Up close and personal by Linda Howard

Blair Wingate, a widow in her early thirties who keeps everyone at a distance. Her marriage had been a business deal and not a true marriage, as her multi-millionaire husband needed an overseer of his children’s trust funds and not a wife but this is not common knowledge. This part of the story is sketchy at best and we never really know if Blair was chosen because she had been an excellent personal assistant or for some other reason. We first meet Blair as she is enduring the emotional turmoil associated with being the executor doling out monthly allotments to Tamzin and Seth Wingate, two adult children who are incredibly spoiled and can’t be trusted with their inheritance. With the onslaught of verbal attacks it made me wonder exactly why Blair agreed to this duty as no amount of money could be worth the assaults. The story picks up pace when Blair is leaving to go on vacation – she’s meeting her brother and sister-in-law in Colorado for a river rafting trip. She hires a private airline company to take her to Denver. The pilot, Cam Justice, is someone she’s known from previous flights and doesn’t like. In fact she thinks of him as a “sour puss”. As Cam is heading towards Colorado, he hits problems somewhere over Idaho. The engine stalls on the plane and he fights to keep them alive as he crash lands. Blair awakens after the wreck to find them upside down, her arm injured, and Cam unconscious with a gash in his head. He’s losing a lot of blood and she has to take matters in her own hand or he’ll be dead soon. She gets him out of the plane, stops the bleeding, and then sets out to make a shelter for them or they will freeze to death that night. As she heroically puts off taking care of her own injuries and does what’s necessary to live, the reader can actually feel the nervousness, the fear, and the exhaustion. Linda Howard perfectly describes what Blair is going through, emotionally and physically, and even what Cam is going through as he is unable to help. This part of the book is one of the best narratives in the entire book. Over the next few days, Cam begins to recover, Blair becomes ill with infection, they realize they won’t be found and must hike off the mountain. It’s a bunch of different directions that the author takes us - some are fascinating while others are tedious. Later I realized why the tedious subplots were necessary but at the time I was a bit distracted by them. As Cam and Blair fight to stay alive, a mutual attraction becomes evident (anyone who is a Linda Howard fan knew that was coming) and the story takes on yet another set of problems and outcomes. This part of the story, although predictable, was not attention grabbing and was mundane at best. It was more like “ok yeah I guess I’m in love with you after four days on the mountain. Now what?” Where are the sparks? Where is the angst of two adults who have built walls around themselves realizing someone has penetrated that wall? The romance aspect of this story definitely needs more pizzazz!