The Texan Cowboy Billionaire's Secret Love Child. Or Something.

Oh, the shame! The hot, searing, secret shame! I love something that I really, really shouldn’t. Ready? 

*Deep Breath*

I love Mills and Boon books.

I luuurve them. I love them like Penelope loves Odysseus. I love them like bees love pollen. I love them like Ross loves Rachel. I love them like a fat kid loves cake. It’s an epic, primal love. Don’t look at me, I’m hideous!

I picked up my first M&B when I was about 10 or 11. My older cousins spent their school holidays with us and were very partial to these tales. Plus, I went to an all-girl boarding school – this was our crack, passed furtively after lights out and read by torchlight. Back then, the heroines were usually British, very much English Roses™, and very much the ‘lesser’ of the two leads i.e. she was more often than not financially poorer, less educated and altogether less carnally experienced than her male counterpart. Feminism was a distant twinkle in my eye then, so of course, I missed the crushing subtext. Instead, I thought these stories were wildly romantic, and found them thrilling. Women with sensible names like Briony (you never forget your first, do you?), Susan, Catherine, and Anne abounded, and they were partnered with brusque, square-jawed men with such monikers as Heath, Matthew and one memorable Clive. I was in gothic romance heaven!

Come on. You don't want to read this even a *little* bit?

Things got switched up with the seemingly sudden awareness of Europe, and its reserves of sloe-eyed, lean hipped millionaires. If he had some link to royalty, well, all the better! There were principessas, contessas and dukes, costume balls, and raven haired local beauties. Italians, Spaniards and Greeks had names like Nikolas, Aleksandr, and Maximillian, and they either worked as shipping tycoons or as heads of multinational companies whose purpose was never really made clear. More often than not, the heroines were foreigners, naive, and really rather oddly, pregnant. Like the only way for a woman to ‘keep’ her man was to ‘trap’ him. Sure, she would rail against his heavy handedness at first, talking about her piddling ‘career’ or her ‘life back home’ but then he would kiss her with that “full-lipped, almost cruel mouth” and say something about “my son needs to be born here, in the land of his grandfather and father before him” and she would shrug, say “meh” and get on with the seduction. It was a simpler time, wasn’t it?

Then came (for me) the influx of the Americans, and my M&B habits adapted. I started reading the Temptation series, the calling card of which was a blood-red apple – just like the one Eve had consumed! – a timeless symbol of smut, shame and evil. It was a canny insignia. I. Could. Not. Wait. Heroes’ names changed drastically – suddenly, there were Todds, Hunters and Troys in my vocabulary. I’d chuckle to myself, “Only an American would name someone Stone. Those Yanks, what are they like, eh?” And their jobs! The first wave of male protagonists were traditional ‘heroes’, working as police detectives, firemen, Marines. And the plots! I remember reading one called Dear John, about a solider in some unnamed conflict, who received sexy letters from an anonymous woman back home. Then he returned, and the time came for them to meet… How could you not want to read on? Seriously. You could always trust M&B to keep up with the times too. I remember another one in which the hero was an Internet start up guy. Of course, we didn’t see the looming dotcom crash…

I'm guessing the gift is in his heart. But, I suspect, also in his pants...

These days, I’m less of a voracious reader. When I lived in east London (Newham, represent!), the libraries were well stocked with my poison. Every reader type was catered for - Blaze, Romance, Historical, Silhouette etc. – and I indulged heavily. Then I moved to liberal north London. In my local library, I have several copies of the Communist Manifesto, every published edition of His Dark Materials and every sex memoir written by every anonymous French lady. But I have no Mills & Boon. I gave in last month and went to the large Asda outlet store in Tottenham Hale and bought three. I began reading them on the tube home and there was an almost audible click as I shifted down a couple of gears. It’s familiar, comfy and very relaxing.

Sometimes, only a hot car bonnet will do...

How offensive! I'm referring, of course, to that atrocious pun

Earlier this month, I spotted a Mills & Boon book club on the London listings page. I checked and checked again – this is not a forum for mocking M&Bs, but for celebrating them! How extraordinary. They meet on the first Tuesday of every month at tea house Yumchaa (45 Berwick Street, W1) in central London. Six words, as uttered by the immortal Liz Lemon on 30 Rock, came to mind:

Come out of the woodwork, people. Our time has come! Let us read the smutty, formulaic books of our youth with no shame or fear! I’m so booking a table for the next one.