Rourke

NORA

I built Cascade Analytics out of nothing — a forensic accounting firm sharp enough to catch what banks miss and what criminals bury. I found the fraud. I didn't ask to become the target. Now there's a dead colleague, a folder of financial records someone will kill to bury, and a man standing in my foyer telling me I don't leave the house without him.

I don't share my house. I don't share control. And I definitely don't share the truth about how close I actually am to unraveling — not with the security detail assigned to keep me breathing long enough to testify.

ROURKE

Vantage Protective doesn't send me on soft details. They send me when the threat is real and the client won't admit how real. Nora Vance is the second kind of dangerous — not because she can't handle a gun, but because she won't stop working the case that's trying to kill her. My job is simple: get her to the hearing alive. Don't get involved. Don't let the woman who flinches at being protected get anywhere near the parts of me I keep locked down tighter than any safehouse.

Living under her roof was supposed to make the job easier. Instead, every closed door, every 2 a.m. light under her office, every moment she almost tells me the truth and stops herself — it's rewriting rules I built my whole career on.

The people hunting her don't make mistakes, and they're running out of patience. Somewhere between the threats closing in and the nights we can't pretend nothing's happening between us, I stop calling this a job. And that's exactly when it gets dangerous — for both of us.

She trusts me with her life. She won't trust me with her fear. And the closer we get to the truth behind the money, the clearer it becomes: someone on the inside wants her silenced before she ever reaches the stand.

Tropes: Billionaire CEO Bodyguard Romance, Bodyguard Romance, Romantic Suspense, Forced Proximity, One Safehouse, CEO Heroine, Ex-Military Hero, Slow Burn to High Heat, He Falls First, Shared POV.