Title: Rawhide And Lace

Author: Diana Palmer

Paperback (If I’m reading Diana Palmer’s website correctly, you can get Big Sky Winter, which has both Unlikely Lover and Rawhide and Lace as a double novel. And guess what? There’s a Manga version of Rawhide and Lace . . . no, we’re not getting it.)

Pages: 189

Publisher: Silhouette (Harlequin)

ISBN: 0373053061 (one of those older ones)

Release Date: 1986

Book Details: Normal paperback size 4×7

Where To Find It: Well, I’m having a hard time finding it. You may have to go through a few retailers it looks like.

Time that the story takes place? 1986

POV? Third Person

What caught your eye? Well, it was on my shelf. However, after I read Unlikely Lover, and saw/remembered that this book was connected, I decided to give it a go.

Did you enjoy it? For the most part, yes.

Was it predictable? Seeing as I knew the probable outcome from Unlikely Lover, in some ways yes. Other than that, this was a bit different from Diana Palmer’s other books.

Was it sexy? Tame? I wouldn’t say sexy or tame, romantically experimental, perhaps?

Did you find it funny? Entertaining? There’s actually a few lines that I really did LOL on. 

Would you read it again? Most likely. I’d read this once in my teenage years, but I truly had no idea how this book played out. 

Is this part of a series? According Diana Palmer’s website, this is part of the Rawhide and Lace Series. However, it looks as if there are only two books.

Well, you know me, I never read things in order and once again I’ve read the first book last. However, rest assured it did not diminish any storylines or enjoyment of the book.

I also want to give a bit a warning on this book, gentle reader. This one deals with some heavy stuff, this isn’t an easy love story.

 This book starts off with a fatal car crash, literally page one. Our hero has arrived at the hospital to see about his younger brother, who was brought in earlier. Ty is only there briefly before the doctor/surgeon comes out and tells Ty that his brother, Bruce, did not make it.

While in the hospital parking lot, Ty thinks about Erin, with whom both Bruce and Ty were in love with. Bruce had brought Erin out to the ranch during the summer and basically taunted Ty with her. Ty is not a good-looking man, he even says that he’s ugly and that his experience with women isn’t vast and varied. He was taught by his father that sex was a weakness and not to give into it. Thus, Ty is not the experienced playboy that his brother seems to be. Ty’s parents split up early on and Ty was raised by his father while Bruce was raised by their mother, so both men have a different outlook on life.

Now a lot happens within the first two chapters of the book. Seriously, there’s a huge amount of information that is dumped on the reader in a short amount of time. To the point that as I was reading it, I was literally muttering, “Holy sh*t.” Here’s the gist of it:

Ty has a successful ranch that butts up with Ward Jessup’s land (Unlikely Lover), Ward suspects that there’s oil on the land and he’d like to come to an agreement to put oil wells on the land. Ty is not having it. 

Bruce owns a share of the ranch—because they’re brothers and when their father died, he obviously left the land to both brothers. This will come into play in a moment.

As I said, Ty is thinking about Erin while in the hospital parking lot and is letting his memory play back the last six months. Ty and Erin made love in the den after a brief argument, like on the floor. Erin was a virgin, which Ty realized too late in the action. Precautions were not taken, and a baby was made. Two months later, Erin comes back to the ranch to tell him, however, Ty by this point has been fed a few lies from his dear brother and isn’t keen on seeing Erin again. Things are said, feelings trampled, and Erin speeds away never to return.

From the hospital, Ty goes to Bruce’s apartment to tell his roommate, Sam, that Bruce is dead. And I have to pause with narrowed eyes on this particular scene. Bruce and his roommate literally share a room, with twin beds and everything. Bruce is 28 years old. Sharing a room with another grown man. Really? Bruce is wealthy and okay, sure he’s sharing an apartment with a roommate . . . but also a room? Really? That just made my eyeball twitch a bit.

Anyway . . . Sam The Roommate tells Ty about how Bruce, “worshipped that girl,” when Ty sees the photograph of Erin and goes on to tell him about all the returned letters in a box under the bed—letters that Bruce sent to Erin—and on top of the pile is an opened letter from Erin. Which, according to Sam, put Bruce into a rage after reading the contents. The letter had come roughly a week prior to Bruce’s accident.

Ty reads the letter and discovers that Erin has been through some horrific crap in the last six months. She explains that she was in a terrible car accident that crushed her pelvis, she’s walking with a cane, she’s lost her modeling career, and on top of all that, she also lost the baby.

Our man Ty puts the pieces together and realizes that Erin was pregnant with his child the day she’d come out to see him and he sent her away. 

Bruce, knowing what his brother had done, went and wrote Ty out of his will and left everything to Erin, with the condition that she come and stay at the ranch in order to claim the inheritance and if she refuses, then it all goes to Ward Jessup.

Ty is actually fine with this. He figures he deserves it and even tells the lawyer that he’s not going to contact Erin. However, the lawyer is all, “Dude, that’s like your livelihood.” Okay, he didn’t talk like that, but he does call Erin after Ty leaves and informs her of the situation. While Erin is at first reluctant to have anything to do with Ty ever again, the lawyer tells her that a lot of people will be put out of work if the ranch goes to Ward Jessup and that there are families that have worked on that ranch for generations. Erin, not being a heartless person, agrees to come and arrangements are made.

This is all within the first two chapters of the book!

Now really the rest of the book is about redemption and recovery. Erin is as she puts it, “crippled,” she’s living on food stamps, and has understandably gotten into a significant depression. She doesn’t want to do the exercises and therapy for her leg. She’s weak and has basically given up.

Ty is not only grieving for his brother, but also the whole “what might have been.” He grieves for the child he didn’t know Erin was carrying. He grieves for what she’s lost because of him. He blames himself for the accident she was in, thinking that it happened right after she left the ranch that day. Erin assures him that the accident happened minutes from her home in New York and it was unavoidable, as it was a car driving on the wrong side of the road at high speeds (and I think the driver was also intoxicated, I just can’t remember, nor can I find that exact moment right now).

The rest of the story is that of healing and getting to know each other again. Ty had believed that Erin was Bruce’s girl and did feel guilty for wanting Erin. We see that Ty isn’t sophisticated with women, he’s too rough and not exactly Mr. Sauve when it comes to matters of seduction. Again, Ty was raised with the notion that giving into sex was a weakness and there hasn’t been much opportunity to gain experience. 

Erin is patient with Ty. She doesn’t hold a grudge, at least not any longer. She still loves Ty and even helps him with learning how to be gentle in more physical matters. Not to mention that Ty is determined to help Erin gain back her mobility, he himself is engaged fully with her recovery to the point that he becomes “physical therapist”, often times spurring her into a mood so that she’s motivated into working out and regaining her strength. 

I will say this isn’t a lighthearted book. Certainly, the complete opposite of Unlikely Lover. This book is rather dark in places, watching the respective characters dig themselves out of the dark as they’re searching for the light, as the reader, you’re fighting along with them.

With all that said, it does have a good ending and certainly ends on a note of hope. 

The other thing I wanted to note, Rawhide and Lace and Unlikely Lover were released within months of each other and are just completely different books, there is nothing formula about them. Sure, we can point out that we have the age gap between the leads, the women are virgins, and the men are ranchers. The thing that really struck me is that Rawhide and Lace was part of the Silhouette Desire, the sexier line of books that the company put out, while Unlikely Lover was in the Silhouette Romance. As it was described to me years ago, “Desire has sex in it, Romance does not.” Oddly, I found Unlikely Lover to be not only more romantic but more sensual as well. 

I just find it really interesting that these books were most likely written at the same time and they are so vastly different. But I think that’s good, it shows the author wasn’t just plugging in elements and calling it day, some real effort went into these.

I have to stop there or else we’ll be here all day. 

But you know, I just really love talking about books.