In HEAT WAVE, the second in a trilogy of books by Jill Marie
Landis, Kat Vargas is a private investigator who for many years has
focused only on her career, to the exclusion of her family and any
serious love interests. She's too busy to have a long-term
boyfriend and she likes it this way. When her friend and ex-partner
Jake needs a housesitter for his beachside home near San Luis
Obispo so he can take the family away on a long vacation, Kat is
coerced into taking the job. She had just come off of a very
dangerous situation, ended up in the hospital and now needed time
to recuperate. She leaves her home in Long Beach, California and
drives up the coast to a small beach town called Twilight
Cove.

Kat isn't there very long when a neighbor comes by Jake's house to
see her. Ty Chandler, one of the residents of this small resort
town, has heard about her and asks if he can hire her to do a job.
He has just found out that he has a daughter, born nineteen years
ago to an old girlfriend from high school, but was never told about
the daughter until recently, right before his mother passed away.
He's angry with his mother for hiding this information from him.
She had never liked his girlfriend Amy and wanted to protect him,
but his mother and Amy are now both gone, and it was time to make
up for the time he had lost. He's ready to find his daughter.

With only a few clues to go by, Kat and Ty work side by side,
searching the Internet and making phone calls, following the trail
of the missing girl. While this is strictly business for Kat, she
senses that Ty is growing fond of her, but Kat does her best to
tell him "no." She insists that she does not mix business with
pleasure, but she also remembers what Jake has told her --- that
she needs to relax and let someone new into her life. It was about
time she moved on from her tragic past, a past that she hides from
everyone she has met since leaving her home in Hawaii. Her career
as a private investigator had come about because of what she
endured on Hawaii due to a tragic accident. Only her family and
friends back on the island of Kauai know of her tragic loss and the
pain she kept buried inside her all these years.

Ty and Kat have enough clues to find Ty's daughter, who they
discover is now living in Southern California with a number of
other people her age, all of whom seem to be destitute,
shady-looking and lacking any financial means to make ends meet.
Upon meeting them, Sunny, Ty's daughter, looks upon both of them
with distrust and lets them know that she is not interested in
going back with Ty to Twilight Cove. But Ty hands over his phone
number to her, hoping that she changes her mind.

Sunny does take Ty up on his offer and comes to find him in
Twilight Cove. They get to know each other while she tries to make
a home for herself and her baby, another surprise for Ty. While Ty
is dealing with a new family, Kat is dealing with her own feelings,
not sure whether she is falling in love with Ty or wanting to run
away again. She's also not sure about Sunny, and decides to
investigate Sunny's past to see what kind of trouble she may have
gotten herself into.

HEAT WAVE was a surprise to this reviewer. It was a lot more than a
romance. The story of Ty and his long-lost daughter was a great
story-within-the-story, allowing the reader to get to know Ty's
character much better than simply as a love interest. And Sunny's
account of her life in Southern California was another interesting
side-story that fit in with the rest of the book. Landis does a
good job at creating characters that the reader will relate to,
although this reviewer was not totally sure she liked Kat Vargas at
first. As is the case with any romance, the most important feature
should be the reader's ability to relate to the characters, and
whether the story is believable or not. Based on that, this
reviewer recommends HEAT WAVE to any person looking for an
engrossing romance and a great beach read.