Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 160202085X, Paperback)
When he was taken hostage by a strange man Michael never expected he’d lose his heart… Michael Vernon is a rich, spoiled brat with a string of meaningless lovers and an entourage of superficial friends. With no direction in life, he wastes his days spending his father’s money and drowning himself in liquor…until he crashes into a man even more desperate than himself, Jarrod Hunter. Jarrod Hunter grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. Out of work, about to be evicted, and unable to afford his next meal, Jarrod thought he’d reached the end of his rope and was determined to take his life. Then fate intervened delivering him Michael Vernon. Why not take him home, tie him up, and hold him hostage to get the money he needs? Two men from two different worlds…one dangerous game. Trapped together in close quarters, Jarrod and Michael find themselves sharing their deepest thoughts and fighting an undeniable attraction for each other. As the hours tick by, the captor becomes captivated by his victim and the victim begins to bond with his abductor. This wake-up call might prove to be just what Michael needs to set himself free. To Have and to Hostage…sometimes you have to hit bottom before realizing that what you need is standing right in front of you.
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:56 -0400)
Wikipedia in English
Jarrod is a nice guy. 22 years old from a too poor family to allow him to go to college, he has left home to arrive in Los Angeles with the hope of a better future. But even if he is a very handsome man, he is like many others and in the end he is nothing special. So now Jarrod is at the end of the rope, without money and starving. And he is alone: he looks around his empty apartment and knows that he has no one in the world who cares for him. He has only two chance: hustling, a thing he can't consider, or suicide, what he chooses to do. So he shoplifts a little gun from a pawnshop and turns his steps towards home... and he is almost run over from a drunken Michael.
Obviously Michael is not the type of man to excuse himself or to ask if Jarrod is all right, instead he yells to Jarrod, and Jarrod snaps out of his suicidal stupor and aims the gun towards Michael: he brings a drunken Michael in his two rooms apartment and ties him up to the kitchen's chair. Now Jarrod is no more alone, now he has Michael.
Among naivee attempts to ask a ransom for Michael, Jarrod begins to see him in a different way than an hostage: he begins to see him like a friend, something he needs so much, and like a lover. And Michael begins to understand that he has no one around him who cares really for him and in the claustrophobic apartment he begins to feel that the only one who cares for him is Jarrod. But it's not so simple: in a situation that is almost a push psicological therapy, Michael continues to run in his mind all the reasons why he is alone, but he never admits that he has some guilty in it, everyone is to blame but him. And everytime Jarrod reaches a hand to "pet" him or to feed him (not only food but also love), he finishes with a bitten hand...
I'm addicted. I always know, even before starting a book, that I will like an Hauser's book and I will love her faulty characters...