The Virgin’s Secret Marriage: Post 15

Chapter 11: The Sanctity of (an unknown) Marriage (of convenience)

(Posts for the foreseeable future may be a bit brief and slapdash. Sincere apologies—it’s been a heck of a few months and the Commissioner is digging her way out of them.)

“Saul and Margaret want to see me—and my new wife—at their estate at seven-thirty this evening for dinner. Because I am now an employee under contract with the Storm, the option of no does not exist” (141).

I dunno, dude. The very fact that you were summoned like that makes me wonder. Sure, if you were only an employee, I’d agree. But you are also now their son in law, and they invited you two through the coach and via you (instead of Emma) and the whole thing smacks of ickiness.

Emma says he has to go (as employee) but she doesn’t. Joe, however, does not agree. He puts a “possessive” arm around her.

“If I have to go, you have to go. That’s what being my wife means” (141).

Suddenly my choice to remain single has been validated and clarified. It’s 2015 (or within a few years of that, since this book isn’t exactly hot off the presses.) Being married does not make you chattel and does not mean you have to go where you’re told by your spouse!

Emma does not argue, however, because she needs to put her Detecting Plan into action. So instead she tells Joe that his mother needs him (she doesn’t) in order to get rid of him. Hannah-the-Mechanic is outside, in her prearranged place, looking at the engine of Emma’s car and shaking her head sadly. The Subplot Groom does not hesitate for an instant when Emma asks if she can borrow his BMW, but alas, all the planning is for naught when Emma whips open the trunk expecting to find all the stolen hockey memorabilia but instead discovering only a single, forlorn, unidentifiable, plain black puck.

That better not be a clue. I haven’t played hockey in almost a year (with one exception) due to health and then landing in the Appalachian-Land-of-No-Freakin’-Rinks, but I would not in the least bit be surprised if there were a puck still in my car’s trunk. And probably a water bottle and some stick tape, too.

When Emma gets home, Joe questions her and threatens to “kiss it out of” her if she doesn’t confess as to why she’d sent him to his mother and why she’d borrowed the Subplot Groom’s car (142). Emma manages to evade answering him, despite the fact that they’re both wearing only towels as they prepare to go to her parents’ house and he’s being all demanding and apparently sexy.

“And do you know… that when you’re at your bossiest and most demanding—like right now—that I…”

Joe’s sexy grin widened.  “You what?”

I want to give you everything you want. And more (144).

Oh Emma. If you have a BDSM fetish, that’s totally fine. Go find yourself a proper dominant. But stop finding Joe’s every-day ordinary browbeating to be sexy and romantic.

The newlyweds—are they? They’ve technically been married for seven years… They should be at the “Seven year itch” at this point, right? At any rate, the two of them show up at the home of Emma’s parents where everything is very “civil” and very “tense” (145). After the hor d’oeuvres, Saul starts insisting that Joe go on Tiffany Lamour’s show.

Oh FFS, novel, seriously?

Joe’s response is that he doesn’t want to talk about his personal life on tv, in order to spare Emma. Margaret’s response is sort of horrifying, in my opinion.

Margaret shrugged… “Emma’s reputation as a proper young woman went out the window the moment the two of you were caught on camera, sans clothing” (146).

On one hand, yeah, I get it. On the other, this seems so dismissive, as though Emma doesn’t get to have a private life because she was caught on camera in a bizarre accidental nudity moment. Does her own mother not care about Emma’s desire now because she has lost her reputation?

Margaret goes on in a vein that I suppose is meant to characterize her as caring, but frankly the whole thing seems very self-interested to me.

“For you to get yourself in the predicaments you have with Joe tells me that there is something special between the two of you. All your father and I are asking is for the two of you to accept the fact that like it or not you both are very much in the public eye. … That means you are role models to a lot of young people” (147).

Ummm. Well, Joe might be, as, you know, an NHL player. And sure, hockey players’ wives and girlfriends typically do a lot of charity work and such, but I wouldn’t say that any of them are role models, let alone role models because they married a hockey player. (Yes, little Susie and little Jane, you two can grow up and marry an NHL player and be just like Emma!) I mean, how many hockey wives can you name besides Carrie Underwood? And Candace Cameron (Bure)? And, um, Ovechkin was (is?) dating a Russian tennis player, right? But these—even if I could think of more—actually prove my point because all of those women were famous before dating their hockey players and for reasons completely separate from dating hockey players.

Emma is a wedding planner. I don’t think they have to worry.

Did it mean now that the sanctity of her marriage had to be sacrificed for the benefit of the darn hockey team? (147).

Well, I wouldn’t go that far, Emma. Because your marriage doesn’t have any sanctity. You (re)married because of the ‘darn hockey team’, remember? Geez.

The conversation continues, with her parents pushing that the scandal won’t die until Joe answers questions and it’s Emma who doesn’t want him to, because that would put him in the claws of Tiffany Lamour, “in a position where he was vulnerable to the whims of a vindictive, scandal-hungry heiress” and “her interest in Joe seems a lot more than simply professional…. “(147 emphasis and ellipsis original).

The lady doth protest too much. (I get paid to teach Shakespeare; I’m allowed to quote Hamlet). Emma’s concern over the “sanctity of her marriage” and Joe being “vulnerable” to Tiffany are both smokescreens as far as I’m concerned. She’s really just jealous. This is the female-version of the romance novel trope that has men wanting to pee in circles around the heroines when another male character so much as looks at them.

“All we are asking is that you let the world in on a little of the excitement or happiness or whatever it is you find with each other,” Margaret said softly (148).

That line makes me laugh. Earlier Margaret declares how the two of them must have something special, and here it’s “excitement or happiness or whatever it is…” I don’t think the author meant to write Margaret as so dismissive, since she’s not described that way when Emma thinks about her, but her actions and words seem awfully shallow and disinterested in Emma as a person, let alone as her daughter.

Joe and Emma go home after Joe agrees to do Tiffany’s show. He tells Emma that he’ll do it because it’s the only way to protect Emma and as her husband that’s his job. Everyone clear? According to this chapter, wives go where their husbands say, and husbands protect wives by going on sports & gossip television programs.

Emma asks that she go on the show, too, since the situation is at least half or more her fault. (I imagine it’s also because of her jealousy.) But Joe declares that she cannot because that’s not what’s done and anyway he refuses to hide behind her.

Then there’s sex in the kitchen, during which Emma is afraid that that when everything has been smoothed over and they’ve been together for a time, after she’s lost her heart, Joe will leave her. If you’re thinking that makes for a less than sexy sex scene, you’d be right. Also less than sexy is Joe’s celly when Emma climaxes.

I totally picture Joe doing this, post-coitus.

A satisfaction that was even better than throwing the puck into the net flowing through him, Joe held her until her shudders stopped (152).

You know what, Book? How about a moratorium on hockey terminology when you’re in a sex scene? Because while I’m sure there’s a way to do it well, this isn’t it.

Then there’s more sex and apparently it is so wildly amazing that Joe is now convinced that their marriage will work forever. Then they have more sex 5 minutes later. This second bout exhausts Joe, but Emma is too worried about Joe’s hockey memorabilia to sleep. So she calls his brother (the sheriff, not the doctor).

Because OF COURSE HE DOES, Joe wakes up while Emma is on the phone, being all furtive. He figures out it’s his brother, Joe, and when she hangs up, she spots him and Joe decides she looks guilty.

Well, so much for that marriage working forever, eh?

The Virgin's Secret Marriage: Post 11

Chapter 7: I Begin to Understand Why These Two are Still Single

(Posts for the foreseeable future may be a bit brief and slapdash. Sincere apologies—it’s been a heck of a few months and the Commissioner is digging her way out of them.)

It would take a great deal for me to despise a fictional romance couple as much the one from Play the Man, but Emma and Joe are doing their best to give that previous a couple a run for their money. (As you may recall, I found that couple to be borderline abusive, so Emma and Joe aren’t that bad yet, just super irritating.)

Last chapter ended with Emma telling Joe not to kiss her, although she doesn’t tell him why (because she doesn’t want physicality with him without love from him.) This chapter opens with Joe deciding that since they’re married, they should enjoy sex, and he wants to convince Emma of this idea.

So he took her chin gently in hand and lowered his lips to hers. She murmured a soft, sexy sound of protest and clamped her lips tightly shut. He grinned. He always had liked a challenge.

When the kiss she’d been expecting didn’t come, she opened her eyes again (87).

First? “sexy sound of protest” in a non-negotiated non-bdsm situation is troubling. No means no, no matter how sexy the protest. Second, come on Emma. Go for it or don’t but stop being a douchebag being all “I don’t want to sleep with you but I want you to want me!” So irritating.

There’s a bunch more back-and-forth about whether they should kiss and whether she wants him to, but when Joe suggests that they head to the bedroom, Emma puts her foot down and finally gives a firm no. She even, shockingly, explains, sort of, saying that their marriage is legal on paper but not in her heart. I wish she’d been more straightforward because I can only imagine that Joe won’t understand what she means for another 100 pages or so. Regardless, Emma goes off to sleep alone in the guest bedroom.  I suspect this yes-no/push-pull/not-quite-explaining crap will continue through the rest of the book.

The next morning, Joe is lamenting how much he physically wants Emma.

It was territorial. Male. Instinctive. He wanted her to be his woman and his alone (89).

Sigh. I am so tired of this Animalistic Male trope. I mean, I know it’s pretty common in paranormal romance—shapeshifters having mates and such—and I’m okay with it there. (If nothing else, it’s easier to avoid there if it’s not your cup of tea.) But finding it in ordinary contemporary romance (hockey or not) is disconcerting because reifies that men-are-animals and out-of-control theme that’s so pervasive and which helps excuse boys-will-be-boys behavior which is dangerous. To make it a desirable trait in romance novels is creepy.

Will Joe be the next hero to want to pee in corners in order to keep his mate isolated to him alone? Erk. Did not expect to need a tag for this. I expected better than this, hockey-romance genre!

…okay, actually, I didn’t. We’re what, half a dozen books into the FHL? I should have learned better by now.

Emma shows up while Joe is about to eat breakfast (juice and a PowerBar, in case you’re curious. I’ve seen Coyotes players having breakfast after practice at the little restaurant next to their practice rink, and they’ve eaten, like, actual food, not just PowerBars, so y’know, each athlete’s mileage may vary.)

Emma declares that she needs order in her life, so she asks Joe to unpack. He doesn’t want to and teases her by picking up a Neon beer light and threatening to hang it over the couch. His reasoning is speshul.

“I know what you’re thinking, but no way am I putting this in the master bedroom, above our bed. That’s where my picture of dogs playing poker goes” (91).

I’m not sure how needling Emma for the sake of needling her is going to help their mutual discomfort at living with each other. But it’s the “our bed” bit that freaks out Emma. When she questions him, he responds that marriage “brings with it certain… perks” (91).

Emma doesn’t respond and instead goes to his box of hockey memorabilia and insists that he put at least that box away that day. She doesn’t give a reason why that particular box is important. The narrative announces that Joe had planned on unpacking that particular box in between his two practices that day, but now that Emma told him to do it, he tells her maybe he will, maybe he won’t.

I’m so glad to see Joe got the “act like a preteen” memo that Emma got two chapters ago with the “You’re not the boss of me” line. Another little detail added to the list of why I’m disliking these characters.

Joe declares that he needs Emma and drags her into a kiss, to which Emma informs him that he doesn’t play fair.

“I play to win. Always have, always will.”

“Isn’t that the truth,” a low feminine voice said from the patio off the family home (93).

Oh delightful. The evil Tiffany Lamour has returned to plague this novel—showing up on their doorstep no less.

She informs them that there’s been another robbery in town, this time at the country club nearby, so therefore Joe should put his hockey memorabilia (which includes an autographed, heavily used Gordie Howe practice jersey) some place safe. When our reluctant-ish-couple ask her why she’s actually there, it’s apparently a multipurpose visit. First, Tiffany asks Joe to be on her show, and when he says no, she gets bitchy. Second, she’s there to spy—she openly admits that she didn’t expect to actually find Emma there and she waits outside in her car until Emma and Joe leave together. Finally, she’s also there to try to make Emma jealous—or perhaps that’s just an ancillary benefit. Tiffany insinuates that she and Joe have a past and Emma begins to believe it.

Because apparently Emma is an idiot.

Joe is downright cold to Tiffany, showing her to the door and acting as if he doesn’t even know her, but Emma is still concerned over how beautiful Tiffany is, and how powerful (because of her show), and how blond and slim, blah blah blah.

Joe drives Emma to work at the Wedding Inn, and when he asks her what time she’ll be done, she doesn’t have an exact answer.

“Well, call my cell and leave a message, and let me know your plans,” he told her authoritatively.

Emma hadn’t answered to anyone about her moment-to-moment whereabouts in years. It was a disconcerting feeling, having him do so. Kind of thrilling, too (99).

Problem the first, that second part actually doesn’t work grammatically. Having Joe do what, exactly? Problem the second, it’s “thrilling” being accountable to someone else for your schedule? Yuck.

I think Joe was asking because Emma will need a ride home (he tells her later that he’ll make sure she’ll get a ride even if he’s busy when she’s ready) but he doesn’t say that ahead of time; he just demands that she call him with her schedule, and she doesn’t think about why, just thinks it’s “thrilling.”

Finally, one last example of Emma’s wishy-washiness. As Joe drops her off, she thinks he’s going to lean across the seats and kiss her, but he doesn’t. Her last thought of the chapter?

So much for the “perks of matrimony, Emma thought (99).

No. No, no, no. You don’t get it both ways, Emma. I don’t much care for Joe but one defense I will give him is that he’s not a mind-reader, expected to know precisely when you want physical affection and how much and exactly when to stop—enough to prove to you that he’s putting you ahead of his career but not threatening to make you fall in love with him.

Stupid character.