I picked this up at B&N because I wanted a good, sexy Highland romance. What I got was a Highland romance. It wasn't bad, don't get me wrong. It was okay. Possibly part of the problem is that it is the 2nd in a series and I haven't read the first.
Catriona Hurst lives in the country with her family. Her twin sister, Caitlyn, is in London for the season, and word has reached Catriona that Caitlyn has been acting up in an unladylike manner. Apparently Caitlyn made a bet with Alex MacLean that he would ask her to marry him, and she plans to win. Catriona hurries to London to stop her sister before she makes a huge mistake and ends up ruining her reputation. When she arrives, Caitlyn is already gone. Catriona learns that Caitlyn's plan is to climb into Alex's carriage and wait until they've been gone long enough that when she is discovered he will have no choice but to propose to save her reputation. If that isn't bad enough, she plans to say no!
Catriona rushes out to look for her sister and finds Alex's carriage at an Inn changing horses. She climbs into the carriage to grab her sister and put a stop to her nonsense, but she finds the carriage empty. Then it starts to pull away, with Catriona still in it! After some time, Alex gets into the carriage and tells her he knows what's going on and he won't fall for it. Catriona tries to tell him she's Caitlyn's twin, and that there's been a misunderstanding, but he won't listen. It's not until much, much later, when Catriona's uncle pulls them over, that he understands the truth. The other problem is that it's not Alex, but Alex's brother, Hugh, that has been with the carriage.
Of course, Catriona's uncle demands they marry, as society has already heard what happens and her reputation will be in tatters. Three days later they are married, and she goes home to Scotland with him. He tells her they will live there for a few weeks, until the scandal dies down, then she will return to her home and they will live their lives separately. While Catriona is not happy about being married to this stranger, she is even less happy with his idea of how their marriage will be. Then, on top of that, when she arrives at his home, his three daughters are there (he's never been married)!
Things continue to go downhill for her. I found Hugh was a very blah character - he was just ambivalent about everything. He didn't want her involved in his work raising horses. He didn't want her interacting with his daughters, as they had a history of being abandoned and abused and he didn't want them to grow attached to Catriona just to have her leave again. Due to their abusive history, the girls were awful to Catriona - they played pranks and tried to get Hugh to send her away. It seemed to me the only time he wanted Catriona involved was in the bedroom.
Needless to say, Catriona was lonely and homesick.
Also, Hugh's family was cursed in such a way that when they were upset they control the weather, and I think he did get mad enough a time or two to cause that to happen. Once was during a terrific fight with Catriona about her place in his home and his life and with his daughters. This "talent" was just a weird side-note until near the end of the book when it came in handy.
As I said before, it wasn't a bad book, the plot was good, I just found that I really didn't care what happened to the characters. There were some secondary characters that might have a good storyline, but for this book, eh.
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