Born in Fire by Nora Roberts

When Maggie Concannon, a young lady who is a glass sculptor, sells her first piece of glass, she meets her beloved father, Tom Concannon, for a drink and then they head out to the cliffs looking across the ocean towards America. When Tom suddenly dies there with only Maggie by his side, his last word was Amanda, which meant absolutely nothing to Maggie.

Fast forward a couple of years and Maggie is a moderately successful artist, but she has just caught the attention of Rogan Sweeney who is a big time art dealer, manager, connoisseur.

Maggie has a very temperamental and volatile personality that is usually ascribed to artists. She might have caught the attention of Rogan Sweeney, but it doesn't mean to say that she wants to keep it. She doesn't answer her telephone, won't respond to messages, so the suave and sophisticated Rogan decides to head to County Clare and speak with her face to face. Sparks fly almost immediately, and they are both interested, but business comes first, until finally Maggie is the one who takes the bull by the horns and starts things. Maggie is a great heroine - earthy, passionate, fiery, artistic...real. Rogan is a great catch - rich, good looking, determined, and he knows when to take what Maggie dishes out to him, and when to fight her for her own good.

Rogan realises pretty quickly that he wants more, but Maggie has never wanted the normal things in life - marriage, kids, domesticity. She leaves the domesticity to her sister Brianna, and attributes her fears about marriage to her own parents marriage. Her father loved her, but her mother Maeve, is a complete bitch who has made both of her children's lives a misery in different ways. For Maggie, she was conceived outside the bounds of marriage, of a long dead passion, and Maeve never lets her forget it! It doesn't matter that the sin was Maeve's, Maggie is the one who is blamed for Maeve's loss of her life as she wanted it.

Once Rogan has managed to get her to sign on the dotted line as far as her art goes, he starts down the path on trying to keep her interest in him, realising that he needs to play it cool before she will come to him. I really loved that there was no huge misunderstanding in this book. Yes, our hero and heroine spent time apart, but it was time apart for Maggie to realise how much she loved Rogan, time apart for her to become as comfortable as she was ever going to be with the idea of commitment to Rogan, and he was willing to wait as long as it took, but as soon as she took the first step towards him, he was there to show just how much he wanted her!

The only other Nora Roberts books I have read are the Chesapeake Bay books featuring the Quinn brothers, which I absolutely loved. The first book of the Born In series is right up there with them. I think I feel another glom coming on!!

Rating 4.5/5