Secret Sins

Jessica Marie Zajak is the well-put-together assistant director of the Colorado Tourist and Convention Bureau and the adopted child of the loving Zajak family of Cleveland, Ohio, who took her in after her parents were killed in a car crash. Anyway, that's what Jessica believes when Cresswell's story begins. By the time it ends, in predictable fashion, she knows she's really the daughter of a cruel, manipulative judge, Victor Rodier, who has just been nominated for the Supreme Court, and a fragile heiress whom he had committed amid stories that she killed her only child. With the help of her sexy ex-husband, Dan, Jessica finds her mother and punishes her dad. There are no mysteries here; the experienced modern-romance reader twigs to the whole plot in about 75 pages; but Cresswell (Desires & Deceptions) has so much to deal with as she reunites husband and wife, and mother and daughter, and mother and psychiatrist, and pits them all against unspeakably villainous Victor, that it sometimes sabotages what is often an entertaining read. (Feb.)