Heartstrings

Theodosia Worth is a Boston intellectual who has nothing in common with wild-west tough guy Roman Montana. Fate nevertheless thrusts the two of them together on a wild romp through nineteenth-century Texas when Theodosia travels south for a job interview, and along the way concocts a scheme to bear a child for her barren sister. Beset by hordes of potential papas who answer her advertisement requesting the sexual services of a man who closely resembles her Harvard-professor brother-in-law, Theodosia hires Roman as a bodyguard. Although disqualified from siring his employer's child because of his apparent lack of intelligence, Roman is a wily sexual tease who quickly teaches the cerebral Theodosia a lot about emotions and desires she never knew she had. These two are a particularly implausible match, and most of their adventures are predictably plotted and unsurprisingly resolved. But Paisley (The Barefoot Bride) keeps readers enaged by eschewing melodrama in favor of comedy, playing up the zaniness of this oddball couple for all it's worth. (Sept.)