Whipped Heroes Piss Me Off

I've read several romance novels in which the heroine leaves the hero once she discovers that she's pregnant (and after she realizes that she's in love with him and they've had the most amazing sex evah). Her excuses for doing so are always incomprehensible to me...something idiotic like "I want my child to have parents who are both equally in love and he doesn't love me" or even "I’ve got a big secret and even though he knocked me up, it doesn't matter, I need to get the fuck out of here, so he doesn't hate me for ruining his life" or some shit like that. It never makes any sense to me. It's always fairly obvious that the hero is in love with her or that they seriously have a chance to make it as a couple.

What makes even less sense is when the hero just forgives and forgets in less than a paragraph. There's never any emotional "I will never forgive you for this" or "you've gone too far" from the hero...she leaves and is about to take HIS kid with her and he never flips out...not even a little bit. Of course, it is a romance novel and I do want a happy ending, so I don't expect him to hate her forever, but I would like to, FOR ONCE, see the heroine sweat a little, realize that she fucked up royally and beg his forgiveness. I mean, don't we always see the hero do this? Really, sometimes the heroine deserves the same uncertainty from the hero. I want to see a hero give his heroine a hard time so badly it hurts!!!

I was hoping for this in Jenna Petersen's SCANDALOUS. The book felt like a broken promise of epic proportions. The book was good, albeit unoriginal. The protagonists had some issues (but who doesn’t). I liked the fact that the heroine didn’t deny her attraction to the hero and allowed herself to enjoy the physical aspect of the relationship from the beginning. Of course though, she HAD to fight her feelings getting too deep (good luck!). I liked the story up until the point when the heroine decided to run away after getting pregnant and learning she was in love with the hero. It upset me because the hero had been through enough garbage in his past; he never knew his father and was looking for a clue to his identity (his mother refused to reveal his father’s identity – big bitch!) all throughout the book. You would she would be less selfish and just talk to the guy, reveal her fears about the marriage and what not, but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO…run away, run like the wind is what she did. At this point, since what she did was pretty fucked up, I thought the hero would lose it and give her hell. I was wrong. He just kissed her, told her he loved her and that is the end of the story. Even a rather tear jerking first meeting between the hero and his real father (yes, he finds him in the end) isn’t enough to remove the bad taste in my mouth caused by the heroine’s actions.

Now, I plead with romance authors. Please write a book in which the hero gives the heroine hell. I’m sick of them turning into pussy whipped wimps at the end of the novel…a little bit of this is all right, but give me a break. Chick runs away with the guy’s kid and he does nothing but beg her to love him and take him back. Are you kidding? Argh! Does someone out there know of any books with knocked up runaway heroines and non-pussy whipped heroes? Please let me know…I’m still looking!