In a lot of ways I feel like I had missed something crucial to this book. The characters are all over the place in terms of how they feel--there's how they think they should feel (betrayed? lost? lust filled? angry?), how they act (stiff, formal, frustrated) and how they say they want to act (friendly). They tend to mix all those emotions up without sticking to one or the other for any length of time.

So let's lay this out. You're an uber wealthy, attractive, young guy. Your young daughter, who happens to be blind, is in need of specialized help for a month while her normal nanny has to tend to important family business. do you:

A) Throw oddles of money at an agency to get someone useful
B) Re-arrange your plans to provide for your daughter
C) call an old flame who you think is a scheming bitca, but who happens to be good with children and then offer to toss oddles of money at her soon to be shut down school for the underprivleged?

If you answered A or B, you're completely rational. Leo Valente is NOT rational.

I honestly was not convinced that after 4 years, most of which he's spent in seething anger and pain, that the first person he would think to call is Eliza. Eliza who he thought led him on for 3 weeks, was laughing at him behind his back as she told all her friends what a fool he was for proposing to her.

And Eliza? I think she wanted to apply for martyrdom. She felt so guilty about everything. Guilty about her fiancee's accident. Guilty about not telling his mother the truth. Guilty about leading Leo on. Guilty about feeling so intensely attracted to him. Guilty that if she hadn't hurt Leo so badly he wouldn't have gone out, shagged the first female he met, gotten her pregnant, married her, caused her post-natal depression and ultimately her suicide.

Yes I truly think that Eliza blames herself for what Leo's late wife did.

Another quiz. So you want to sleep with the woman who you hired to take care of your young blind daughter, but you believe her to be a scheming, lying, bitca. Do you:

A) Romance her, but make it clear that this is purely physical
B) Seduce her, but make it clear that this is purely physical
C) Offer her oddles of money to sleep with you for the remainder of her employment, but make it clear that its a purely physical relationship of exclusivity

Once again A&B are the rational choices, C is the choice that Leo took. And Eliza decides that she will take him up on his offer and then turn around and use the money to help her invalid, catatonic fiancee (I think he was catatonic? The author kind of wavered on what exactly was the problem beyond 'he's unresponsive') and his mother pay for the upkeep of said fiancee's condition.

I want to make sure its clear, at no point does Eliza tell Leo that her fiancee has been catatonic for a good 5 and half years now. Her evasive answers make him sound like a total jerk instead and only make Leo wondered MORE why she tossed him over.

So then of course we have the inevitable conflation of things--Leo finds out and confronts Eliza. Making some justifiable points about how she shouldn't live as if SHE was in the accident. Eliza gets upset and they part. Soon after returning home Eliza finds out that her fiancee's mother had been lying to HER all this time--she KNEW that her son and Eliza were no longer together and its severely implied that the reason he was in an accident was because he had been on his phone while driving. Not only that but the mother wasn't surprised they broke up at all.

But she needed someone to lean on and selfishly let Eliza be the martyr and Eliza never questioned it because of her overwhelming guilt. Now that the mother has found a new boyfriend--a doctor!--she doesn't need Eliza around anymore so Eliza happily prances off to find Leo and they make up and its all magically okay now. ( )

I liked this one. Well written and the plot made sense. The heroine held on to her secret a bit too long but there was some angsty goodness there. The scenes with the hero and his daughter were well done. ( )

Review Posted on HarlequinJunkie.com

It’s not a new concept – two tortured souls coming together and finding love. But for Eliza and Leo, things are a lot more complicated than that. In His Final Bargain by Melaine Milburne the issues are so large and daunting that it’s difficult not to get a little tense while reading about them. Read More ( )

His Final Bargain by Melanie Milburne
This story is about Eliza and she teaches at a small community school but it's about to be shut down due to no money. She is heartbroken to learn of this as she teaches there.
Leo, a man who had once proposed to her, very high class, jet set type had come to her flat and now with the holidays upcoming for her school he wants to hire her for 4 weeks of that time to be his daughter's nanny and he will pay for the school to remain open.
She has not told him who her fiance is or his circumstances.
He has told her that his wife killed herself. She does agree to go but with some hesitation...
Not much in the way of detailed descriptions about the locations abroad. Love the fact she knits for the underprivileged children!
He also has secrets, about his daughter but she learns them very fast...Hot sex scenes and they do get to talk to another. Especially like what she's accomplished with the blind girl.
I received this book from Harlequin in exchange for my honest review. ( )