Ronnie, now a college freshman, has been babysitting for the Baumgartners so long, she’s practically a member of the family. I was fifteen when I started babysitting for the Baumgartners. They had two kids. Henry and Janie were four and five the first time I sat in their living room eating pizza and watching “Lilo and Stitch” with them. I still remember them that way, both conked out on the floor, their greasy faces smearing their mom’s white carpet.

I can take care of them, Mrs. B.” Her bikini thong left her bronzed, rounded bottom completely exposed. I blinked fast and looked away. “That’s what I’m here for, right?” This has in itself been a staple of romance fiction, as Leslie Rabine points out in her much-lauded 1985 article "Romance in the Age of Electronics: Harlequin Enterprises." Moreover, Rabine argues, the conflation of work and romance is deliberately utopian:

I knew I was staring, but I couldn’t help it. Her skin was smooth and tawny-even there. Her nipples were brown, vastly different from my light pink ones. Wh-what?” I stammered. I was still staring. She smoothed oil over her belly, which was softer and a little more rounded than mine, working it under the strings of her bikini and down into the grooves of her thighs. The young co-ed discovers that the Baumgartners have wayward plans for their au pair that are going to lead places she could have only imagined. Brandt takes a pornographer's perspective to the material that is unfortunate. There are plenty of opportunities for conflict or confrontation, but if one starts, as porno people are wont to do, from a "sex is everything" and "repression of impulses is bad" point-of-view, then every chance encounter turns to full-blown passionate sex. Sara is seduced by the beautiful couple, but early on I was wary of their motives and expected something to happen. Other than a momentary sort of twist at the very end, not part of the film proper, nothing comes of their bringing Sara into their bed, other than a lot of sexual activity for us to watch. The very fact that the hero is both boss and lover, that the world of work and business is romanticized and eroticized, and that in it love flourishes suggest that the Harlequin heroines seek an end to the division between the domestic world of love and sentiment and the public world of work and business.

I wish I still had the body of a nineteen-year-old.” She gave a sad little laugh. “So firm and tight. There’s not a crease or a wrinkle on you, is there?”

Her writing embodies everything from the spicy to the scandalous, but watch out-this kitty also has sharp claws and her stories often include intriguing edges and twists that take readers to new, thought-provoking depths. Ocr tesseract 5.2.0-1-gc42a Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.18 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-1300564 Openlibrary_edition