One Night Consequence by Yvonne Lindsay

Posted March 4, 2022 by Marsha in Contemporary Romance, Harlequin, Harlequin Desire, Owned or Purchased, Series, Sexual Content / 0 Comments

An unexpected visitor

leads to a surprise that rocks her world…

After being in a controlling relationship, hotelier Stevie Nickerson won’t let anyone take away her hard-earned independence.

So when construction CEO Fletcher Richmond, her deceased husband’s best friend, unexpectedly strolls into her boutique hotel for a little R and R, she’s leery, to say the least.

But when innocent flirting leads to off-limits innuendo, she ends up in his bed…and expecting his baby.

With Fletcher insisting on marriage and providing a boost to her business, will Stevie rebuff his bossy moves…or let her guarded heart melt?

Titles in the Clashing Birthrights series include – Seducing the Lost Heir – Scandalizing the CEO – What Happens at Christmas…One Night Consequence – 

This is an adult 18+ story that contains language, possible violence, and sexual situations geared to an adult audience.

Title:  One Night Consequence
Series:  Clashing Birthrights #4
Author:  Yvonne Lindsay
Genre:  Contemporary Romance
Published:  February 22, 2022
Publisher:  Harlequin Desire
My Rating:  4 stars

One Night Consequence is the fourth title in the Clashing Birthrights series and brings us a tale that while heartbreaking in some ways did open up new chances for this couple… once they got out of their own way to finding lasting happiness.

Stevie is reinventing herself, or perhaps finding her way back to who she once was might be more accurate.  Stevie married for what she believed was true love.  Slowly, steadily, and with great skill, she was changed from the happy, hopeful young woman who entered this marriage into a woman groomed precisely to her husband’s requirements for his needs alone… losing herself along the way.  She watched her marriage crumble without doing anything about it until her baby daughter’s death and her husband’s reactions.  She had set the divorce in motion just before her husband’s death in a plane crash.

She returned home, back to the woman she once was vowing to never, ever enter into marriage again or to place her life, her future into the hands of another man.  Fate had different plans.

After the revealing of Fletcher’s father’s double married life after his death and the subsequent publicity and confusion for his entire family (both families), Fletcher is ready for a break, to get away where no one knows anything about his family’s troubles.  A small bed and breakfast seemed to be the perfect spot to escape to… until he discovered his former best friend’s widow was the owner and operator of this establishment.  He’d always had an attraction for Stevie, but Harrison met her first and there was that bro thing of not acknowledging that you wish you’d discovered someone first so he remained what he considered a friend.  Now, that attraction is sparking once again and this time there is nothing to prevent him from making a move… except perhaps the woman herself.  Stevie sees Fletcher, her deceased husband’s friend, as cut from the same cloth, the same attitudes, the same lifestyle and there is absolutely nothing she wants to do with this man except get through his two-week stay at her hotel/B & B.  It’s not going to be that easy.

I was torn on One Night Consequence.  It’s a well-written story, the characters are believable, the story interesting yet… Stevie never came across to me as loving.  Passionate, yes.  Stubborn, definitely.  Lost in her grief, of course.  But loving, when it’s obvious even to her but she’s still denying those feelings because all the “what ifs” – isn’t what I’d describe Stevie as at all.  Her overwhelming fear, that desperate desire to package herself into a neatly contained box that can never be opened simply kept me from caring about Stevie as I’d hoped to.  I wanted to like her, to feel some empathy toward her but found that I was enjoying the story more for Fletcher’s sake than them as a couple.  Sometimes that happens to me as a reader.  The story is good, I simply wish I could have liked my hero’s choice a bit more.  Also, this story is from “the other” family’s viewpoint, so there was a bit of shuffling to see a different angle to what has happened to these families.  I enjoyed myself, this story moved the overall series along, and I adored Fletcher – sometimes that’s got to be enough for me.

I own a Kindle edition of this title.

Available in print or for your favorite e-reader.

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