Jacob’s Proposal is the first of a trilogy of Silhouette Desire romances by Eileen Wilks, detailing the hasty marriages of the three West brothers, confirmed bachelors all. How well you like these books will probably hinge on your tolerance for wills and trusts with weird stipulations, because that’s the device driving this whole series.

All three brothers are doing quite well for themselves, but they also have shares in a trust that shelters their enormous inherited wealth. When Ada, the feisty housekeeper who practically raised them, becomes ill with a rare disease requiring very expensive treatments, the brothers agree that the time has come to break the trust and claim their inheritance. The hitch is that the trust can’t be dismantled until all three of the brothers get hitched.

If that just made you roll your eyes, then you can probably go ahead and skip this book and the two following. I can tolerate weird wills and trusts to a certain extent – yes, I know they are unrealistic but so are countless other romance novel devices – amnesia, marriages of convenience, needing to pose as husband and wife for a business deal, and so on. What matters to me is if the story is internally consistent and realistic after I’ve decided to keep my disbelief suspended.

Jacob’s Proposal worked out well for me in this respect. Jacob’s first choice is to propose to his long-term girlfriend, who turns him down, with little emotional repercussion for Jacob, it seems. At the same time, he hires Claire McGuire to be a temporary secretary for him while his regular secretary is out on leave. He quickly decides that Claire could fill the bill for a new position as wife.

I did have some problems with Jacob. He’s too much in the mold of the romance novel business tycoon – the very wealthy man who does unspecific business deals and makes tons of money. He arranges his whole life and the people in it to his liking. His employees all live in his stately mansion with him, and he is well into his plans to marry Claire before he ever gets around to letting her know it. Claire eventually figures out the wounded man underneath but I never really saw it; I had to take her word for it.

It’s Claire herself who really made the book work for me. She is trying to overcome her own past life, both her wild teenage reputation and her unhappy marriage to the mentally unstable scion of one of the wealthy families in the town. Her ex, Ken, provides a bit of a suspense subplot as he returns to stalk her. Jacob’s odd employee arrangements and later, his proposal, offer some protection and a hiding place from Ken.

But Ken isn’t really the point here. What impressed me was the honest emotional dilemma that arises for Claire out of the potboiler plot elements. She is someone who has been terribly deceived and wounded by what passed for love in her marriage, and at some level Jacob’s proposed arrangement makes sense to her. She’s relieved to find that love isn’t in the equation; she’s had enough of that. Safety, respect, tenderness and protection from the ghosts of her past seems like a good offer. Yet she still hesitates. What if someday she wants love again? Forever is a long time to stay in a loveless marriage of convenience.

Claire’s has to work this out within herself and with Jacob, and it was the strongest part of the book. It was refreshing to read a book with a heroine more vivid than the hero. So often it’s the other way around (although ideally, of course, both would stand out equally). It’s also rare that internal emotional conflicts are the stronger story element, but given Claire’s past turmoil, to have the whole thing resolved in one of those desperate kidnapping, when-I-thought-you-were-dead-I-realized-how-much-I-love-you moments would have felt like a cop out.

The glimpses of the other West brothers, Luke and Michael, were intriguing enough that I want to see more of them, especially Michael, who is some sort of SEAL-like military operative. I recommend this book to anyone who likes some deeper and perhaps darker emotions in their series romances, and who can get past the marriage as will or trust stipulation in the setup.