Leo's Daughters — Sydney Smith

What would you do if your father offered you in marriage to a man you'd only just met?

This is the outrageous problem facing Gloria and Cluny, the daughters of Leo del Marco, a grocery store tycoon. The year is 1969.

Leo doesn't have a son to inherit the business, and after a recent battle with cancer, he urgently needs to find a suitable heir. A traditional man with unyielding views on gender roles, he doesn't believe a woman can lead a large and thriving business. But he thinks Christian Frederickson, a rising star in his accounts department, can do the job. There's only one stipulation �" Leo demands that Christian marry into his family.

Christian is ambitious, handsome, and ruthlessly determined to grasp the money and power. He accepts Leo's stipulation even before he meets the old man's family.

Leo has three attractive daughters:

Gloria is dutiful and obedient, putting her father first in all things. After the death of her mother 16 years ago, she raised her younger sisters and continues to run the household. At 31, a shy virgin, she has never been tempted to put any man ahead of her father �" until she meets Nathaniel Katzenberger, a gifted young mathematician.

Sofia is stalled at an early stage in her development, possessing a spectacularly shapely body and a sweet, though stubborn disposition. Leo has decreed that she will never marry and has told Christian, “Any hanky-panky there, young man, and you're out!”

Cluny is Leo's youngest daughter, dazzlingly sexy, mutinous, her father's favorite, and a warrior queen.

The night he brings Christian home to meet his daughters, Leo publicly offers him the choice of Gloria and Cluny. Christian sets out to win each daughter over. Which one is the pot of gold? Cluny does all she can to stop the marriage scheme. She knows her father expects Christian to choose Gloria. As he tells her during one of their arguments, “No sane man would marry you!” Cluny also knows Gloria's weakness: that her sister will obey her father because she has never learned to stand up to him. Cluny will do anything to protect her heart-wrenchingly vulnerable sister. But as the adversaries fight for dominance, Cluny comes to fear that the unscrupulous Christian will find out the secret she's been hiding from her father and use it to blackmail her. 

More than a retro romance, this is a family drama about an autocratic father's ruthlessness, and ambition's dangerous influence.