Orchid

Author: Jayne Castle
Published: May 1998 (Pocket Books)
Category: Paranormal Romance
Series: St. Helens #3
Rating: 9/10

I really think that no one writes the predatory male better than Jayne Ann Krentz. Rafe Stonebreaker, friend of Nick Chastain and Lucas Trent of the first two books in the St. Helens series, has off-the-charts strat talent, meaning that he's very good with strategy. This talent is considered a throwback to more primitive times, as it's sort of a hunter/predator thing. Sure, Rafe can use his strat talent to make tons of money in the stock market, but he can also use it to take out two skilled attackers in thick fog.

Rafe, in a business ploy to assume control of his family's failing company, has to become respectable in order to garner the board's approval as the next CEO. To compete with his smarmy cousin, who has a wife and children, Rafe has to find a wife... fast. So he turns to the St. Helens institution of marriage consulting agencies. Unfortunately, his counselor can't find a woman willing to marry a strat talent, or one who meets Rafe's stringent requirements (i.e. liking an unpopular style of architecture, liking a certain type of crappy poetry, and must be a full spectrum prism). Since the agency can't find him a bride, his strat talent tells him to find one himself by hiring full spectrum prisms and figuring out which one would suit him as a bride.

He finds his candidate in Orchid Jones, psychic vampire novelist by day, and part-time full spectrum prism by night. They are drawn together for a case involving a missing alien artifact (Krentz/Castle reuses this plot in her Harmony series novel, Silver Master) that has potential to do great harm. And as seen in the previous St. Helens novels, Orchid's talent is very rare and special. She's an ice prism, able to manipulate the shape of her prism to best suit the waves pouring into it, becoming the perfect prism for any talent.

When Rafe and Orchid connect on the psychic plane, the link is extremely sensual, which isn't supposed to happen during a talent-prism connection. Rafe knows that Orchid is the one for him, even though she hates meta-zen-synth poetry. They come to an agreement, where they will be each other's dates at various family functions and solve the mystery together. Of course, the mystery turns out to be more dangerous than they thought, and Rafe has to protect Orchid as well. Aside from protecting her, Rafe also does those fantasy boyfriend things, such as tossing your jerky ex into a lake during your cousin's wedding. As Orchid won't marry without an agency's stamp of approval, and she knows that Rafe is looking for a specific kind of wife, she doesn't want to engage in anything permanent with him, and so they begin a steamy, yet bittersweet affair.

The mystery is well done and the ending is so sweet. The Chastains and Trents make an appearance at Rafe and Orchid's wedding, proving yet marriage agencies wrong once again. A powerful talent can marry a full spectrum prism, despite the belief that such a match is impossible. This was definitely my favorite of the St. Helens books, and I can see how they gave a foundation for Krentz to start her Ghost Hunters series on the planet of Harmony. Really, if there were dust bunnies in the St. Helens series, I'd say I can't pick one over the other!