However, she is suffering from leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant to survive. Daughter number one was not a match and the agency has identified Vanessa Porter as another one of the children. Each girl was tattooed at birth, and it is thought the combination of the three tattoos will provide a clue to the identity of the father.

Wade Cordell is offered the soft assignment of finding Vanessa and talking her into being tested for a bone marrow match. He accepts and is off to the Caribbean where Vanessa is on a cruise.

Vanessa is a high powered Wall Street deal maker and is actually taking the cruise under the pretense of a vacation when in fact she is trying to find her co worker and friend Clive. Clive has disappeared and been out of touch for a month. She knows he is on one of the islands and about the time she meets Wade, she had been directed by ”paid sources” to St. Nevis. Wade tries to enlist her support for her mother and Vanessa is absolutely not interested.

Vanessa is tactless, abrasive, and heavy-handed which turns people off pretty quickly. She locates the place Clive had been renting only to find it is under an assumed name. Believing that if she can bribe her way into the premises she can find clues to his whereabouts, she is setting out to do this when Wade reappears. Finally it becomes obvious to her that a little brawn and a lot of finesse will probably accomplish more, so she strikes her bargain…his assistance in finding Clive in return for her bone marrow test.

Southerner Wade is handsome, bright, etc. with lots of baggage who is just trying to accomplish his mission and although instantly in lust, he is not charmed by Vanessa’s personality. However, apart from her forceful intellect and ways of accomplishing her goals, Wade is impressed with her loyalty, as they join forces in the search for Clive.

Strings are being pulled from afar directing the course of their search and after the requisite number of pages, it crashes into an ending that seems contrived.  The search progresses at an unrelenting fast pace, and at the same time and at the same pace, their instant lust morphs into love. The speed seriously erodes the credibility of the characters and their actions. Since both are drawn as figures that are “larger than life,” there is little room for growth (or character development) and certainly no occasion or time to do so.

Sadly, the plot and the Caribbean setting do not overcome the one dimensionality of the characters.

--Thea Davis