Jove, $5.99, ISBN 0-515-13055-9
Historical Romance, 2001

Oh boy. Mackenzie Cord is a bounty hunter. What else can a hero be in a western romance anyway? Oh yeah, Texas Ranger. Forget I ask. He is always in love with Savannah Carrington, ever since he was a nice, sweet lil’ boy. Now, Savannah is in trouble and Mac decides to ask her daddy for her hand in marriage.

See, Savannah is in jail. She somehow ends up being arrested as an accessory to a bank robbery. Mac pretends to be her hubby so that he can get her out of jail. Now all he has to do is to make the pretense a fact.

If you think Hero for Hire is a romance in which the singular conflict is going to be steady Mac keeping Savvy-Free Carrington out of trouble, you’re dead on. Mac has to pamper, save, protect Savvy-Free from her many rather braincell-free antics. And for what? Love? Oh boy. And the romance dynamics proceed in a direly predictable manner: Savvy-Free wants to be free, she wants Mac, oh no she doesn’t, yes she does…

Mac is a decent, if typical, hero, but I can’t take anymore of this “hee-hee, heroine behaving stupid – isn’t that HEE-LA-REE-OOOO-US?” nonsense. Someone hand me the baseball bat – Savvy-Free Carrington has to be punished. Take that! And that! And that! And THAT!