Review: Heartbreak at Roosevelt Ranch

Heartbreak at Roosevelt Ranch by Elise Faber

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Our heroine discovers a hidden phone that has calls and tests from another woman.
The hero is increasingly distant and working more and more. His attitude is very suspicious and he seems guilty.
He practically abandons his family and lust his co-worker. She is everything the wife is not. She's sexy and hot. He is always comparing the two and the wife loses.
The wife takes care of two children, the dog, the house, the extra curricular activities, is a driver and still takes care of the hero. She still has a cooking blog and is practically single mom.
The author could not convince me that he did not fuck the other woman. They were in too much lust for something more intimate not to have happened. He came home with marks on his neck and also lipstick marks on his shirt. And we still have several scenes of the two together and him with erection.
The two of them spent days in a hotel room together disguised as a couple.
And even the colleagues and people in town were noticing that they were having an affair.
All very shady and dirty.
She accepted everything very easily and had no grovel.
And the turn of the plot was very fucked up.
Very nonsense.
The result did not convince me.
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because there was a mark on his neck.
A suspicious bruise on the base of his throat—
Where someone might have kissed him.
And that someone had not been me.

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Just after seven in the morning, the precinct was fairly quiet.
Which was just the way he liked it.
Fewer people, fewer distractions, a smaller risk of getting caught.

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“Hey.”
The voice was soft, feminine, and sexy as hell.
Which meant he knew exactly who it was before he even glanced up from straightening the chair.
“Celeste,” he murmured.
A flash of white teeth framed in lush fire engine red. Curves for days encased in the department’s blues. Blond hair pulled into a perky ponytail.
Breasts. Ass. Hips. Waist.
This woman had it all.
She closed the door. “I need you.”
The chair slipped from his grip and bumped into his desk. The little frame standing next to his monitor rattled, fell forward.
His family’s smiling faces disappeared, but he barely noticed.
Celeste crossed around his desk, drew his hands to her waist, and kissed him.

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===>While he is making out with his co-worker and the wife is at home with two sick children:<===

I’m dying,” I told Kelly into the phone.
“I’ll come over,” my sister said immediately. “Abby and I will distract the kids so you can get a break.”
“No,” I said. “We’re on quarantine. Stomach bug. I don’t want Abby to get sick.”
“Oh no!” Kel said. “The kids picked up something from school?”
“Yup,” I said. “And then me.”

-----------------------

“We were all sick.”
His dark brows pulled down. “You were? Why didn’t you call me?”
“I texted you three times.”
“You did? I didn’t get them.”

“Maybe don’t put your wife on Do Not Disturb?”
“Oh, I didn’t realize—”

----------------

Rob and I hadn’t had a date night since—
I couldn’t remember.

----------------------

“I need to tell you something. I have really awesome news—”
A voice intruded on their conversation. “Sorry. You’ll have to tell me later,” Rob said. “I need to go.”
“But—”
“I’m at work, Miss.”

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===>He thinks of her as his girlfriend.<===

Rob hung up the phone and glanced over at Celeste as he slipped back into the car. “Good?” he asked.
She clucked her tongue. “Wife calling when you’re at work. So cliché.”
No, he thought. What was cliché was his wife calling when he was with his girlfriend.

----------------------------
==>He compares the two always and Celeste always wins.<===

She tapped a finger—complete with bright-red polish—to her lips. Melissa would never wear something so flashy. His wife wasn’t about upkeep. She liked things simple and underdone.
Skirts with flowers. Lacy shirts. Jeans and flats mixed with the occasional pair of sweats.
No heels. Nothing ostentatious.
Not like Celeste.
Even in the department-required button-down and slacks, she oozed sex.

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Celeste squealed then leaned up and smacked a kiss on his cheek. “You’re the best, Robbie!”

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He was more focused on the smear of red lipstick on his collar.

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It was a local number, but one I didn’t recognize.
“Hello?”
I could barely hear anything—it was all static and wind and voices.
“Hello?” I said again.
“I can’t tell my wife . . .”
My heart twisted at the sound of Rob’s voice.
“I’ve got two kids. This is about them . . .”
Knees trembling, I leaned back against the counter when the call suddenly went crystal clear, wind and static gone. Rob’s voice came through with perfect clarity.
“No. She’s nothing.”

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==>He has the courage to blame her for the dog being injured, while he does not even show up at home to help care for his children or know what's going on.<===

“It’s not Tammy’s fault Rocco was injured.”
“Fine,” he snapped and thrust a hand through his hair. “It was your fault.”

------------------------

I heard Rob’s car start up.
And drive away.

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“What’s between you and the girl on your phone?” I hissed and shoved at his chest, knocking him back a step. “What’s with you and the lipstick on your collar? What’s with you and not coming home last night?”
I yelled the last at the top of my lungs.

-----------------------
==>He admitted it!<===

Rob shook his head. “It’s not work.”
Those pretty little bubbles of positivity disintegrated. A giant boulder dropped straight onto my gut.
I was going to be sick.
“It’s not work?” I repeated dumbly.

-----------------------

“You’re good enough, Miss. Trust that.”
I paused, letting the words wash over me, holding them close.
“If that’s it, then I need to go.”
I pursed my lips together. Throwing me a tiny bone, then right back to normal.
At least I knew where I stood.
“Thanks for the pep talk. It was—” I shook my head. ”You did your duty. I won’t bug you again.”
“Melis—”
Pressing that red circle felt good.

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==>He gets turned on and with dick hard by the other woman.<==

“Hey,” a feminine voice said two days later. The greeting was accompanied by red nails scratching lightly down his spine.
Rob shivered, slung an arm around Celeste’s waist to tug her tightly against him. She slid closer still, and plunked her ass into his lap. He shifted, adjusting those hourglass curves sideways over his legs.
“Is that a banana in your pocket . . .” she began, lips curved up and one perfectly shaped eyebrow raised.
“No,” he muttered, jutting his chin up and flicking his eyes over her shoulder when she glanced back at him.
Her bottom lip slipped out for a moment before she sighed and looked forward.

----------------

Maybe he’d been working too long of hours for too many years. Maybe he’d put other people before his family. Maybe he’d pushed everyone away.

----------------------

He used to think that ass was gorgeous, but now it just seemed like she was trying too hard.

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“Dad is never home,” Max grumbled.

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“Then I had to drop out of college to work and pay to put Rob through the academy.” My hands were fists, and I smacked one against my thigh. “I did it because I loved him, because I wanted the chance for him to do what he loved. So, after everything we’ve been through, how could he begrudge me that?”

-----------------------

Justin snagged Abby from Kel’s arms. “We’re here for you, Melissa. We’re family, and that means we have your back, Rob be damned.”

-----------------------

“Well, I don’t think patrolling involves calling my husband baby, do you?”
“No,” Kel said. “It doesn’t.”

-----------------

Rob stumbled into the chief’s office a little after midnight, bleary-eyed and unshaven. It had been five days since he’d been home.

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==>WTF! Does it mean he does not care if it was the wife who was hurt?<==

Thank God it wasn’t the kids, but Melissa.

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He cleared his throat, eyes drifting down my body in a way that I might have thought was desire, if he wasn’t seemingly interested in a woman like Celeste. A woman who was supposedly all curves and sex appeal and red lipstick and—

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==>He got emotionally involved with the other woman!<===

“Celeste.” Rob’s pleading voice raised enough for me to hear it clearly. “Please don’t do this.”
Pain knifed through me.
And dammit I was tired of this man hurting me. I was on a perpetual merry-go-round of pain and really freaking sick of it.
“Celeste— Stop. Listen. You mean too much to me to—”
Fuck. This. Shit.
I threw the covers back and stood.

-------------------

“No. A really shitty thing to do was to fuck your coworker and then disappear from our lives. To throw me and our kids away like we didn’t fucking matter. That was the shitty thing to do.”

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===> WARNING! PLOT TWIST... UNBELIEVABLE! I DO NOT BELIEVE IN THIS SHIT!<===

“Celeste fucked with my phone,” Rob growled. “She put you on the blocked caller’s list and then changed your contact information. Look.”

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“Only that it’s obvious to everyone in this town that you’ve mixed duty with a slice of on-the-job-pleasure and that Celeste was your favorite version of it.”
“That’s bullshit.”
I stopped and glared at him. “Oh, so you haven’t kissed her? Had your hands on her and her hands on you? You haven’t touched or fantasized or fucked her?”

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==>AND THE INITIAL SCENE WITH THE TWO KISSING AND MAKING OUT IN THE OFFICE? WITH NO ONE TO OBSERVE! THIS WAS NOTHING WITH THE CASE THAT THEY WERE WORKING.<==

“I haven’t slept with her,” he muttered. “And any touching or kissing was strictly for the case.”
“That according to you? How does she feel about it?” He froze and so did my heart. “Yeah,” I murmured. “That’s what I thought.”
“Celeste can be a little persistent, but she knew I was married.
That everything had to be on the level. We only pretended to be a couple when it was necessary to further the case.”

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“I don’t understand why you’re still here.” I spread my legs and pointed between them. “Are you that desperate for another lay? Have another itch for me to scratch since Celeste isn’t here?”
“Miss. I haven’t—”
“Fuck off, Rob. Just fuck the hell off.”

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Except . . . when was the last time that he’d just thought of her as the woman he loved?
Years.

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This was Rob. This was me. This was us.

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==>Where's the grovel? Is that all? It's too little!<===

“Miss, I’m sorry.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry too.”

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==>He rushed to assist Celeste when she called him. He cares about her.<==

But . . . Celeste was still in.
And she’d just texted begging for his help.
“Rob,” Miss said, and he turned back to his wife. The beautiful woman he’d just finally started rebuilding bridges with, their peace tenuous at best.
“You have to go,” she said.
His knees wobbled. Actually felt like Jell-O until he got his shit together and manned up.
“Miss, it’s not—”

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