'From the First' Moorehouse Legacy #3 by Jessica BIRD (J.R. Ward)

From the BLURB:

All Alex could see was her long, thick, copper-colored hair. Pale smooth skin. Lips that were naturally tinted pink. Eyes that were green like sea grass.

He stopped himself. His best friend Reese might be dead. But in Alex's mind, Cassandra was still very much the man's wife.

Cassandra. The forbidden woman Alex had yearned for from the first moment he'd laid eyes on her six years ago. The woman who'd been married to his best friend--the friend he'd lost to the sea. The woman who was rebuilding his family's bed-and-breakfast...and who just might, in the process, be rebuilding his anguished heart.

This third installment of Jessica Bird’s ‘Moorehouse Legacy’ series had the biggest ‘will they or won’t they’ storyline thus far. In book #1 ‘Beauty and the Black Sheep’, eldest Moorehouse Alex was in a sailing accident that killed his best friend, Reese, and left his wife, Cassandra, a widow. Alex’s survivor’s guilt is made worse by the fact that for the six years Reese and Cassandra were married, Alex had a rip-roaring crush on her that slowly evolved into unrequited love.
Cassandra was wholly unaware of Alex’s romantic struggles – she interpreted his restraint as feelings of hatred, and has never understood why Reese’s best friend thought she was such an inconvenient third wheel.

Now, months after Reese’s death, Cassandra is contracted to do a fixer-upper on the Moorehouse Mansion – putting her back in Alex’s life… only this time there’s nothing but his guilt standing in the way of romance.

Alex and Cassandra are hot. Alex’s unrequited love for his best friend’s wife adds a real element of spice to their relationship – even more so since Reese is dead, Alex is feeling the sting of two-sided guilt. It makes for some hot pent-up frustration on Alex’s part.

He rolled over and punched his pillow. The sheets shifting against his arousal made his jaw clench, and when he arched his back to try and release some tension, the heat rose even further. He pictured her lying beneath his naked body, her red hair in a wild tumble over his pillow, her skin so soft against his. He imagined being joined with her, going deep and sliding free only to plunge in again. He felt her grabbing on to his back as he drove his hips, heard his name on her lips as she climaxed.
Afterward, he saw himself holding her and watching her fall asleep.

My one complaint is the fact that early on in ‘From the First’ we learn that Reese had cheated on Cassandra throughout their six years of marriage. Furthermore, Cassandra was aware of his adultery but never confronted him about it. We discover that while she and Reese were great friends, Cassandra never felt passion in their marriage, and wasn’t really in love or satisfied with Reese. I think this is a bit of a cop-out; and it would have raised the stakes between Alex and Cass if she had been devoted to and thoroughly in love with Reese.

I’m still on a winning streak with Jessica Bird’s series. Not one of the ‘Moorehouse Legacy’ books has disappointed me yet. I really can’t recommend these books enough – they have all the romance elements we’ve come to expect from a J.R. Ward book, minus heavy action plot.

4/5