Series: LaBlanc Sisters (Book 1)"Why would you decide to seduce me? And why now after all these years?"
Southern debutante Vivienne LaBlanc can't believe bad-boy rock star Connor Mansfield is back in town for the New Orleans annual Saints and Sinners pageant. He has a reputation as wicked as his devilish smile, and Vivi has no intention of becoming one of his latest groupies!
He once crushed her high school heart, so playing the saint to Connor's sinner should be easy. But how can Vivi get those less than angelic thoughts out of her head -- especially when Connor's so good at tempting her to be bad?
Good book. Vivienne is a former beauty queen who now owns an art gallery and spends her time working with a lot of charities doing good all around New Orleans. She is always very conscious of her actions and how they could be perceived. She is very proud of the fact that she has been asked to participate in the annual Saints and Sinners pageant. She is not at all happy to find that Connor has also been asked to participate. She and Connor have known each other all their lives and have disliked each other the entire time - except for one brief period in high school. Now they are going to have to work together to raise money for charity.
It took me awhile to warm up to Vivi. She came across at the beginning as very snooty and as feeling that she's better than everyone else. Her attitude when Connor made his appearance was rude and definitely not in the spirit of the competition. And while competitiveness can be a good thing I felt like she was losing sight of the reason for it. I also felt it was rather childish of her to have held her grudge against Connor for so long. I had to laugh when she realized she was attracted to a man she didn't even like. It was pretty obvious that all that heat between them had to come from somewhere and the passion of their dislike easily morphed into something very different. I did like the way that once they decided to call a truce Vivi actually started to see the real Connor. Besides the physical attraction that they gave in to, I loved seeing how Vivi finally realized how much they had in common. I also liked the fact that she didn't pull back when she found out that being seen together in public in a personal way was going to change her life. While there were parts of it she didn't like I found that he ability to deal with it all went a long way to redeeming her in my book. She did have a relapse when she allowed his publicist to undermine her confidence in what she and Connor had together.
I liked Connor better. He came home to New Orleans to recover from a rough tour and some undeserved scandal. He started out thinking that the Saints and Sinners gig would be good publicity and hanging with Vivi, even though he found her a sanctimonious prig, would go a long way to repairing his reputation. He couldn't figure out why he was attracted to someone he couldn't stand to be around. When he found out why she still held a grudge against him after all this time he couldn't believe it. I liked the way he did the big thing and apologized for being an idiot as a teenager and suggested that they try to move on like adults. I liked the way that he was honest about his intentions that they just have some fun together. I also liked the ideas he had for spending more time in New Orleans, bringing some business back to the city and also helping out some young people. Thanks to his celebrity status he had some issues with being able to trust peoples' motives, and his publicist used this to try to drive a wedge between him and Vivi. There was a big blowup between the two that saw them both saying some pretty nasty things to each other. Seeing them recover from this was very emotional and made the story more satisfying than I thought it would be at the beginning. I'm looking forward to reading Vivi's sister's story.
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