Not Just For Tonight

“Leave it to the imaginative O’Neal to sweep readers off to exotic Buenos Aries at the turn of the century as Sierra Winston arrives in the city intent upon getting help from British sex therapist “Dr. Yes,” Dr. Alistair Lange. Instead of what she expects, Sierra is thrust into the middle of a dangerous political intrigue and has to trust a sexy rogue who knows all about desire.

During the lazy days of summer, allow yourself the guilty pleasure of indulging in these delicious stories of bad boys and willing women.”

— Kathe Robin, Romantic Times

South America had never (yet) held the lure for me that Europe did. I found no romance in the overweening oligarchy, in greedy civil wars, in Nazis escaping justice in the sun. But I did love the stage production of EVITA and jumped at the chance to walk in Eva Peron’s footsteps in Buenos Aires.

Imagine my surprise when we checked into the 1908 Plaza Hotel and I found all around me a grand European city of grace, beauty and charm. The Teatro Colon was an opera house to rival any in Paris. Ralph Lauren’s store, inside a once privately-owned mansion, nearly made us weep at the serene resplendence of its darkly paneled interior. I began to see in my mind the harmonious world of 1910, before the Titanic and two world wars had decimated it. I heard the clip-clop of horses’ hooves on cobbled streets, the honk of early automobiles, the swish of ladies’ skirts on the Calle Florida. And everywhere, emanating from this city of ostentatious sophistication, I could feel the relentless pulse of the tango like a heartbeat of sensuality.

I learned that Buenos Aires has more psychiatrists than any place on earth, that people come from all over the world to see them, and had since the days of Freud. So I thought what fun it would be to have a spirited but frustrated heroine seek out the help of a radical sex therapist—to tell him all her secrets—then find that she’d confessed to the wrong man. And what sort of therapy might this devilishly handsome sham of a therapist come up with for her, anyway?

Not Just For Tonight

A Kensington Brava Anthology