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“You scared her away!” Ellie accused, and Sean realized she was angry.

“I nearly broke my bleedin’ neck,” he protested.

“Couyon!” Her voice rose. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“I barely caught myself,” he insisted. “That monster tree of yours almost took me out!”

“This is my home—you need to leave.”

“But I just got here.”

“You weren’t invited!”

“Which I won’t take personally, even though we’re partners and all.”

“Partners?” The disbelief on her face was almost comical. “We are not partners!”

“Sure we are. You heard Stuart. In tandem. You know what tandem means, don’t you, love?”

She pointed at the door. “Go away, Irishman!”

“McDougal,” he corrected. “But you can call me Sean.”

“Que diriez-vous je vous appelle un idiot!” she snarled, only part of which he understood—idiot translated well enough—and then she closed her eyes and took a deep, ragged breath.

Then another. Then she took a careful step back, as if she’d suddenly found herself standing at some dangerous, unknown precipice.

Dousing the fire, he thought, oddly disappointed.

“I’ve turned my ankle,” he continued, just to poke at her. He limped back a step. “I’ll need to ice it.”

Her eyes opened. Fell to his booted foot.

“Might be fractured,” he added.

“You are a strange and frustrating man,” she said.

“Aye,” he agreed somewhat apologetically and smiled at her.
After Ellie Broussard saves Sean McDougal’s son from drowning, she walks away, unwilling to involve herself with the rakish Irishman and his charming boy. Ellie has suffered a devastating loss, and her world is one of chosen isolation and calculated vengeance. She has only one focus: to find the monster that stole her child and turn his world to ash.

Sean can relate to Ellie’s suffering. Having lost his wife to cancer, his sole focus has become raising his boy, and love…well, love can take a long walk. He’s in Louisiana to locate a cache of stolen art, and even if he’s taken aback—and reluctantly intrigued—by the mysterious and chilly Ellie Broussard, he knows better than to tumble down that rabbit hole.

But when they’re thrown together on assignment to recover the cache, Sean and Ellie have no choice but to put aside their mutual misgivings and work side by side. To share; to trust; to discover they are not as separate as they appear. And as Ellie’s deadly hunt approaches its culmination, they must risk everything they hold dear to stop a murderer who is readying his next strike, and to save an orphaned girl whose only hope lies in their willingness to defy the darkness and step into the light.

A steamy thriller with characters you won’t forget…dark romantic suspense at its best.

"Hardy har har," Wynn retorted. "How did it happen?"

"How did what happen?"

The growl in his voice probably cowed a great many folks. She didn't happen to be one of them. Even if he was big and intense and talked about delivering death like it was the mail. "Your leg."

He didn't respond. Instead, he stood at the sink and stared out into the storm.

"Is it a state secret?" she wanted to know. "A matter of national security? An injury suffered while on a clandestine mission that you can't talk about under penalty of death? Did they make you swear on a Bible?"

"You're a piece of work," he said.

"I know." When he turned to glower at her, she smiled. "It's a gift."

His gaze fell to her mouth, and awareness speared through her, a hot, electric slide that made her cheeks burn.

He was attracted to her, the same way she was attracted to him. And he didn't like it.

Not one bit.

You and me both, bucko...

★★★★★

When a local bank robbery brings newly elected Sheriff Beau Greystone to Wynn Owens' front door, she has only two things to give him: the endless bounty of her caustic wit and a one-finger salute. Wynn has history with the law, none of it good. And the notion that one of her elderly tenants might have something to do with the robbery is just plain crazy.

A former DEA agent, Beau owes his newly minted badge solely to his meddling aunt and his own foolish indifference. Recovering from the murder of his wife-and the debilitating injury caused by the explosion that killed her-Beau has been happily checked out for some time. But the people of Blossom Hills are counting on him to do his job, and bringing a bank robber to justice is a fine place to start...until the killer that's haunted the town for the last decade abruptly returns.


Wynn has a tenant to exonerate; Beau, a killer to catch. Neither is prepared for the compelling but unwelcome current between them, or the unexpected circumstances that will force them to reassess the rules by which they live. But the clock is ticking, and they must decide: adapt and evolve, or surrender to the past and the dark malevolence that has risen within it....