Missing Scene In Death

From Naked In Death:

[Eve:] "It's a lot of house for one guy."

[Roarke:] "Do you think so? I'm more of the opinion that your apartment is small for one woman." When she stopped dead at the top of the stairs, he grinned. "Eve, you know I own the building. You'd have checked after I sent my little token."

"You ought to have someone out to look at the plumbing," she told him. "I can't keep the water hot in the shower for more than ten minutes."

"I'll make a note of it."

What the book really needs is a scene where, the next time Eve takes a shower at home, she has epic hot water and water pressure. We know, based on the characterization that develops as the series go on, that Roarke would in fact actually have someone fix the plumbing, even if he'd heard of the problem from someone less important to him. I think showing this so early on would make him a much more sympathetic character, and would make it far more believable that Eve falls in love with him.

Nearly everything Roarke did in his early courtship of Eve came across as arrogant and pushy. Every favour or kindness he did for her came in a context where he forced his way into her space in a way that would trigger alarm bells in anyone who read Gift of Fear. He is made more nuanced, more likable, less assholic as the series goes on and we learn more about him and actually spend some time in his head, but at the point of the scene above I hadn't seen any of this and found it completely unrealistic in a trashy romance novel way that Eve found anything appealing about him. I continued reading the series because I enjoy spending time in the universe, find Eve inspiring (at this point despite the fact that she fell for Roarke), and already had the second book on my library holds list, but I don't think I would have added it to my holds list if it hadn't already been there.

But a simple half-sentence mention that there's now plenty of hot water would show Roarke being kind to Eve (and to everyone else in the building) in a way that does not aggressively push forward his own agenda, thereby leading the reader to a much more sympathetic interpretation of the character. Roarke hasn't yet at this point won over either the reader or Eve, so it's better to show us why he will rather than assuming it's inevitable.