The Virgin’s Secret Marriage: Post 14

Chapter 10: Emma Hart, Girl Detective

(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.)

Emma is greeting at the Wedding Inn by Joe’s mother telling her that she has that “honeymoon glow” (127), which, I don’t know about you, but I find kind of creepy coming from her mother-in-law. On the other hand, Emma and Joe apparently have had All the Sex during the night and that morning. I imagine Emma must be pretty sore, geez.

Then the Subplot Bride shows up in tears and Emma hurries away to in quire what’s wrong. Turns out that the Subplot Groom has been having “secret conversations on the phone” and “sneaking out around two this morning, only to sneak back in around four” (128). I sincerely hope you all see what’s going on here because the book is broadcasting it loud and clear. Emma, however, only sees that she needs to get the Subplot Bride & Groom back together, or else her reputation as a wedding planner will suffer.

Then Joe shows up at the Wedding Inn, because apparently he has nothing better to do between workouts, and they bother the Inn’s cook long enough to steal some lunch. Then Mac the Sheriff arrives to tell Joe and Emma that there’d been another break in the night before (around four am, ::cough, cough:: ) and they’d been caught, and they’d had a list of homes that had been broken into on them, including Joe’s house. On the other hand, they did not have any of Joe’s hockey memorabilia on them.

Mac (finally) asks Joe if anyone knew how much the memorabilia meant to him or how much it was worth, since the hockey stuff is the only stuff that doesn’t fit the pattern of break-ins… which is odd since the book never bothered to tell us that there was a pattern before. 

Ooooh, mystery.

Joe thinks really hard and (finally) comes up with Tiffany Lamour.

Then, because apparently the Wedding Inn is also the Hart Family Grand Central Station, Joe’s other brother, Cal the doctor, shows up just in time to inform everyone that Tiffany Lamour has been at the hospital asking questions about Joe. Gee, that’s not suspicious at all. Thank you, convenient other brother, for that well timed information!

Mac decides that Tiffany must have some connection to the thieves and had them steal Joe’s stuff, but that there’s someone else actually masterminding the whole situation. Everyone splits up, and Emma decides to play Girl Detective. I guess since Emma no longer has “virgin” as an identity, she’s trying on new ones. She realizes that the Subplot Groom was

·         Acting suspicious

·         Needs money, due to the wedding demands

·         Is the manager of the golf club and thus knows when people are out of town

But she needs proof! (dunh, dunh, dunh, duunnnhhhh)

The Virgin Girl Detective's Secret Marriage & the Hockey Mystery ... of DOOM was probably too long a title

Conveniently, she already has plans for the Subplot Bride and Groom to have tea at the Wedding Inn that day in order to rekindle their romance. (Now, I love tea as much as the next girl. I’m drinking a mug right now in fact. And I firmly believe in the healing powers of tea, and the soothing powers of tea, and the caffeinating powers of tea. But I don’t think tea is going to be enough to bring a fighting, suspicious couple under stress back to their old romance.)

But as I said, conveniently. So Emma gets Hannah, the mechanic, to stand in the parking lot and pretend that Emma’s car is dead so she can trick the Subplot Groom into lending her his car, so she can snoop. I’m not sure why Hannah even has to be there, frankly. I mean, sure, having the town’s mechanic declare Emma’s car to be dead lends an air of authority, but was the Groom really going to ask?

“Excuse me, my car is dead, and since I’m your wedding planner and need to pick up your tux, may I borrow your car? Especially since you’re scheduled to be here having Romantic Tea with your fiancée?”

“Is your car really dead?”

I mean, that’s just not the answer one gives in this situation.

But before Emma can put her plan into action, Joe shows up again. I know it’s the off season, but damn dude, don’t you have things to do? Geez. Then he badgers her, in my opinion. He asks if she’s busy, and when she says yes, he says she doesn’t look busy. When Emma insists that he is, he demands to know what she’s doing. She says she’s waiting for someone and he says he’ll join her. When she says she’d rather he didn’t, he demands to know what he missed because he doesn’t recall them having a fight.

If you’re going to continue being so irritating, Joe, we’re going to have a fight. Oh wait, you’re fictional and Emma isn’t going to stand up to you… There’s some canoodling and Emma finally pushes him away. She doesn’t want to tell him her plan because he’s a “straight shooter” (140) and wouldn’t go along with it.

Joe still won’t leave her alone and he drops a bomb, that he’s agreed for the both of them to have dinner with Emma’s parents that evening, and that’s where the chapter ends.

Man, if I were Emma I’d be so pissed off at this guy, from him showing up all the random time, to him getting her all hot and bothered the night before but then disappearing to go freakin’ grocery shopping, to now accepting an invitation for the two of them without asking her first.

I suppose there’s a reason I’m not a romance novel heroine. Well... okay, more than one reason. Kind of a lot of reasons, actually.

The Virgin's Secret Marriage: Post 13

Chapter 9: The No-Longer Virgin’s Not-So-Secret Marriage

(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.)

We left off with the Great Box Cliffhanger and it turns out that it actually was a cliffhanger, in that when Joe returns we discover that he did not, in fact, unpack his boxes. Instead, ::gasp!!:: they’ve been [dunh dunh dunh] stolen.

Joe is thinking all about the sex, and not about putting away the groceries or about unpacking, when he gets back to the house. But Emma wants to congratulate him for his hard work (apparently not with sex) which leads Joe discovering that all of his hockey memorabilia has been stolen, along with Emma’s jewelry box. And none of the hockey memorabilia was insured. And apparently everyone (?) knew that he owned it.

According to a neighbor that the sheriff (remember, Joe’s brother Mac) interviews, the thieves “used some sort of electronic device to open the garage door” to get in (114). Personally, I use some sort of electronic device to open my garage door every day. It’s called a garage door opener.

After Mac leaves, Joe vows to protect Emma, horrified that he’d left her home alone when the thieves might have been there—which is sort of stupid since they absolutely weren’t at the time.

Neither of them can sleep, so they decide to go to bed together, but not to have sex. There is, of course, some touching, and Emma “was glad he hadn’t shaved his chest” (116).

Does anyone else find that line really odd? I mean, not that Joe doesn’t shave his chest—I find that quite normal for the average guy. (There isn’t anything wrong with shaving one’s chest, either. I just don’t think that shaving one’s chest is so common that Emma would remark on Joe not doing so.)

They talk a bit about trying to find out where the thief or thieves might sell the hockey memorabilia since lots of it was super rare.

Anyone else think it’s just a coincidence that the day before Tiffany Lamour was in the house commenting on that same hockey stuff? No? Just me? Okay.

They agree to go to sleep, but then Emma starts touching Joe all over. Joe decides to pretend to be asleep as a tactic, but he has to drop that when she goes for his boxers. He tells her they can’t sleep together since she’s probably only wanting to because she’s had a shock. When she says he should be wanting to get in her pants (pajamas?) he says he’s just now developed “a selfless streak.”

“You’ve always been noble. That was in fact the problem. Had you not been noble you would not have refused to stay married to me when you found out who my dad was or that my parents would not approve of my even dating you, never mind becoming your wife!” (120).

Uh, what? Emma is suddenly rewriting history. That is not okay. Every time the story of their ‘marriage’ comes up, Emma has said that they got married, Joe found out who her parents were and immediately had their marriage annulled in order to save his career. And she has been bitter about that since the very first time she thought of him in this book. Suddenly that action is now cast as noble?

I love you, Calvin, but no.

“Instead, you would have taken my virginity that night and consummated our marriage, and used that fact as leverage to keep your spot on my father’s NHL team. But you didn’t, and because of that we both suffered” (120).

This description of what Joe didn’t do is such a far cry from Emma’s description of what he did do as putting her career ahead of her that it’s like it’s two different novels. What the hell?

Despite this not-very-compelling conversation, Joe still won’t sleep with her because he wants her to want him when she wants him, instead of as a reaction to being robbed. Emma gets angry about this and insists that they can have sex and still be friends. So they have sex.

Finally. Geez.

Sex, and Emma’s first orgasm, is apparently so magical that it makes Emma declare (albeit only to herself) that she loves Joe. Joe is more concerned with the fact that Emma was a virgin and hadn’t told him. She says it didn’t matter and that someone had to be her first. He asks the oh-so insightful question of, “Is that so?”

Emma didn’t want to feel like they were in the midst of a high-stakes play-off game, but that was exactly how she felt as they faced each other and he waited for a more detailed explanation of her actions. As if Joe was the star shooter, bearing down on her, and she was the goalie trying to defend the net (125).

I suppose that’s a moderately better use of hockey terminology than the penalty calling make-out scene. Marginally. Although I don’t know exactly why she feels she’s under fire, since his question was, I repeat, “Is that so?”

I mean, who could possibly resist such an inquisition?

Her internal response? So she had encouraged him to make love to her! All the way! So what? (125).

You know, just because she was a virgin doesn’t mean she has to act like a young teenager. “All the way”? Seriously? Did they “round the bases”, too?

Joe just says that now their marriage is consummated and he liked it and they’re going to have sex again. Fortunately the chapter ends before we end up seeing that. I’m grateful, because I feared it would be more hockey terminology.

I’d like to point out that the marriage is no longer secret and the heroine is no longer a virgin, so this book should be almost over now, right?

(Oh god. What if we started having hockey terminology sex, like with this book, mixed with anthropomorphized naughty bits, like in other books? … I think I just broke my brain.)

The Virgin’s Secret Marriage: Post 12

Chapter 8: Subplots & Ice Skating

(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.)

(My old tablet, the one that died over the weekend, seems to be working again. I have no idea. And there’s a new one on its way to me, although it remains to be seen if I’ll keep it since the old one is working. Regardless, I’ll write posts while I can. And I’m going to try and power through the rest of this book before anything else breaks or goes wrong…)

Emma has been dropped off at work and is pouting because she didn’t get a goodbye kiss, but she also doesn’t actually want a goodbye kiss, and I understand being confused but good lord, Emma, get it together.

Then we have an update on her wedding planning, in a subplot that I really don’t care much about. Suffice it to say that the bride has lost the shipment of wedding flowers (yes, seriously). She’d gone to the airport to pick up the flowers, in order to save her groom some money, and after collecting them, let them sit as she went to the restroom, and they were stolen. She cries at Emma a bunch and says she’s worried her husband-to-be doesn’t love her and blah blah blah why is there no hockey?

Then someone we’ve never met before shows up, sent by Joe to pick Emma up. The only reason I’m going to bother mentioning anything about this person is because she’s so unexpected—her name is Hannah and she owns and is chief mechanic of a classic car repair shop in town. I approve. (I care not one whit about cars, but I like that we have a female character in a traditionally male dominated career. Then again, she gets about a page here and I have no idea if she’ll show up again. Her entire purpose in this chapter is to shuttle Emma from the wedding place to the practice arena.

When Emma asks what happens if she doesn’t want to go with Hannah, the response is as you might expect.

“Then I’ll catch heck from Joe and he’ll come looking for you, and probably cart you off to the rink, anyway” (103, and the comma errors came with the book.)

Lovely.

To be fair, Joe is trying to be romantic. When Emma gets to the rink she finds that it’s lit by “wall torches” instead of the overhead lights and Joe wants her to join him, skating. He’s had someone pick up some of her clothes, buy her a pair of skates (figure skates, sigh), and set up a stereo and picnic basket.

If you’re wondering how he knew what size skates to buy her, so was Emma. Apparently he took a pair of her shoes to the skate shop and “had them sell [him] a pair in a similar size” (105).

Readers, have you ever ice skated? I don’t remember figure skates all that well (I haven’t worn them since my teenage years) but I know that I’m super picky about my hockey skates. Not because I’m such a great player that I can tell differences based on quality, but because my feet cramp incredibly painfully if I’m wearing the wrong size skates. When I bought my most recent pair of skates, I tried on a bunch of them, usually in two sizes each. And then once I’d chosen a pair, I had them baked to mold themselves to my feet.

I will admit that figure skates are far more flexible, so I imagine it’s not quite the same thing. Even so, I do remember being picky about sizes when I skated as a teen. And when I took my little sister skating this past winter, she started with figure skates and found the ones in her size so uncomfortable that she went back to try a different pair. (And then she got hockey skates, and I was so very proud of her, heh.)

I just would think that a professional hockey player would understand how difficult it can be to get skates that fit comfortably. I mean, pros get their skates custom sized and made for them. They often wear two different sized skates (off by a quarter size, mind you, not like a size 10 on one foot and a size 7 on the other.)

Oh well.

So they skate about the rink, Emma having some difficulty because of course she does. (Joe has to keep her from falling.) Apparently Emma used to skate competitively as a kid (Hey! Just like Flurry!) but quit when she was 12. And she hasn’t skated at all in 7 years because it would make her think too much of Joe.

Judging from how long she skated competitively, and based on Flurry skating as a kid and then not again for 20 years, I’d say Emma might be rusty but she shouldn’t be having trouble with just going around in a circle. It’s amazing how quickly that stuff comes back to you.

Oh well.

There’s some chatting about how Joe’s mother didn’t really support his desire to play hockey because she was worried he wouldn’t make the pros (fair worry, since most people don’t) and neglecting his education would thus not be a good idea. Then Emma asks him why he hasn’t bene shaving which leads to kissing. That leads to them wanting more, so they head for their house.

HALLELUJAH, they didn’t go have sex in the locker room. Thank you, thank you, thank you. (Although since Emma is still a virgin, that would have made for a heck of a first-time story, I suppose.)

Joe drops her off at the house so that he can go get groceries. Emma goes in alone and is startled, but happy, to find far fewer boxes strewn about and is incredibly delighted to find that Joe has done some unpacking.

That’s where the chapter ends, which is weird to me. The two were in such a hurry to have sex that they rushed home … and Joe drops her off. And the plot moves on to the Great Unpacked Box Discovery.

… oh well?