For Services RenderedBy Patricia KayClaire Kendrick works for Nick Callahan, he wants more with her. What he wants is a real family, a home, and children; but when he allows his feelings to get involved he always makes a mess of things and in business he can’t afford to lose focus again.Claire’s mother, Kitty, is in a nursing home, she badly wounded in a boating accident that killed her father. Now her mental abilities are no more than a two year old, and she needs the constant care. The nursing home is about to increase their rates, three hundred a month, Clare can barely make the payments now, what is she going to do? She doesn’t want to send her mother to the state run home; she knows Kitty won’t get the care she needs.Nick has decided that Claire has all the attributes he wants in a wife, he just needs to convince her that an arranged marriage with set rules is just thing to provide her and her mother safety. He never wants to fall in love again. He doesn’t trust the emotion, but Claire is so giving and peaceful that he finds himself fighting his own heart every step of the way.Kitty gets sick and before they know it, she is gone. Claire now has to decide how to go about her marriage; her husband doesn’t love her, after six months she still has not gotten pregnant, her mother is gone and she now feels that her reasons for marrying Nick are invalid. He needs a wife that can be the society female for him, and that can give him the children he so desperately wants. Can she find a way out of this marriage that doesn’t break her heart? Can Nick find a way to keep her that doesn’t mean he has to open his heart to the love he can no longer deny?I wasn’t sure about this book, but once I started it I could not put it down. I got so caught up in the emotions of these characters and the side characters that I had to keep reading. My heart broke with Claire a couple of times, the woman I first saw as a doormat got under my skin and I felt everything she felt, her growing love for this impossible man, her care and love for her mother, her pain at the loss of the woman Kitty used to be, and at the loss of her father. Patricia Kay is a delightful author that I will be reading more of in the future. I am very happy to rate this book four stars. I gave it a rating of 3 not because I didn't like the book, but because the whole story made me so angry. I couldn't even get into the romantic parts being so mad. I hated Nick from the start to finish. He was an arrogant,rich, controling creep who took advantage of a naive woman. The way he treated her was nothing less than forms of abuse. I kept telling myself "It's just a story", but I can really see how a woman can get into an abusive relationship when she is so vulnerable in reality. I didn't like the ending and I won't go into it because I don't want to give away the ending, but I was just ANGRY! Right now, I don't know if I am ready for another of her books.
What do You think about For Services Rendered (1991)?
Enjoyable and predictable read. Not a lot of depth. Claire and Nick were fun characters.
—Ash
You know how it is going to end but it is a fun and quick read for something light!!!
—TheReader
This book is your standard married for other reasons that turns into love.
—Angy
I liked the book but some of it was predictable.
—faithxoxo
