Take Me, by Cherry Adair

Take Me, by Cherry Adair has been in my Wish List for quite some time. I can't remember just why I added it, since none of my regular haunts has reviewed it.

Business exec Joshua Falcon is used to getting his own way in the boardroom—and in the bedroom. And when he meets gorgeous Jessie Adams at a party, he wants her. NOW. NAKED in his four-poster. Together the two of them could have a hot sexual affair – with no commitments.
She's his for the taking. . .

That suits Jessie to a T. Long nights of incredible sex. No ties. All she wants is a baby by the man she's always secretly hungered for. . .and then she's moving on. Except Jessie and Joshua share a surprising past. One that is about to take them where they never expected to go. . .

This was my first F in a very long time.

The book starts very contrived and stays that way. In the first scene, Joshua comes into the diner where Jessie is waitressing and proposes marriage to her. He needs to get married rightnow! because his uncle will give control of his company to the first cousin who marries and settles down. Oookay. His uncle's still alive, mind you, so he'll see that the marriage isn't real. Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of wanting a man who's settle down to run the company?

The marriage is supposed to be fully in name only, and it remains that way for 7 years. That's when Jessie decides to ask her husband for what he's promised in exchange for marriage, "her heart's desire". And her heart's desire is a baby. Not just any baby, she wants her husband's baby, born in wedlock. At this point I was already asking myself "WTF??" First of all, the author in no way shows Jessie desperately wanting a baby. It's just stated and we're supposed to believe it. Second, whyever would she be so set on wanting Josh to be the father? She saw him for a couple of hours 7 years before, and that was it.

And it gets worse. She doesn't approach him and ask him "Oh please, impregnate me!" (which would have been bad enough, LOL!). No, she engineers a meeting, doesn't tell him who she is and plans to sleep with him until she gets pregnant. She even has her fertile days marked in a calendar. Zero compunction about forcing a man to have a child when he doesn't want to. She has no problem with telling him she's taking care of birth control and then not taking anything. Very, very creepy. Come on, she actually has a room full of baby things in her house, everything ready, and she's been following his exploits for years (I just knew he'd been having the time of his life during their marriage, while she'd been celibate, and I was right. She was actually a virgin). It's almost stalker behaviour.

And another thing. "Protection" seems to be only against getting pregnant, for these two. I mean, Josh, of course, has been a slut these 7 years, and has had sex practically with everything that moves. He has no problem with having sex with Jessie without a condom, which implies that this is something he's probably done in the past, and Jessie is not at all worried about having unprotected sex? Stupid, very stupid. I hated her, I really did.

But then, I also hated Josh, the sexist pig. He's patronizing. He orders for her. Women are all money-grubbing bitches, so instead of just having a couple of one-night-stands, or a relationship that ends when it ends, he proposes that she be his "mistress", with a legal contract and everything. Oh, please! Does anyone actually use that word these days? And would any woman with even an ounce of self-esteem actually accept the "job"? Disgusting. And I hated his cavalier attitude towards her career, he thinks nothing of asking her to drop her clients and accompany him during business trips.

Of course, Jessie is "good". She doesn't accept the money. She doesn't want expensive jewelry. And she's returned every cent of the money she got for marrying him. That just doesn't make sense. I mean, it was a business arrangement. Josh'd get control of his company, and she'd get enough money to make a good life. What the hell is wrong with that?

Also, apart from hating and despising both hero and heroine, I was bored, very bored by the endless and frequent sex scenes. Even some of those were a bit creepy... those benwa balls? Which she didn't want to use, and yet he sticks them inside her in an elevator? God, sorry but yuck!

I'm never, ever reading Cherry Adair again. I usually give authors a couple of chances, but not if I find their books this offensive.