Harlequin, $5.99, ISBN 0-373-83438-1
Contemporary Romance, 2000
This is Vicki Lewis Thompson’s debut full-length title. It is so wrong in so many ways, I cannot even figure out where to begin.
Okay, how about this one: I have no idea what is going on in this story. The story, as far as I can tell from the author’s foreword, is a closure of the author’s Three Cowboys & a Baby series. In that series, three cowboys take turns caring for a baby that they believe is theirs. I think I’m supposed to find deadbeat daddy cowboys’ indiscriminate spillage of sperm sexy or something, because how else can I explain a premise like this actually being given the green light? (Oh, and the movie thing is crap too.)
Apparently the three cowboys are all wrong. The baby’s father is the hero of this story, Nat Grady. He screwed innocent, pure rich daddy’s girl Jessica Franklin a while back, had his fun, remembered that his daddy beat him up black and blue so now he’s unworthy of love – after the jolly is over, that is, and vrooms out of town. He joins a kiddie refugee camp where he takes care of the kids, tries to screw a colleague but fails (aww, whazzamatter, big boy, no ticky-wicky power in that tinkie-winkie today?), and with this, realizes that oh god, he loves the Frankenstein Jess, and he wants to go back to her.
When the story begins, Frankenstein Jess is on her way to meet up with Gnat Grady. I don’t know why or how and I don’t care. Frankenstein Jess is being stalked by a PI her father secretly set on her trail. Instead of running to the cops, Frankenstein Jess here dresses up as a bag lady and sneaks into the back of the cab Gnat is taking. Don’t ask.
When Gnat realizes that Frankenstein Jess has dumped her baby and disappeared, he is shocked. How could Jess be so immature and bratty? Coming from a deadbeat Romeo, that’s so rich.
When Frankenstein Jess is discovered, she immediately hands out herbal stuff for Gnat Grady – she may be a bag lady now, but she still can buy herbal stuff (that’s what the author says anyway, the “stuff” can be marijuana for all I know) for the man she loves. Amazing what these heroines can do today, huh? Next thing I know, they are in a hotel room where Gnat is telling Frankenstein Jess a blow-by-blow description of the failed hard-on with the colleague in a kiddie refugee camp thing. Apparently it got her so hot, they end up boinking on the bed.
I scratch my head. Amazing, really.
The sex thing culminates in a morning after where Gnat interrupts Frankenstein Jess brushing her teeth and she immediately goes down on him with a mouth full of toothpaste. What happens next couldn’t be mentioned in polite company. So gather close.
See, this is around page 73. I read aloud to my hubby the part where they lather Gnat’s privates with toothpaste and she squirted an extra helping into her mouth for good measure.
“Kinda kinky,” hubby says, eyes on TV.
Then, later, “Oh god,” hubby yelps. “Did she swallow?”
I check. “I don’t think so. I’m sure if she did, she’ll choke on all that toothpaste and… stuff.”
“She cleaned him up – even before he bathes off the night before, and then they French kiss?! Cooties and… and… eeeeuuuww!” Hubby drops that pint of chocolate chip Ben & Jerry and stares off into space, looking most pale.
And I’ll end here. Because I can’t get past page 90. I have to stop for my own good, because I swear, I’ll either laugh myself off to death at the sheer stupidity of this story or drop dead from a burst vessel in the head. Either way, That’s My Baby! and its stinky kisses and all will hopefully be forgotten after I drink myself into a stupor to wash off the pain.
