Title: Three Little Mistakes
Author: NIkki Sloane
Genre: Fiction, Romance
What It's About: Joseph is at his club, Dune, because he wants to talk to his club manager. He watches as two men get into a fight and one of them hits a girl who got between them by accident. He has her brought up to his office and asks her if she wants to file a police report, but she says no. She also gives him a fake ID, so he confiscates it and she calls herself Em. He offers to take her home because he is interested by her, and she agrees to it after letting her friends know about this. Then, they slip out the back, and Joseph drives her home in his Porsche that Em calls an overpriced car. They were getting a little frisky, so Joseph pulled into a parking garage so that they could have sex, but Em turned it down. He drives her home to the apartment a block over from her own apartment, unknowingly, because Em does not want him to know who she is.
Joseph sees her again at Dune, when the club is less busy and once again they get close to having sex, but Em hesitates and Joseph tells her that he has no interest in doing this hot and cold stuff, so he tells her goodbye. Em cannot get over self and the way that she has been raised in her catholic family, but she wants to break the rules. She feels that Joseph is that person who will help her make that happen. So she finds out what other businesses he owns and she gets employed as a waitress at one of his restaurants. The day that Joseph comes in to check on the restaurant, she brings him his order and tells him that she wants to go through with him. He tells her to strip and lay on his table, which shocks her but she does follow his instructions. Joseph makes her come.
They begin by going on a date and she reveals that her real name is Noemi Russo--Joseph recognizes her as the daughter of Mr. Red, one of the blindfold club's patron who goes there to cheat on his wife. He's so upset because he really likes Noemi a lot, so he goes back to the restroom to figure out how to get out of this situation. He returns and when Noemi questions him, he tells her that he got a bit worried because Katzenberg is one of his clients, and there is no love lost between the Katzenbergs and the Russos, due to a deal gone bad a few years prior. They go home, and end up having sex where Jospeh introduces her to the BDSM scene by playing the part of bossing her around.
As Noemi is in school, and Joseph has his businesses, it is hard for them to see each other but they make an effort to do so. Thoughout this time several things happen. Joseph is called back to the club while Payton is running it because Mr. Red had seen her and was feeling betrayed. Joseph talks to him and tells him that Payton no longer works the room, but the monitors and the office when he needs a break and he steers Mr. Red back to Claudia because Mr. Red had been in love with Payton, but she's not interested in him that way.
Joseph also reveals to Noemi one night as they are about to have sex in their scene that he had cancer, which is why his tattoo says Nothing Lasts Forever-and she cannot get pregnant if they do not use condoms because of all the chemotherapy and drugs that he had to take in order to beat his cancer. So they have unprotected sex.
One day after they've had sex, Noemi's ex-boyfriend walks into her apartment while Joseph is there, and Joseph tells him to leave, and never come back. Joseph gets the apartment key back from the guy and gives it to Noemi, who in turn tells him to keep it. The ex-boyfriend tries to get back with Noemi in order to further his career but she tells him that she's not interested in him.
Joseph and Noemi celebrate him being in remission by getting a show from Payton and Dominic, as well as having in sex alongside the two. Noemi really likes it a lot, and gets to explore different things that she was taught were forbidden.
Joseph invites and takes Noemi to Hawaii for his brother's ceremony as his brother is in the Navy and is getting promoted. They go, though Noemi does not tell her father anything about this, and she meets Joseph's family. After the ceremony is done, they spend some time with his family and then they go alone to a Yurt-like camp, where they spend a lot of time together. Noemi tells Joseph that she loves him, and the next day, she wakes up to Joseph outside on the phone, a call that he promptly ends. He had not told her that he loves her too, and he did not feel ready to say those words to her until he could tell her about the blindfold club.
Upon their return, Joseph busies himself with the club, and Noemi has classes. One day, she is going to meet him, and the taxi she is in gets into an accident, while Noemi is on the phone with Joseph. He really doesn't like the yelp that she had made, and rushes to her. At first, Noemi doesn't want to get into the car with him, claiming that she is fine, but Joseph orders her to do so and takes her to his home, where she promptly locks herself in his bathroom under the guise of taking a shower. When he doesn't hear the water running, and Noemi does not answer him, Joseph breaks down the door and sees one of Noemi's pupils is larger than the other, and she is aggressive towards him, which is unlike her. He calls. 911 and emergency services come to take her to the hospital after evaluating her and listening to his explanation of the situation as well as the accident. He calls Mr. Russo's office and tells his secretary that his daughter is at the hospital. Then he stays waiting for Naomi and when she does wake up he tells her what had happened, and the way he feels about her. She is grateful to him that he insisted she come home with him after the accident and tells him she has no recollection of what happened after the accident.
Mr. Russo comes in, saying that he had his plane turned around when he heard that Noemi was in the hospital. He reveals the truth about the blindfold club to his daughter when he realizes that Joseph is her boyfriend. Joseph does not have much of a chance to explain himself before Noemi kicks him out, and Mr. Russo follows through with keeping him out.
Joseph tries to reach Noemi to talk to her but she does not want to speak with him. One night, he discovers a swollen lymph node and has a small panic attack that his cancer is back, but he does not want to face that reality. Noemi is at home and she feels distraught over Joseph because she loved him. Payton comes over to Noemi's place and tells her that Joseph put the plan in motion to sell the club while they were in Hawaii so that he could be with Noemi without bringing any embarrassment to her. She reveals that he was planning on telling her about the club once it was all done and sold. Payton also reveals that she was an employee of the club for a while, and that she had a client called Mr. Red because he would not let her go as he was in love with him, but she had no interest in him. Payton asks Noemi what Red is in Italian, and Noemi realizes that her father has been a member of the club. She agrees with Payton that it does not make her love her father any less. Payton then tells her that Joseph has a medical scare and is refusing to go to the doctor to get check out, so she begs Noemi to get through to him.
The two ladies go to Joseph's apartment and after Payton says her piece, she leaves Joseph and Noemi to talk. Joseph reveals that Payton wore him down so badly that he went to the doctor the day prior and found out that he has mono, not cancer. They make up and he tells her that he loves her.
A few months later, Noemi and Joseph meet for dinner with Noemi's father--Tony Russo--and his girlfriend, Claudia, who used to work at the blindfold club but then fell back in love with Tony.
My Thoughts: I don't love Joseph as much as I loved Logan and to an extent, Dominic, because of how he treated Payton in the last book. I'm also irked with how many romance stories with ties to the illicit world have the men giving up those illicit activities so that they could be with the women they love-- from one side, that's very noble of them, but I wish that there was a story where the men stayed in the illicit activity. Specifically, with Joseph, I feel like he quickly looked for a way out of owning the Blindfold Club--and from one perspective I understand that it's because Noemi and her father are too high profile so this would be a huge blow to their reputation--but I just wanted to see how they would navigate that conflict together or separately. It almost felt as he rolled over and gave up on a good source of his income--like a puppy. Overall, not my favorite story in the series thus far, though I'm looking forward to reading more of the books from the series as they're all pretty much standalone books, with some overlap (you can read them at any point in the series without reading the previous one, though there are some small overlaps here and there where the characters from the other book show up in the current one).
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