Seven years ago Liz Braden left Mitch McCoy literally at the altar, escaping the small Virginia town of Manchester for better opportunities. Now she’s returned, discovered by Mitch himself late at night, on a deserted highway while she’s fixing a flat tire in a wedding dress. Mitch is blown over to see Liz again, and, noticing smeared blood on her wedding gown, does what any good P.I. would do - he begins an investigation into her mysterious reappearance.

Liz, it seems, has run away from a fiancé again, and is hiding out in Manchester, where conveniently enough, there’s a vacant family house and her old waitress job awaiting her. She takes up residence quickly because her fiancé, who was also her former boss, has frozen her accounts and is suing her. She’s in pretty big trouble, but Liz is hoping her temporary stay in Manchester will be enough to allow matters in Boston to blow over. Trouble is, now her fiancé from Boston is after her, too, and she’s reluctant to tell Mitch a thing about it.

This is a frustrating book. From the moment Liz and Mitch meet again, there is chemistry between them and they act on it-all the time. Not sex necessarily, but thinking about it, like teenagers, never getting to the heart of why Liz left him all those years ago, and why Mitch never went after her. But boy do they suddenly want each other! It wasn’t that there was too much sex in The P.I. Who Loved Her, but too much misplaced sexual attraction rather than sexual tension. I wanted to get to know the characters; what made them tick, what made them hurt? Instead, I knew just how much they wanted but couldn’t possibly have each other. I also had to wonder how two people who had almost once married, and had left under such emotional and bitter terms, could think of nothing but sex after all this time?

This book reminded me of the classic 50's movie musical Singing in the Rain. Remember the scene where Don Lockwood is in the new talking movie, “Dueling Cavaliers,” with Lena Lamont, and she says, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” and he says, “No! No! No!” as they’re shaking their heads a little too dramatically? Now this, from The P.I. Who Loved Her:

Liz says,
“We’re just not suited for each other. Not for a kiss, not for a date, not for forever.”
(A few pages later:)
“Oh, how I want you,” he ground out, his erection pressing painfully against his jeans.
Her eyes, half-lidded and drugged, stared at him. “Then take me, McCoy.”

The only things missing were the exclamation points.

All in all this was an average read. Not a bad read, certainly, but a sometimes irritating one. One good note was the wide range of enjoyable secondary characters. They put a little “umph” in the story and brought a laugh or two. Unfortunately the melodrama between the protagonists was just a little hard to take.