robs Maddie's cafe. She can identify him, so she needs Gabe's protection until the Bandit is caught. Being trapped with him gives Maddie another chance to get him into her bed.


Maddie is an odd mix of smart and clueless. On one hand she has a reasonable business plan for her cafe, knows how much coffee she needs to sell each day to break even and has savings to carry her until the cafe becomes established. On the other hand, she doesn't know how to make decent espresso and she has only hired 1 employee. An owner can and will work 14 hours a day, every day, but an employee does not. Maddie doesn't seem to have any plan for how she'll handle things when her lone employee has the day off.

That's dumb, but it's incidental to the plot so I could have dealt with it if that was the only problem. Unfortunately, it wasn't. Maddie is spoiled. Worse, she doesn't seem to have any idea how spoiled she is. She simply takes it for granted that the world will give her what she wants. When she decides that what she wants is Gabe she does things that I found really unacceptable to get him. Initially I sympathized with her because Gabe behaves like an ass and sends her some extremely mixed signals. However, he then clarifies his position about not sleeping with her and she refuses to drop it. Her attitude is basically that she chose him to be her stud and how dare he not accommodate her wishes. She makes another move on him and when he turns her down she says this:

"Are you kidding me?" She threw her hands in the air. "And they call women teases? You're sending me to bed fully aroused, do you realize that?"

She actually gave him the blue balls guilt trip. That's Teen Dating 101---a guy who gives you the guilt trip about his hard on is a jerk. Run, do not walk, away and let him deal with it by his own damn self. I don't think that type of manipulative behavior is any more acceptable coming from a woman than from a man. This is one of those hot button things for me, so at that point I just put the book down.

This is not the only book where I've had an issue with this. I've run across quite a few romance novels that seem to implicitly buy into a couple of ideas with which I strongly disagree.

• Men always want to have sex. If they say "no" they're just being stubborn or controlling or silly. Such behavior can and should be ignored. There are several things wrong with this, not the least of which is that if you flip the genders you get the Old Skool "forced seduction" stories, which I never really liked. I could sort of work around it in a historical, but I certainly wouldn't accept it in a contemporary.

• Since a woman can't physically force herself on a man anything she does, short of drugging him, is fine. In fact, it's not just fine it's part of being a modern woman who knows what she wants and goes after it. I find that incredibly disrespectful and I can't root for a couple to have their HEA when their relationship isn't built on respect.
  

I love a good seduction. Done right I also love a good power game. However, there's a point where the "no means no" line is crossed. When that happens I don't care who crossed the line, unless the behavior is addressed as being unacceptable I lose interest in the couple and their HEA.

It also bothers me that the same basic behavior is viewed totally differently when it's done by "the other woman". When you think about it, the idea that the heroine is strong and determined, but the other woman is a slutty hussy is really misogynist.


Grade: DNF