What is a southern, gentile, society lady of impeccable taste, breeding, and education to do when her husband of nearly twenty years announces he is divorcing her on the day they deliver their youngest son to college? Loretta Hill Mason, Head Mistress of the Columbia Academy in South Carolina, did not see her husband’s declaration coming and had no idea what she should do next. She couldn’t just … just emulate Miss Scarlet and say “Fiddly dee, I’ll think about it tomorrow.” Her soon-to-be ex-husband, Randolph, gave her a few weeks to clear her belongings out of the home she made into a show place once featured in Southern Living, listed on the Fabulous Gardens Tour, and envied by their circle of high-society friends and relations. Now she didn’t even have a bank account or credit card in her own name or any other resources to fall back on.
Multi-billionaire Justin W. McCoy learned the hard way from the background of a meager beginning to becoming a titan in the hotel industry. Though he stumbled a few times along the way with an ill-fated marriage, he is now happily divorced, and his teenaged daughter is the brightest spot in his life. Business is good and would be better when he closes the deal to acquire the Delaware Group’s hotel chain. That acquisition would make McCoy Hotels, Resorts and Conference Centers one of the top ten travel industry chains in the world. Yet it could come with a dangerous price tag. A pilgrimage to the first resort he ever purchased suddenly reunites him with a woman he fell in love with from afar over twenty years earlier, but had never met. Tagged with the nickname, The Rejuvenator in the hotel industry, he never lets an opportunity slip through his fingers in business and he won’t let it happen in his private life this time. Fate is a fickle finger when the Delaware Group’s criminal syndicate wants more than a sale of their hotels to McCoy Enterprises and they will stop at nothing, even involving Justin’s daughter, Jessica, and anyone else they can use to their advantage, to get what they want. Justin gambles it all to save his business from the criminal element, win his safety, and the safety of the ones he holds most dear, including Loretta.
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Ask Me No Questions…I’ll Tell You No Lies, by Ann Jeffries, is a heartwarming look at the interestingly glamorous side of the elite rich that shows there’s always a second chance at life and love.
Loretta Hill Mason, a long-suffering wife of a womanizing and oppressive husband, is told they are getting divorced when their last of three children (two being his love children) goes off to college. Heartbroken and lost because she knows no life but with him, she ends up at Oceans Inn Resort during a hurricane. This is where Justin (Willis) McCoy finds her in a catatonic state and gets her inside. Justin is a business rejuvenator and happened to be in town trying to protect and rekindle business for the inn. That’s not the only thing rekindled. A couple weeks of spending time with Loretta and this former ladies’ man is in love. But with so many complex things in his life from his teenager daughter, money-hungry ex-wife, to a shady mob-like family, the Delawares, trying to force his hand into doing business, Justin has more to lose than his heart. Instead of declaring his love for Loretta, he instead attempts to fulfill her every wish and give her the future her past should have been before Mason and Loretta’s family dashed her dreams and her self-esteem repeatedly. Torn apart by careers and danger, will Justin and Loretta be able to fulfill the last dream they both have and be together? Or will the Delawares strike where it would hurt Justin the most, his heart?
First, let me say Jeffries is amazing at creating characters you love and ones you love to hate (ugh, Mason). It quickly pulls the reader in empathizing with Loretta who has given herself over to her family and is completely self-less, so much so that the feminist in you wants to smack her upside the head. But this is a wonderfully done move on Jeffries part for Loretta to have a wondrous and realistically-pace ascension into a mighty powerful woman. Justin is middle-aged yummy, and deep down a sweet guy under his professionally closed-off demeanor. The two suited each other, and I loved how he wanted to rejuvenate Loretta, a girl he once saw in a beauty pageant.
The plot was oh-so-complex, but awesomely so. Jeffries writes a saga and carefully weaves familiar characters from other books and plants seeds for future books. This is ingenious and now I want to see how so-and-so ended up together and what will happen between Dustin right-hand man and Loretta’s badass sister. The plot is weaved so well. You have chapters of Loretta’s story and of Justin’s story separately, and at times they weave together. Side characters are also given some attention playing key roles the main characters’ lives and setting up the next thread for another book. It creates an amazing tapestry of love, danger, and soulful healing.
I recommend this book to any reader who loves a slow-burn romance with inferno highs, and who enjoy seeing people have a second chance to fulfill their dreams. I got sucked into the Family Reunion saga, and with 20+ books in the series, it will take me a while to read them all.