The Billionaire's Bargain by Myrna Mackenzie

Title: The Billionaire's Bargain

Author:Myrna Mackenzie

Publisher: Harlequin

Line: Silhouette Romance

Series: The Wedding Auction - 2nd in the series

ISBN: 0373196229

More Information: http://www.eharlequin.com

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

I have read many of Myrna Mackenzie’s romance novels throughout the years.  Many were well written and always drove me to search for more of her works.  Unfortunately, you find that occasional bad apple.

Dylan Valentine had a small problem.  Well, make that two.  His stepmother asked him to babysit his 18-month old twin brothers for 6 weeks.  As a bachelor, he definitely needed help.  With his two friends, he went to an auction to hire a live-in babysitter.  However, he spied April Pruitt in a sticky situation and ended up bidding on her.  April had no ideas about babies.  With their pasts, April and Dylan fought their attraction, but these babies were going to bring them together.

The story had great potential with interesting main characters.  Alas, it wasn’t meant to be.  The plot moved quickly but the fact that the author lingered too often on their attraction, their past and their present hang-ups ruined what could’ve been a good read.  Every few seconds, the hero and/or heroine would fantasize about each other.  Then they reprimanded themselves and reminded themselves why they wouldn’t be perfect for each other.  Then their past was brought up in every chapter and each was sorry for the other’s past and would find some words of wisdom or act of consideration to make up for their sad childhoods.  And in between these paragraphs, the babies, her stalker and April’s search for the perfect husband was thrown in to keep the plot interesting.  But the fact there was too many side stories going on that the story and character development got left on the wayside.

Dylan Valentine was a decent hero.  For the majority of the book, he was fighting his attraction to April till the very end.  When or how he developed his feelings for April was not well known.  Other than that, I liked his protective and generous nature.  April just plain annoy me.  She was timid and awkward.  And the things she done did not make sense to me.  For example, she had a date and ended up panicking.  So, in her intelligent brain, she invited Dylan and the babies to go along with her on the date.  What grown woman does that?  And have to agree with an earlier review.  April created a program to help pick the perfect guy for herself.  But where were these guys’ profiles coming from?  Nothing makes sense when it came to the heroine.    

I have read the other two books in the The Wedding Auction series.  It was a while ago since I read them, but I must have liked them enough in order for me to want to complete the series.  My advice is to read those and skip this one.  Each story is standalone (events happened in tandem).   This is a clean romance with passionate scenes.  If you are planning to buy this book and like passion, then there is enough to sate you.  However, despite the adorable twins and their handsome older brother, this story was irrevocably a miss.