Bound by Your Touch by Meredith Duran

Beauty is as beauty does...

Silver-tongued Viscount Sanburne is London's favorite scapegrace. Alas, Lydia Boyce has no interest in being charmed. When his latest escapade exposes a plot to ruin her family, she vows to handle it herself, as she always has done. Certainly she requires no help from a too-handsome dilettante whose main achievement is being scandalous. But Sanburne's golden charisma masks a sharper mind and darker history than she realizes. He shocks Lydia by breaking past her prim facade to the woman beneath...and the hidden fire no man has ever recognized. But as she follows him into a world of intrigue, she will learn that the greatest danger lies within—in the shadowy, secret motives of his heart.

James, Viscount Sandburne, lives to embarrass his father, so when he gets the chance to one-up his father in public, he jumps at it. Unfortunately, he does so in the middle of Lydia Boyce’s talk at the Archaeological Institute. She’s so mad at him for causing a scene, that she lets him know the artifact he’s holding and lording over his father, is a fake.

James figures she’s on his father’s payroll. There’s no way this piece is fake. He bought it from someone very reputable…someone who buys from her father…her father the famous Egyptologist whom she idolizes. Yikes.

She wants to prove her father’s innocence, but she also wants to figure out what’s going on. However, Sandburne won’t let her out of his sight, so she can’t investigate on her own, and to top that off, the two of them just really irritate each other.

I’d say that Lydia reminds me of Evie in the Mummy. She’s intelligent, she’s an expert on antiques and Egypt, she adores her father, and she’s attracted to the wrong type of man.

Sandburne’s devil-may-care attitude hides much deeper feelings than he lets on. But Lydia is able to see into the heart of him. She knows there’s more to him than a juvenile need to upset his father.

While this story doesn’t have the action that The Mummy does, it still has quite a bit going on. And Lydia at one point has to open her eyes to some hard truths. Luckily she has Sandburne with her. And together they are wonderful.

These two are almost instantly hitting sparks off each other, and it’s delicious.

You want this book. You want to read everything Meredith Duran has ever written. I spent a week immersed in her books, and my kids had to eat cereal for dinner once or twice, because I refused to put the books down.