Title: Secret
Author:  Penelope Sky
Publisher/Year:  Penelope Sky 7/7/20
Length:  158 Pages
Series:  Betrothed #9

Overview

She saved my life.

She promised she wouldn’t intervene, that her loyalty was to her family, not me. But she did it anyway.

Now everything is different. I can feel it with every kiss, every time she’s underneath me. This isn’t a meaningless fling anymore.

It’s so much more.

I know it…and she knows it.

My Thoughts

I love everything that our author writes and this continuation of Heath and Catalina’s story just adds to my love fest. We saw this couple come together as part of a scheme to get at Damian for falling in love with a woman that ‘belonged’ to someone else, and we watched how their uncommon circumstances turned into a really amazing relationship – unexpected and intense, and so good all at the same time. Until it wasn’t.

Throughout this ninth installment in the series, the second for this couple, we remember where we left off – Heath was going to collect the taxes that Damian owed, and Damian had a plot to kill Heath and his men since he felt that he was unfairly being taxed. Catalina knew about the plan, and while she said she’d never go against her family, she realized that Heath meant more to her, and she warned him at the last moment. Saving his life, and resulting in a shift in the dynamic of just about everything from then out.

The way that their bond strengthened and changed was amazing. We saw that their ‘fling’ – their short term thing became love, even when they didn’t admit it to one another. In the moment that Cat called Heath to warn him, he saw right through what she wasn’t willing to admit and as a result, his own feelings became clear to him as well. Their relationship turned to something concrete. They had open entry to each other’s house. They were part of each other now, and even when Cat tried to fight it, fight Heath on it, she realized that she would always lose.

We spend most of this story watching how they are happy together and how they have something special. The only issue that they truly faced was the notion that Damian and Heath had a pure hatred for one another and as a result the two parts of her life could never meet. When she tried to make that change – she learned more about the past than she ever wanted to know, and that rips her and Heath apart. The things that he did to her family in the past was truly too much and the lies that he kept meant that she was now numb to him.

This brings pleasure to Damian of course because it now opens the door for him to take Heath down, and that’s exactly what happens. We see Cat torn – she’s numb, and she’s standing by her family, but of course life and love are never that easy. The end of this ninth / second book leave us at a crossroads of where Cat will be knowing that she’s vowed never to choose against her family but her future was already chosen by that same fortune teller in Morocco that directed everyone else’s lives in this series. So….I now have to wait until the next installment to see how this plays out. Enjoy!