The Guarded Line

He was hired to keep her alive. He never planned on needing her to survive.

Nora Vance built her company from nothing, and she is not about to let a stranger with a rifle and a security clearance tell her how to live in it. But when her third assistant in two months quits after finding a dead bird nailed to her office door, she doesn't have a choice anymore. Someone has been watching her for months. Someone who knows her schedule, her habits, the code to her building. And now they've stopped watching and started closing in.

Enter Caleb Reyes — ex-Force Recon, ex-everything he used to be before the mission that took half his unit and all of his sleep. He doesn't do corporate protection details. He doesn't do soft targets who think danger is a scheduling inconvenience. But he owes his old CO a favor, and the favor has a name, a face, and a habit of looking at him like he's the safest room in a burning building.

Caleb knows the smart move is distance. Professional. Clinical. Four walls between them at all times. But Nora doesn't do distance, and the safehouse only has one bed, and every time the threat closes in, so does he — until "keeping her safe" and "keeping her" stop being two different jobs.

As the stalker's game escalates from warnings to violence, Caleb and Nora are forced to confront a truth neither of them wants: the only way to end this is to stop running and let him finish what he started. And Caleb has already decided that whoever comes for Nora will have to go through him first — and he won't be gentle about it.

Tropes: Bodyguard Romance | Forced Proximity | One Bed | Possessive Hero | Military Hero | Slow-Burn to High Heat