Estate Affair is the sixth title in Dynasties: The Ashtons, Silhouette Desire’s soap opera mini-series. Since it’s at the half-way point, I guess the editors decided to use this title as a re-cap of what’s gone on before. There are a lot of pages devoted to introducing the various Ashtons, recapping how evil Spencer Ashton was, speculating on who killed him, and showing Eli Ashton and Lara Hunter having hot sex.

When Spencer Ashton was found dead, the scandal hit the pages. Seems he had not bothered to tell his second wife Caroline, that he had been married before. So when he left her for his third wife Lilah, Caroline was so afraid he’d take the children with him that she let him keep the land that had been in her family. Spencer used this land to build his vinyard, Ashton Estates. Caroline married again, and she and her second husband started a vineyard called the Louret vineyard which is smaller but better than the Ashtons. Caroline and Spencer’s oldest son Eli, hated his father with a passion but he went to the funeral anyway.

While at the funeral, Eli meets a strikingly beautiful young woman and asks her to have a drink and some supper. She goes with him and they exchange first names. She is Lara. One thing leads to another and pretty soon they are having hot, sweaty, acrobatic sex. When Lara finds out that Eli is an Ashton, she is not happy. She works for the Spencer family as a maid (and goes to law school at night) and she hated Spencer Aston and his groping hands, but she doesn’t hate Eli too long (it’s a really short book) and pretty soon they are flying to San Francisco and having hot, sweaty, acrobatic sex.

Then the police take Grant Ashton, Spencer’s son by his first wife, in for questioning – he is the main suspect in their murder investigation. Everyone mingles around, while we get a recap as to who is who, Eli asks Lara to marry him and that’s all.

This book is nothing but a trifle and a throw-away. There’s a perfectly decent family tree near the front of the book and anyone can look at it and see where the characters fit in. All the “oh that’s Charlotte the cousin” dialogue was really not necessary. However, the expository dialogue was almost better than the overheated sex scenes. Note to Silhoutte editors – please ban the use of the word “rod” to refer to the male sex organ – it is silly in the extreme (and rather painful to imagine as well).

Eli and Lara were thinner than the thinnest tissue paper, and they utter some of the silliest dialogue that it has been my displeasure to read. Even though I am pretty tolerant of the love at first sight scenario, this one strained my credibility, even I am more than ready to suspend my disbelief.

The next installment of Dynasties: The Ashtons takes place on a Sioux Indian reservation. Seems Spencer Ashton’s late brother married an Indian woman and her son Walker wants to find out the truth about his heritage. Maybe the story will go somewhere. Goodness knows this one didn’t.