THE BODYGUARD AFFAIR

A former Canadian special forces cinnamon-roll hero helps a writer find her own happy ending.

Andi Zeigler is the personal assistant to the Canadian prime minister’s wife, but her real love is writing romance novels—which she’s been doing under a pen name. The only person she confided in was a stranger with whom she had an embarrassing encounter a few years ago—you couldn’t quite call it a one-night-stand because they didn’t end up having sex. Nolan Crosby has returned to Ottawa to help his sister take care of their mother, who has Alzheimer’s disease. But he didn’t expect his temporary stint as a bodyguard to Prime Minister Eric Nichols to bring him back to Andi, the funny and sweet woman he met fleetingly three years ago. Just as they start to become (re)acquainted, a media firestorm started by a misleading photo of Andi with PM Nichols erupts; worse, someone discovers one of Andi’s novels, adding fuel to the speculation. Desperate to counter the rumors, Andi asks Nolan to be her fake boyfriend. Inevitably, they catch feelings as they travel with their respective bosses, share one bed, and pose for acquaintances and the media. Lea takes a popular plot device and adds enough individuality to both her characters and the incidents that bring them closer for them to be pleasing. Nolan and Andi’s chemistry, especially as they become lovers, sizzles. These episodes are sometimes interspersed too quickly with ones involving his mother’s health and his unresolved anger over her uneven parenting of him and his sister. Meanwhile, chapters from Andi’s point of view contain one too many passages about how the romance genre gets no respect, which feel heavy-handed. More gumption and less physical and verbal bumbling on her part—a trait that should be phased out in romance—would also have raised this enjoyable novel one tier higher.

A secret romance novelist and a faking-dating plot will hit the spot for most readers.