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A Matter of Trust
Never Get Involved…
Debra Latham followed her instructions closely when she was persuaded by her private detective sister to keep a watch on a suspicious client. But no instructions told her how to cope with an angry man who believed she was spying on him, or how to defend herself against his impassioned kisses. Marsh Graham turned out to be completely innocent and, embarrassingly for Debra, he was also her new boss. Not exactly the most auspicious of starts to a working relationship.
But another form of a more personal relationship was what Marsh had made clear he wanted. They shared many common interests, after all, including a desire to help local children in need. But Debra had serious reasonsfor never wanting to get involved….
Debra Latham followed her instructions closely when she was persuaded by her private detective sister to keep a watch on a suspicious client. But no instructions told her how to cope with an angry man who believed she was spying on him, or how to defend herself against his impassioned kisses. Marsh Graham turned out to be completely innocent and, embarrassingly for Debra, he was also her new boss. Not exactly the most auspicious of starts to a working relationship.
But another form of a more personal relationship was what Marsh had made clear he wanted. They shared many common interests, after all, including a desire to help local children in need. But Debra had serious reasonsfor never wanting to get involved….
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
About the author
Penny Jordan
1,139 books674 followersPenelope Jones Halsall
aka Caroline Courtney, Annie Groves, Lydia Hitchcock, Melinda Wright
Penelope "Penny" Jones was born on November 24, 1946 at about seven pounds in a nursing home in Preston, Lancashire, England. She was the first child of Anthony Winn Jones, an engineer, who died at 85, and his wife Margaret Louise Groves Jones. She has a brother, Anthony, and a sister, Prudence "Pru".
She had been a keen reader from the childhood - her mother used to leave her in the children's section of their local library whilst she changed her father's library books. She was a storyteller long before she began to write romantic fiction. At the age of eight, she was creating serialized bedtime stories, featuring make-believe adventures, for her younger sister Prue, who was always the heroine. At eleven, she fell in love with Mills & Boon, and with their heroes. In those days the books could only be obtained via private lending libraries, and she quickly became a devoted fan; she was thrilled to bits when the books went on full sale in shops and she could have them for keeps.
Penny left grammar school in Rochdale with O-Levels in English Language, English Literature and Geography. She first discovered Mills & Boon books, via a girl she worked with. She married Steve Halsall, an accountant and a "lovely man", who smoked and drank too heavily, and suffered oral cancer with bravery and dignity. Her husband bought her the small electric typewriter on which she typed her first novels, at a time when he could ill afford it. He died at the beginning of 21st century.
She earned a living as a writer since the 1970s when, as a shorthand typist, she entered a competition run by the Romantic Novelists' Association. Although she didn't win, Penny found an agent who was looking for a new Georgette Heyer. She published four regency novels as Caroline Courtney, before changing her nom de plume to Melinda Wright for three air-hostess romps and then she wrote two thrillers as Lydia Hitchcock. Soon after that, Mills and Boon accepted her first novel for them, Falcon's Prey as Penny Jordan. However, for her more historical romance novels, she adopted her mother's maiden-name to become Annie Groves. Almost 70 of her 167 Mills and Boon novels have been sold worldwide.
Penny Halsall lived in a neo-Georgian house in Nantwich, Cheshire, with her Alsatian Sheba and cat Posh. She worked from home, in her kitchen, surrounded by her pets, and welcomed interruptions from her friends and family.
aka Caroline Courtney, Annie Groves, Lydia Hitchcock, Melinda Wright
Penelope "Penny" Jones was born on November 24, 1946 at about seven pounds in a nursing home in Preston, Lancashire, England. She was the first child of Anthony Winn Jones, an engineer, who died at 85, and his wife Margaret Louise Groves Jones. She has a brother, Anthony, and a sister, Prudence "Pru".
She had been a keen reader from the childhood - her mother used to leave her in the children's section of their local library whilst she changed her father's library books. She was a storyteller long before she began to write romantic fiction. At the age of eight, she was creating serialized bedtime stories, featuring make-believe adventures, for her younger sister Prue, who was always the heroine. At eleven, she fell in love with Mills & Boon, and with their heroes. In those days the books could only be obtained via private lending libraries, and she quickly became a devoted fan; she was thrilled to bits when the books went on full sale in shops and she could have them for keeps.
Penny left grammar school in Rochdale with O-Levels in English Language, English Literature and Geography. She first discovered Mills & Boon books, via a girl she worked with. She married Steve Halsall, an accountant and a "lovely man", who smoked and drank too heavily, and suffered oral cancer with bravery and dignity. Her husband bought her the small electric typewriter on which she typed her first novels, at a time when he could ill afford it. He died at the beginning of 21st century.
She earned a living as a writer since the 1970s when, as a shorthand typist, she entered a competition run by the Romantic Novelists' Association. Although she didn't win, Penny found an agent who was looking for a new Georgette Heyer. She published four regency novels as Caroline Courtney, before changing her nom de plume to Melinda Wright for three air-hostess romps and then she wrote two thrillers as Lydia Hitchcock. Soon after that, Mills and Boon accepted her first novel for them, Falcon's Prey as Penny Jordan. However, for her more historical romance novels, she adopted her mother's maiden-name to become Annie Groves. Almost 70 of her 167 Mills and Boon novels have been sold worldwide.
Penny Halsall lived in a neo-Georgian house in Nantwich, Cheshire, with her Alsatian Sheba and cat Posh. She worked from home, in her kitchen, surrounded by her pets, and welcomed interruptions from her friends and family.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 24, 2018
Re A Matter of Trust - Feb 1995's first HP Plus spot is Penny Jordan doing her typical PJ dithery sensitive h who desperately wants to help troubled teens in the middle of adjusting to a new boss in her accountancy firm's recent merger.
Naturally the new boss is the H, who is immediately interested in the h and works with aggressive troubled teens himself. All while the H is trying to interpret the h's vacillations between weak knees whenever the two of them are within ten feet of each other and the h's worries that succumbing to her inner lurve force mojo will wreck her life, so she gives the H a cold shoulder in his advances.
This one starts out a little differently from the normal PJ HP outing. The h's father died when she was young and her mother remarried. She loves her mum and her stepdad, but the new stepdad came with a stepsister.
While the stepsister isn't evil, she is highly annoying and PJ forces her into the mold of the main character willing to pimp the h out. The stepsister is the divorced mother of two children and now running her very own all female detective agency.
As we start on our HP venture, the stepsis has just convinced the h to spy on a suspected pedophile from the vantage point of an elderly neighbor's house. The h is a very non-adventurous accountant and really, really horrible at spying on the neighbors.
The man she is spying on notices the h hanging out the window to snap a photo of the nicely dressed, married lady coming to meet him and he is soon banging on the h's borrowed house door, wanting to know what on earth is up.
The h accuses the man of all manner of sordid perversions and in the process of the h yelling at the guy, he decides a roofie kiss is in order. The h almost passes out from the passion generated by the Patented PJ Lurve Force Mojo, then has to spend the next ten pages berating herself for being turned on by a pervy guy.
As it happens, the idiotic stepsister never gave the h a photo of their target, so the man with the magic lips isn't the right pervert. Instead he is the h's new boss and there is conflicts in the office as he decides the h is using her tax accountant wiles to seduce an innocent farmer client. We also learn that the woman who was visiting him during the h's spying operation was one of his London secretaries.
The h is very nearly grooming unicorns and painfully shy around men, so the H soon learns he made a huge mistake about the h's tax accountant wiles. Then the H shows up at the h's help troubled teens discussion group. The h is trying to do the mentoring moment with a young teen girl who had been molested by her mother's new husband and has been removed from the family home.
The teen girl is in care and the h is trying to make a connection, but is getting frustrated because she thinks she isn't getting anywhere with the girl. The H presents himself as some kind of troubled teen whisperer and gives the h some advice to just be patient and wait. He himself is taking on one of the more aggressively violent teenage boys and he seems to think that an Outward Bound Course will fix the fourteen year old juvenile thug right up.
The h is not convinced, her own troubled teen young lady has complained that the bully fourteen yr old has been making extremely personal advances towards her with a knife. The h is very scared for this already traumatized girl and it doesn't get much better after that.
In the midst of all this, the annoying stepsister is berating the h for not giving in to her baser urges and berating the h for not busting out of the limited grooves the h likes her life to run in.
(I found this stepsister to be truly annoying and fairly dangerous. Who in their right mind sends a timid woman to spy on a pedophile? Moreover a woman who is inherently gentle and shy and has no clue about self defense. The H points this out as well and it was one of his few decent moments, the rest of the time he comes off as a know it all kinda creepy bully.)
The stepsister also pretty much does everything but offer the H a check to lurve up on the h. It was a just soooo tacky and the stepsis had no personal knowledge about the H to be offering the h up on a platter to him, either.
(The stepsis totally failed the LaToya Jackson Online Detective School Correspondence school beginner course. In fact, LTJ probably brained the stepsis with her magnifying glass as she used her pointy toed stiletto Jimmy Choo's to kick her out.)
So anyhow, the teen rescue drama continues and the stepsis keeps on with her annoying pandering. The h gets wrapped up in a betrayed wife client's cheating husband's jointly owned business embezzlement drama while having naughty thoughts about the H and then fretting about her inner quaking over the H, whom she has suddenly decided she loves.
The H has to bully the h to attend another troubled teen discussion meeting with him driving, as the h's car is in the repair shop. When the H brings her home, the h finds her house trashed, her intimate clothing hacked to pieces and unsavory sexual photos of women slashed in strategic areas by the thug troubled teen boy. This completely and utterly freaks the h out, so the H takes her to his home for the night.
This leads to a mad purple passion lurve club event and the h has a little moment of peace. When the H goes out for milk the next morning, the teen thug breaks into the H's house and his crude language about the preceding night's events between the H and h puts the h into a state of shock and more inner turmoil.
The H rescues her from the teenaged boy, but the h is running in panic mode and retreats to her parent's house. She doesn't want to see the H again, but there is the nagging pimp pushing stepsister encouraging the H and the H tells the h that she has to work out a three month notice before she can resign from her job.
The h is still traumatized from the violation of her home and the H gets frustrated, so he forces another kiss on her and the h kicks him out.
Then the h goes back to her home to prove she isn't a coward and finds that the H has had it cleaned and filled with flowers as a caretaking gesture towards the h. The h is looking around when she hears someone on the stairs and has another freakout moment.
It is only the H tho and after some verbal back and forth, they both confess they love each other. (How it happened, I am still not sure, but the love declarations were pretty sweet and the consummation was passionate.)
We get a little epilogue where the H and h are married and the h's niece is all googly eyed over the handsomeness of roofie kissing H. The stepsister can't resist rubbing the h's nose in the fact that she was right and that the h was wrong about passion and pimping.
We leave the stepsister delivering the moral of this story that the h can trust the H as well as love him, with the h's murmured agreement, for a very dull and not sparkly PJ HPlandia HEA.
This one was pretty low on the PJ scale of readability. The H has some shinning moments that keep the book from being a total waste, but the whole troubled teen angle was not handled in a positive manner and really, the overall tone of the story is dull and sorta dreary.
I was continually irritated by the stepsister and a lot of time by the H as well, as they both acted like they held all the knowledge of the ages and the h was a concussed duckling who couldn't possibly understand life or how people worked.
The h was a typical PJ h, but I had some empathy for her, cause she was right to be wary and while the H wasn't a total skeevy dude, he had some definite creepy moments and there was very little romance to raise his game or even a reason why he suddenly decided he loved the h.
All in all, if you give this one a miss, you probably won't be missing much and there are much better PJ HP ventures out there to enjoy.
Naturally the new boss is the H, who is immediately interested in the h and works with aggressive troubled teens himself. All while the H is trying to interpret the h's vacillations between weak knees whenever the two of them are within ten feet of each other and the h's worries that succumbing to her inner lurve force mojo will wreck her life, so she gives the H a cold shoulder in his advances.
This one starts out a little differently from the normal PJ HP outing. The h's father died when she was young and her mother remarried. She loves her mum and her stepdad, but the new stepdad came with a stepsister.
While the stepsister isn't evil, she is highly annoying and PJ forces her into the mold of the main character willing to pimp the h out. The stepsister is the divorced mother of two children and now running her very own all female detective agency.
As we start on our HP venture, the stepsis has just convinced the h to spy on a suspected pedophile from the vantage point of an elderly neighbor's house. The h is a very non-adventurous accountant and really, really horrible at spying on the neighbors.
The man she is spying on notices the h hanging out the window to snap a photo of the nicely dressed, married lady coming to meet him and he is soon banging on the h's borrowed house door, wanting to know what on earth is up.
The h accuses the man of all manner of sordid perversions and in the process of the h yelling at the guy, he decides a roofie kiss is in order. The h almost passes out from the passion generated by the Patented PJ Lurve Force Mojo, then has to spend the next ten pages berating herself for being turned on by a pervy guy.
As it happens, the idiotic stepsister never gave the h a photo of their target, so the man with the magic lips isn't the right pervert. Instead he is the h's new boss and there is conflicts in the office as he decides the h is using her tax accountant wiles to seduce an innocent farmer client. We also learn that the woman who was visiting him during the h's spying operation was one of his London secretaries.
The h is very nearly grooming unicorns and painfully shy around men, so the H soon learns he made a huge mistake about the h's tax accountant wiles. Then the H shows up at the h's help troubled teens discussion group. The h is trying to do the mentoring moment with a young teen girl who had been molested by her mother's new husband and has been removed from the family home.
The teen girl is in care and the h is trying to make a connection, but is getting frustrated because she thinks she isn't getting anywhere with the girl. The H presents himself as some kind of troubled teen whisperer and gives the h some advice to just be patient and wait. He himself is taking on one of the more aggressively violent teenage boys and he seems to think that an Outward Bound Course will fix the fourteen year old juvenile thug right up.
The h is not convinced, her own troubled teen young lady has complained that the bully fourteen yr old has been making extremely personal advances towards her with a knife. The h is very scared for this already traumatized girl and it doesn't get much better after that.
In the midst of all this, the annoying stepsister is berating the h for not giving in to her baser urges and berating the h for not busting out of the limited grooves the h likes her life to run in.
(I found this stepsister to be truly annoying and fairly dangerous. Who in their right mind sends a timid woman to spy on a pedophile? Moreover a woman who is inherently gentle and shy and has no clue about self defense. The H points this out as well and it was one of his few decent moments, the rest of the time he comes off as a know it all kinda creepy bully.)
The stepsister also pretty much does everything but offer the H a check to lurve up on the h. It was a just soooo tacky and the stepsis had no personal knowledge about the H to be offering the h up on a platter to him, either.
(The stepsis totally failed the LaToya Jackson Online Detective School Correspondence school beginner course. In fact, LTJ probably brained the stepsis with her magnifying glass as she used her pointy toed stiletto Jimmy Choo's to kick her out.)
So anyhow, the teen rescue drama continues and the stepsis keeps on with her annoying pandering. The h gets wrapped up in a betrayed wife client's cheating husband's jointly owned business embezzlement drama while having naughty thoughts about the H and then fretting about her inner quaking over the H, whom she has suddenly decided she loves.
The H has to bully the h to attend another troubled teen discussion meeting with him driving, as the h's car is in the repair shop. When the H brings her home, the h finds her house trashed, her intimate clothing hacked to pieces and unsavory sexual photos of women slashed in strategic areas by the thug troubled teen boy. This completely and utterly freaks the h out, so the H takes her to his home for the night.
This leads to a mad purple passion lurve club event and the h has a little moment of peace. When the H goes out for milk the next morning, the teen thug breaks into the H's house and his crude language about the preceding night's events between the H and h puts the h into a state of shock and more inner turmoil.
The H rescues her from the teenaged boy, but the h is running in panic mode and retreats to her parent's house. She doesn't want to see the H again, but there is the nagging pimp pushing stepsister encouraging the H and the H tells the h that she has to work out a three month notice before she can resign from her job.
The h is still traumatized from the violation of her home and the H gets frustrated, so he forces another kiss on her and the h kicks him out.
Then the h goes back to her home to prove she isn't a coward and finds that the H has had it cleaned and filled with flowers as a caretaking gesture towards the h. The h is looking around when she hears someone on the stairs and has another freakout moment.
It is only the H tho and after some verbal back and forth, they both confess they love each other. (How it happened, I am still not sure, but the love declarations were pretty sweet and the consummation was passionate.)
We get a little epilogue where the H and h are married and the h's niece is all googly eyed over the handsomeness of roofie kissing H. The stepsister can't resist rubbing the h's nose in the fact that she was right and that the h was wrong about passion and pimping.
We leave the stepsister delivering the moral of this story that the h can trust the H as well as love him, with the h's murmured agreement, for a very dull and not sparkly PJ HPlandia HEA.
This one was pretty low on the PJ scale of readability. The H has some shinning moments that keep the book from being a total waste, but the whole troubled teen angle was not handled in a positive manner and really, the overall tone of the story is dull and sorta dreary.
I was continually irritated by the stepsister and a lot of time by the H as well, as they both acted like they held all the knowledge of the ages and the h was a concussed duckling who couldn't possibly understand life or how people worked.
The h was a typical PJ h, but I had some empathy for her, cause she was right to be wary and while the H wasn't a total skeevy dude, he had some definite creepy moments and there was very little romance to raise his game or even a reason why he suddenly decided he loved the h.
All in all, if you give this one a miss, you probably won't be missing much and there are much better PJ HP ventures out there to enjoy.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 20, 2022
The relationship between the heroine and hero seemed underdeveloped because the author placed too much emphasis on their volunteer work and the resulting subplot. The romance that managed to sneak through felt tepid. Other than a physical attraction to each other, I don’t understand how the hero and heroine even fell in love. The first time they made love was completely skipped over too. The reader was told about it after the fact. Finally, I didn’t care for the heroine who was too much of a wimp and prone to overreacting.
September 4, 2012
Borrrrrrrrring. Heroine does a favor for her sister, the hero flips out and turns out to be her new boss. All of a sudden the hero has an interest in her. Some parts were okay.
November 5, 2021
I'm apparently a minority for giving this a higher rating. I admit that the side plots were a bit too deep and either over or underhighlighted in the book but beyond wondering what will happen to Karen and the psycho Kyle, I'm okay with that. The H was clearly head over heels for the h and he showed it in many ways so it would have been nice if PJ hadn't made their consummation scene a fade to black with us only seeing them cuddling afterwards. It seems
I loved the H here. And I am a sucker for a HEA. This wasn't dark and I didn't think the sister was as bad as other reviewers thought.
I loved the H here. And I am a sucker for a HEA. This wasn't dark and I didn't think the sister was as bad as other reviewers thought.
March 1, 2021
Annoying
I used to love penny jordans books when I was young but now the whiny, wimpy, over emotional heroines drive me nuts. You want to tell them to grow up and think about someone besides themselves.
I used to love penny jordans books when I was young but now the whiny, wimpy, over emotional heroines drive me nuts. You want to tell them to grow up and think about someone besides themselves.
May 31, 2014
This one started out so promisingly. The premise was as follows: Leigh, a private detective, asks her much more staid and responsible (boring) sister Debra to step in for her one weekend and keep surveillance on a dirty old man who is set on seducing a teenager. Debra, an accountant by trade, reluctantly agrees and sets about watching the man. She sees him lure a pretty woman into his house and takes photographs. He duly spots her and comes round demanding the camera. A row ensues, in which she accuses the man of being a pervert. He responds (and I really did feel that Jordan was on distinctly dodgy ground here) by kissing her. His actual words are “I’m not a pervert. And just to prove it..” followed by a kiss. How this proves he’s not a pervert, I wasn’t sure.
Unfortunately for Debra the man she has just accused of being a pervert was the wrong bloke – and to make things worse, he’s actually her new boss at work. Thus the stage is set for some romantic fireworks. Sadly, it all goes downhill there. Marsh (the pervert) is staid and boring. He might have been a bit more exciting had he been a pervert. Debra is even worse. They both of them spend their spare time working in social care trying to befriend troubled teenagers. Unfortunately the troubled teenagers aren’t interested in being friends with staid middle-aged accountants (and who could blame them) and end up causing them a whole load of trouble. Poor Debra is traumatised by one which nearly ruins her burgeoning relationship with Marsh.
There’s lots of angst-y second guessing what’s going on in Marsh’s brain (not much) by Debra and her leaping to the wrong conclusions. Marsh is as bad and between them they nearly manage to wreck their relationship before it has even got off the ground. It’s not that romantic – the sex scenes are definitely not up to Jordan’s normally pulse-racing standards – it’s all a bit dull. There’s a lesson in this somewhere – i.e. don’t base your romantic novels around accountants; or social care; or in Chester. Poor.
Also: the cover - at first I just thought it was awful. The artist has portrayed Debra as a barbie doll and him as really plastic looking. Then, as I read the book, I realised that it really was a stroke of genius on behalf of the cover illustrator - Both of them are a bit plastic and doll-like; too good to be realistic in any way shape or form. There's almost something didactic being portrayed in the way that Jordan has them behave - they're too good; as if all people should be like them. Frankly, that was just a further off-putting strand to the novel.
Unfortunately for Debra the man she has just accused of being a pervert was the wrong bloke – and to make things worse, he’s actually her new boss at work. Thus the stage is set for some romantic fireworks. Sadly, it all goes downhill there. Marsh (the pervert) is staid and boring. He might have been a bit more exciting had he been a pervert. Debra is even worse. They both of them spend their spare time working in social care trying to befriend troubled teenagers. Unfortunately the troubled teenagers aren’t interested in being friends with staid middle-aged accountants (and who could blame them) and end up causing them a whole load of trouble. Poor Debra is traumatised by one which nearly ruins her burgeoning relationship with Marsh.
There’s lots of angst-y second guessing what’s going on in Marsh’s brain (not much) by Debra and her leaping to the wrong conclusions. Marsh is as bad and between them they nearly manage to wreck their relationship before it has even got off the ground. It’s not that romantic – the sex scenes are definitely not up to Jordan’s normally pulse-racing standards – it’s all a bit dull. There’s a lesson in this somewhere – i.e. don’t base your romantic novels around accountants; or social care; or in Chester. Poor.
Also: the cover - at first I just thought it was awful. The artist has portrayed Debra as a barbie doll and him as really plastic looking. Then, as I read the book, I realised that it really was a stroke of genius on behalf of the cover illustrator - Both of them are a bit plastic and doll-like; too good to be realistic in any way shape or form. There's almost something didactic being portrayed in the way that Jordan has them behave - they're too good; as if all people should be like them. Frankly, that was just a further off-putting strand to the novel.
October 28, 2016
I had a good laugh when they first met.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews