Outside The Lines
Love Beyond Reason #2
by Beth Rhodes
For the first time in her life, good-girl Maria Rodriguez throws aside caution for an all-consuming desire. She wants freedom from rules and her family looking over her shoulder. She wants the love she’s only ever dreamed of. But then that love walks away. Jaded bachelor David March doesn’t believe in love. His fling with the pretty Hispanic woman from California is as close to feeling as he wants to get. Now, he’s back home, burying himself in work and trying to forget.
Shortly after he leaves, Maria finds out she’s pregnant. Her first leap into freedom results in a life-changing consequence. She knows she has to find him. But what she finds is not what she expects. David is not the down-to-earth man he portrayed. And the love she remembers has been replaced by cold calculation and contracts. He lied to her once. Can she trust that a marriage agreement will bring back the love they once shared?
David has not had the most nurturing upbringing – his dad is pretty intense and has more than his fair share of pride. He seems like a pretty ruthless man and has been David’s main family since he was 9 & his mom left. David blames her for abandoning him and he’s put up some thick walls when it comes to romance.
Meeting Maria throws him for a bit of a loop, especially when he starts falling for her. Of course, he handles that very poorly but fate has another twist in store for him 🙂 While David continues to try to keep things unemotional, it’s very hard to resist Maria’s love of life … and having her in his life every day, shaking things up, isn’t helping. She’s nothing like he’s used to but that has to be the best thing for him because that man needs some major softness in his life.
I will say I was just a tiny bit confused over how much emphasis Maria put on gaining her independence and not being babied, instead wanting to be needed. I’m not sure if I just didn’t get it or if maybe it needed a little more something. She’s got her own career and has been saving money, which seems pretty adult for a mid-20s person … and maybe that’s it. I get the idea she still lives at home and her parents are pretty conservative, so perhaps it is just a little quarterlife crisis going on – she’s looking for something all her own, separate from her big, boisterous family. Otherwise, though, I just loved her. And she is just what David needs – they are so darn cute together!!
Just like Letters From Home, Rhodes again delivers a romance full of warmth and humor. And I love that we have more siblings out there just waiting to meet their match!
(It’s been a while since I ready the first book in this series, but it didn’t really matter and I’m pretty sure it won’t matter if you haven’t gotten to it yet.)
Romantic Reads and Such 