The Moongate Wish: Chapter One-An Intense First Meeting

This book is The Moongate Wish by Nancy John. Before we get to the first chapter, there's something I think you all should know. There's a letter to the reader before the story starts and the important bit tells us that this kind of book, Special Editions, have, “...longer stories, sophisticated style, greater sensual detail and variety...” Hang onto your hats, kiddies. This'll be a step or five above the last romance novel I did.

The chapter opens with a map of Bermuda. That's one way to tell your reader the setting. On the first page of text, we learn that our main character is Erika and that she is jetlagged because she traveled all the way from Yorkshire earlier today. Erika is a relief worker for hotel managers, apparently, and she's filling in for two months at the Moongate Hotel in Bermuda. The Moongate Hotel is terribly fancy and Erika, as acting manager, is taking the effort to learn all of the guests' names. When she's done eating, and after talking with a waiter who pulls her chair out for her (see, it is fancy), Erika goes through to the kitchen to talk to the head cook.

Really, all of that is just fluff and the set up for Erika to take a walk outside and hear Glen Hunter playing something in stops and starts on the piano. He's a composer and lyricist for Broadway, you see. On the sixth page of the story, Erika thinks about how it's amazing that she's encountering Glen again. Wow, that was a quick introduction of the love interest. I guess they have to meet early for Special Editions to have “greater sensual detail”. By the way, he wouldn't remember her, but he's an “attractive, charismatic man”. Yup. Love interest. Or sex interest. I'm not here to judge.

Anyway, Erika's chilling outside in the dark when Glen leaves the villa to think of a rhyme for “sexual mechanics”. The first image that pops into my mind is of people with large wrenches figuring out what's going wrong, but that's not what Glen means at all. The line is, “How long till they're bored with the sexual mechanics...” Anyway, Erika comes up with “passion's galvanics”. Wikipedia's results seem to suggest this is a process for changing metal, or an early battery. Something like that. I can't find it as a noun. Well, I suppose I shouldn't pick at the grammar in a romance novel when there's so much else to discuss.

Erika suggests this rhyme from the dark, so Glen demands to know who is skulking about in the darkness. She steps into the light and he bites back of cry of shock as he sees the perfect woman, fairly radiating love and sex appeal... OK, it's kind of something like that, just without him making noise about it. He's an experienced womanizer, apparently. I had no idea composers got all the ladies, but hey, whatever works. He convinces her to come listen to the song with the lyric she suggested, so they go back to his villa. Throughout this exchange, and the one inside the villa, he keeps touching her. Yeah, definitely going to have sex.

Anyway, the two of them get coffee, Erika drinks it black of course, and she tells Glen her life story. Divorced parents, mom opened a bed and breakfast to make ends meet, so Erika decided to be a hotel manager on the ritzy end. She's temping now, with an eye to full time swankiness in the future. By the way, Glen finds her very attractive. Apparently, she's not “blatantly sexy”, but her dress gives her “a thrilling eroticism”. Then we learn that Glen wants to see her naked, and bang her, but he wants to get to know her first. Aw. True love.

Erika takes a long look at Glen as well. Apparently, he could compete with athletes in their twenties, but he's got to be in his thirties. He's tan and well-muscles, blah blah blah. Then the detail that made me laugh out loud. She's talking about his mouth, when she thinks, “its symmetry broken by a small scar on his upper lip.” I doubt it'll be because of an epic fencing duel, like it was in The Devil Earl, but it amuses me greatly that he has to be rugged enough to have a scar, but it can't be anything seriously deforming, so it's just a little scar on his lip. I'm sure she'll kiss it and make it better.

Then we find out where they met before. Erika was helping at a hotel and there was a mix-up about Glen's reservation. He was with some blond at the time and Erika is totally not jealous. It's a little weird that she remembers his face “so well” if that's all the interaction they had previously. While taking a look at Erika's backstory, we learn that she has steered clear of marriage because her parents' divorce made her bitter. So, she's single, then? It'll be even less time for her and Glen to hook up. Oh, Glen doesn't believe in marriage either. They're perfect for each other?

Erika tries to leave, but Glen says they have to listen to the song with her contribution to it. So, he guides her over to the piano, and pulls her down on the seat next to him. Well then. In the heat of the moment, she comes up with, “The whole Kama Sutra of passion's galvanics.” Okay, Erika, I'm a little worried about why you are bringing the predecessor of the battery into the bedroom. I'm not entirely clear on what “galvanics” means, dictionary.com was less than helpful, but it still seems a little sketch.

Erika tells Glen that she's seen all of his shows, then tries to deflate his ego by mentioning that she loves musicals in general. Oh, apparently, Glen's dad is also a composer and Glen's got some issue with him. No time for that, though, Erika has to get to bed. Jet lag, you know. Glen walks her to the edge of an exterior light the hotel has. Men are apparently more dangerous, and therefore sexy, in dim lighting. Then they stand there and stare at each other.

You see, Erika wants him to kiss her, but she is powerless to move because he's got a “magnetic aura.” The books says explicitly that she can't walk away, but I don't understand why she doesn't move to kiss him. Isn't she supposed to be an empowered, independent woman? Or does his magnetism only work to a certain distance, and then it starts repelling instead of attracting? Anyway, she finally starts to walk away when he pulls her back and kisses her with his hands all up and down her back. When he stops kissing her, Glen holds her at arm's length for a moment and says, “Good night, beautiful Erika.” He walks away and Erika takes a few steps toward the hotel and stops. She waits to stop blushing and for her heart to calm down. Hotel managers need poise and whatnot, you see. When she does finally calm down, she enters the hotel and her heart is “singing with joy”. Egads.

So, given that we got the word “eroticism” ten pages into the story, I'm guessing that the two of them will have sex, probably in the next two chapters or so, be driven apart by some misunderstanding which is made worse because each thought the other was truly committed, solve the misunderstanding, and the book will finish with their make-up activities. They've got 241 pages from start to finish. Let's see what Nancy John does with it.