Masquerade

By Nicole Flockton

Publisher: Crimson Romance
Publication Date: October 22, 2012
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Source: SupaGurl Tours

After being humiliated by her fiancée, Sophie Franklyn has decided that getting involved with work colleagues and men in general isn’t for her. Now her focus is going to be on her career and her recent promotion. That is until at a New Year’s Eve masquerade ball, she meets a man that tempts her to question her choices.

Alex Scavoni is extremely dedicated to his job, so dedicated that his first marriage crumbled under the pressure of his dedication. Now he’s happily single, with a new job he’s excited to start. When he meets a masked Sophie at the ball, she fires desires in him he thought long dead. He spends a wonderful night with her, but wakes up alone.

The next time the two meet, it’s in the high pressure world of Emergency Room medicine where they must work side by side. While they deal with the stresses of the Emergency ward, they endeavor to keep their feelings for each other on a professional nature. When the desire that pushed them together that one night flares to life again, can they ignore them or will their one night together have consequences neither of them planned on?

Goodreads Summary

Up until they went and changed the format on me, I used to subscribe to a few different monthly Harlequin collections. I love the little exotic bites of the category romances, not too short, not too long, not too tame or too explicit – Goldilocks would be happy. I recently added some Mills & Boon titles to my collection, discovering the wonderful world of the medical romance. Masquerade is just such a treat, one with the right amount of drama and swoony goodness.

Sophie Franklyn has reason to be conscious of the need for a good reputation. As the daughter of a very rich real estate developer, she’s always on show and expected to act the part of a socialite at events with him. She’s also coming off of a disastrous broken engagement with the outgoing CEO of the hospital where she works. It could have been a potential career-ender, but thankfully it didn’t stand in the way of her promotion to the head of the nursing department. She’s sworn off workplace relationships forever.

The job doesn’t start until the new year though, and before that is the New Year’s Eve Masquerade Ball her father signed them up for, then backed himself out of. Rescue from a dull and kiss-less midnight comes in the form of a handsome, charming masked man named Alex Scavoni, who’s seated at her dinner table. The chemistry between Sophie and Alex is immediate and intense enough that both agree to spend one night together – one night only, nothing more between them. Alex has his reasons for not wanting commitment. He had a painful divorce years earlier because his wife couldn’t handle his hours. Alex is a doctor – as a matter of fact, he’s the newly appointed director of the emergency room who’ll be working right alongside Sophie, something neither of them knew when they slept together.

Uh oh.

There were several things I appreciated about this story that kept me glued to it more than I expected to be. I was fascinated by the scenes in the emergency room and reading the interplay when Alex and Sophie worked on a patient together. I was extremely impressed that when Alex and Sophie had sex New Year’s Eve, they used a condom! It’s sad, but how rare is that? I loved that even when Sophie was determined not to have a romantic relationship with Alex, she still tried hard to be friendly with him – no screaming matches, not answering the phone, etc. Of course, I loved that when Alex decided he wanted more with Sophie, he went about it very calmly and respectfully and Sophie had a hard time resisting the delicious doctor.

Both Sophie and Alex were refreshing to read about. There wasn’t anything particularly over the top about them, they were good people who were very dedicated to their jobs, had complicated pasts and each had different concerns about their relationship. I loved that Alex was trying to soften Sophie up by giving her little kisses here and there when she wasn’t expecting them, or she would smooth his hair because she couldn’t help it.

My Summary: This was a sexy, romantic little book that was a great mood-lifter. It went by rather quickly and didn’t have a huge amount of substance, but there was such great chemistry between Alex and Sophie that I barely noticed. This was a welcome little distraction and a fun read.

My Rating: B+