Reunion Romances

With: Jennifer Hayward

If I were pressed to choose, I might have to pick reunion romances as my very favourite type to write, right up there with the fun and antics of marriage of convenience. Reunion stories, done right, pack the biggest emotional punch for me. It’s always heartbreaking to watch a love that once was torn apart – whether due to external forces that conspire against it, the baggage we carry, or perhaps simply because two people have grown apart, grown up, fallen apart.

I love the immediate tension the backstory creates for the characters, the stakes immediately on the table, but it’s the journey the characters need to take, the transformation, I find most compelling. Why is it going to be different this time? How have they changed?

In my latest release, Reunited for The Billionaire’s Legacy, it’s my two protagonists stubborn obsession with their own independence and careers that drove them apart. My heroine, Diana Taylor, is a surgeon, a resident, looking to make a name for herself as a pediatric surgeon. My hero, Coburn Grant, is out for redemption – to prove he is worthy as the CEO of his father’s company. Both are driven by their own personal demons and neither was willing to give on their careers, which meant two people living separate lives. Sometimes even the greatest love isn’t enough to keep a marriage from falling apart. And sometimes a kiss isn’t just a kiss…

Here’s a snippet from the night before Coburn and Diana’s divorce papers are to be signed when they allow themselves one last heartbreaking night together:

“There will be no audience,” he said roughly.

He slid his arms under her knees, picked her up and strode through the apartment to his bedroom. It was a big mistake to take her there, he knew. If he did, he would never get her out of his head. It was his bed, his space he’d created when she’d left him hollow and broken. To let her violate it again was surely unwise, but he wasn’t thinking with his head, he was thinking with another body part entirely.

The play of the moonlight through the skylight was all he needed to absorb his wife’s jaw dropping beauty as he deposited her on the bed. She was everything he’d ever wanted, everything he could no longer let himself want. Not after this.

 He stripped off his pants, shirt and tie and slid on a condom. Diana was staring at him like he was a beast on the prowl and he liked that. Liked when she was at his mercy. He straddled her, pinning her to the bed with his heavier weight. She looked brazen with her dress half off and her eyes full of desire. He ran a hand from her throat to the heat between her legs, pushing her dress up to her waist. Her lips parted in an unspoken message. The urge to kiss her, to take possession of her sultry full mouth was so strong it nearly consumed him. He swallowed it back, clamped his jaw down hard on the need. If he did that this bedroom would never be his own.

            “Coburn?” Diana lifted her hand to curve around his nape. Her dark eyes were confused, questioning. He closed his against the emotion he saw there because now it was too much for him. Now it threatened to singe him beyond repair. He allowed her fingers to bring his head down toward her parted lips, but at the last minute he turned his head and buried his mouth in her throat.

*****

In celebration of reunion stories, here are five of my favourites, some new, some old. Would love to hear what some of yours are!

Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell - What can you say about Scarlett and Rhett? If there ever were two people meant for each other they are it. But can they live together? Will Scarlett and Rhett ever find happiness?

Billionaire Prince, Pregnant Mistress – Sandra Marton – Part of the Karades series for Harlequin Presents, this story is so full of emotion and passion you simply can’t imagine Alex and Maria not ending up together. Yet the path to love is fraught with intrigue and betrayal…

Paradise - Judith McNaught – I love a Cinderella story – this was one in reverse with tough former Indiana steel mill worker Matthew Farrell who falls for the unattainable Meredith Bancroft at a swanky country club where he is the outsider. It stole my heart as all of McNaught’s books do. Meredith once defied her father to be with the sexy Matt, marrying him in an ill-fated match that left both of them scarred. When Matt sets out to capture the Bancroft empire – he must choose between revenge or love.

Summer of Mahogany – Janet Dailey -This is one of my favourite reunion stories of all time. When rich, yacht-set Rhyder sets anchor in naïve Gina’s small Maine town, she’s never seen anything like him. Rhyder knows he should stay away from the beautiful young Gina but when their attraction proves too strong to resist, he must marry her to save appearances. They quickly have their marriage annulled and Rhyder moves on, but Gina, now a mature woman and a lawyer, is about to come face-to-face with the only man she’s ever loved.

The One That Got Away - Kelly Hunter - There’s an edge to this Harlequin Kiss title, a hint of dominance I loved. Any story Kelly writes is brilliant and I loved the insane amount of heat between Logan and Evie. I couldn’t stop turning the pages to find out what happened first time around and how it would end.

*****

Reunited For The Billionaire’s Legacy

Petition for divorce…denied! 

Diana Taylor's marriage to playboy Coburn Grant was short, passionate and blazed brightly until the reality of their different worlds set in. Now, years later, Coburn has finally agreed to a divorce. Except one last pleasurable night together seals their fate—with a baby!

Diana knows Coburn will never sign the papers now—he will have his wife and child. And, whisked away to a tropical island paradise, it's increasingly difficult to ignore their primal hunger for each other. With his legacy growing inside her, can Diana deny the one man she could never resist?

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