His Case, Her Child by Linda Style, Cold Cases: LA #1, Harlequin SuperRomance #1281, Rating: B-

By the book cop Rico Santini crosses paths with child legal advocate Macy Capshaw when he believes a child she's acting as advocate for might be the child of a cold case five years old. A child he's been searching for all that time because it's personal to him, despite knowing he shouldn't have gotten involved with the case. Macy is a lawyer but doesn't always follow the letter of the law exactly as it's written, she knows there are shades of gray in those black and white pages. Together, they uncover a scheme that hits very close to home bringing up pages of the past long buried and thought to be forgotten.

Lawyer Macy Capshaw was pregnant at 17 that resulted in a still birth. An only child of wealthy and prominent parents, it's a subject not discussed. Not even her grandparents were aware of her pregnancy. She broke out from her father's law firm three years ago to pursue her own practice so that she would be able to take on the clients she wanted to take on. She does a lot of pro bono work and deals with battered wives, abused children, etc. She's single and content to be so thinking that it has to be that way. I liked Macy. She was independent, convincingly needy when the time was right and it was clear she was loving from the way she approached the child that brought Rico Santini to her office in the first place.

Rico Santini is one of seven children from Jersey who ended up in LA following a girl friend there who was an aspiring actress. The relationship didn't pan out, but California stuck with him. He's more than a cop, though, an MIT graduate in Engineering and a computer geek. He has invested a lot of time in a particular case that's personal to him. His first encounters with Macy lead him to believe she's cold and aloof and a little too accepting of bending rules for his liking. When the bending of the rules suited her at any rate. There was also the difference of their financial backgrounds, she had one and he didn't. Rico was a likeable man, his friends were as well. I enjoyed getting to know him, witnessing his inability to break the law or throw the book out but he still helped Macy as best as he could within the parameters he found acceptable.

The ending was a little jarring and from the picture on the front cover I was expecting a different ending then what Linda Style gave us. And despite the logical conclusion, I found myself a little disappointed in it. Overall, though, I enjoyed the book. I liked Rico and Macy, liked the passion they gave to one another and to their jobs. It was nice seeing two very different people (and we saw how different they were by way of their families) get together and overcome the differences they had. I rate His Case, Her Child a B-, the minus due to the jarring ending.

©Susan Falk and phantomroses.com