The dog backed up. Not cowering, not growling, but nervous. She stopped, not wanting to scare it. “He’s a bit odd with strangers,” Rob said, giving it an encouraging nudge in the backside. “Don’t take it too personally.”
The dog or you Rob? I think we know what the author is doing here.
Rob looked just as gruffly sexy this morning, blue eyes bright in the morning sun, assorted gray hairs lending him a worldly air, forearms flexing as he pressed the loose dirt flat. She’d never kissed a man with a beard, and suddenly her life seemed to depend on discovering how it felt.
Flannel, sweat, and forearms. That sizzling heat McKenna is known for is starting to appear. Very few authors can hit that right amount of depth of characters, story, emotions, with sex like McKenna can for me.
Is your back stiff? I’ll rub it for you. It was probably all muscly from wood-chopping and potato-harvesting and all sorts of things that made Merry feel like a giddy pervert. “Nice shirt,” she said. Can I sniff it? It must smell like . . . labor.
Emotions, heat, and don't forget the humor!
There’s a lovable person hiding somewhere inside you, Rob Rush. And I’m going to make his acquaintance if it’s the last thing I do.
Some of that sunshine and grumpy. There's an archery scene where Rob is teaching Merry to shoot that was great for showcasing her poking/prodding him to get peeks into his personality and have him open up to her more.
We get some reveals of similarities between the two, how both were playing a part or role in their lives, Merry the chubby happy girl and Rob the trendy bar owner, that helps give some basis why they are, will be connecting.
"By the time I was thirty I was like, Jesus. If I’d charged these people for all the therapy I doled out, I’d be a millionaire by now.”
He smiled.
“And the thing is . . .” Her eyes narrowed as she made the discovery. “I bet they didn’t even want to be happy. I bet they just wanted an audience for their misery.”
Yeesh, the way some people need to hear this and realize this. But another example of Merry is coming into her own.
It was only when he’d gone off to university and learned to drink that he’d felt capable of the socializing necessary to foster friendships. Alcohol was like a secret he’d finally been let in on.
We're getting more Rob here and touching on his alcoholism. He seems to have had a caring dad and brother but more than a touch of "outsider" to his personality. This line is all too real and again humanizes Rob while also giving him realness and depth.
And the man he was out here . . . Rob didn’t self-reflect often these days, but this was the most he’d liked himself, ever in his life. Well, not liked. But this was easily the least he’d ever loathed himself. He wasn’t the awkward, unnerving child, or the self-medicated charmer, or the monster that charmer was doomed to become.
We learn Rob has been out here for two years, at this point he hasn't mentioned that he's an alcoholic to Merry. She's more of the mind that he is out here escaping and he thinks more of it as hiding. Merry's so open that is in turn causes Rob to be so and make him freeze up.
He balanced a fat log and brought the axe down, splitting it in two. The halves fell to either side of the stump and he placed the next one. Merry laughed, watching, and crossed her slender arms over her chest. “Goddamn, you’re manly.”
Ok, so the scene with Merry handling a rope and Rob's reaction, I think the setting and how Rob is living is a definite Choice by the author. The duality of strength and "manliness" with, what looks like is going to be, Rob's subservient nature in the bedroom. I'm enjoying how to each other they are unaware of the others attraction and the dial that seems to slowly be turning up in each chapter.
“Hurt them how?” she asked, more curious than fearful. Nothing about Rob got her serial killer alarm wailing, but she did want to understand.
“Not physically,” he said. “Like I said, I was a miserable arsehole. I hated myself, and I think I drove people away, annoyed that they even cared.”
"annoyed that they even cared" Oof. More of Rob not wanting to be seen and ashamed of who he is, which is looking like the majority of it can be due to his bedroom desires.
Merry felt that way, from time to time. She knew she couldn’t have overindulged herself to 240-plus pounds if she weren’t seeking to quiet something—sadness or anxiety, some cold, echoing depth she hadn’t known how to muffle except with food. And more recently, with the all-consuming project of losing the weight. The hole was still there, demanding satiation. And she still didn’t know how to fill it, not permanently.
Another similarity, her addiction was food and his alcohol.
“I can’t remember the last time anyone seemed eager to know me.”
A pang of heartache passed through her, chased by something softer. Affection, perhaps. Longing. “Maybe because you never answer when they knock.”
I like this exchange simply for the soft hit back Merry gives to his little bit of wallowing here.
“I want to, if you do,” she whispered.
Another intentional moment, I think from the author, Merry is the one who initiates physicality. It balances out the moment and between them; Merry a woman alone with a strange physically more powerful man.
This section had a more earthy and tactile feel to it with some break throughs between Merry and Rob. I have a feeling the dial is about to go up to 11 in the heat department.
About a Rogue by Caroline Linden
SEAL's Promise by Sharon Hamilton
Enemy Mine by Megan Mitcham
Someday My Duke Will Come by Christina Britton
Unbound by Cara McKenna
