Harte's Deception, Third in the Pet Shelter Series

Christie's got trouble! When Fran Marshall's math-whiz daughter returns to university for her sophomore year, she knows there will be serious problems. She'd got a whiff of it the semester before, and now she's on the trail of a sophisticated, brutal conspiracy by a group of legacy athletes. What Christina doesn't count on, as she pursues data and makes spread sheets, is that someone blabs. Fran, concerned that Christie is incommunicado, schemes to visit her only child, to no avail. Trapped by the increase in her marshmallow business, and challenged to find an acceptable employee, Fran works long, anxious hours wondering what her darling daughter is up to. When Fran does find an employee, a childhood friend of Christie's, her throwback landlord takes exception to the woman's gender orientation. Django wonders if his marriage proposal to Fran, made the night of the shelter's big fundraiser and accepted instantaneously, will ever come to fruition. Fran's dodgy about the date, about the ceremony, about even discussing the event. Their talk is of neutral subjects, even Christie's improbable liaison with Clive Campbell, the rugged security chief twice her age, is off limits. And Fran won't consider moving in with him, even though her house has just sold. Is their romance on the rocks and she just hasn't told him? When disaster strikes, the fragile family Django hopes they are building threatens to crash. The urgency of the moment takes Django and Fran on a wild, unpredictable ride into unknown territory to keep Christie safe. When former Special Forces officer Clive Campbell gets into the equation, Django Harte must decide how much violence and deception he is willing to accept. And how he can bring himself to deceive the woman he loves and the girl he hopes to save.