I love my trucking route, being able to see the country and get paid for it. But when a freak blizzard strands me in Rock Springs with a good friend and her family, I start to see a different life. The hot cowboy ranch hand doesn’t hurt either.

Kelley Pierce is my person. He has been since the 9th grade. He gets me like no one else does. My quirks. My love of pros/cons lists. My need to have everything under control. He accepts me just as I am, because he is the perfect...friend. My best friend. But Kelley is also totally gorgeous. And confident. And tempting.

I’m not looking for a hero, and definitely not a fake relationship with my new boss, nightclub owner Dante Fury—over six feet of dark, hot, and dangerous. But he isn’t taking no for an answer. The plan was to run, live under the radar, survive. My life’s been destroyed by some very bad people and everything I know is gone—career, friends, family. I thought I could hide as a bartender at New Orleans’ hottest new club, Ember.

Kettle had it all. Until he didn't. He lost it all in a moment. One heart stopping, soul shattering moment, and there wasn't a single thing he could do about it. From that day forward, he stayed away from relationships. Then he responded to a possible fire and there she was, rocking his world when he didn't want it to be rocked. Adeline was just a schoolteacher. She lived a boring life. Until she stole something. And it didn't have anything to do with the sexy firefighter's heart. Oh, she stole that, too, even if he didn't want it to be stolen.

I used to fantasize about meeting a masked madman who would love me endlessly and obsessively. He would look after me in a world where no one else did. He would manipulate all the strings that held up my life until I had exactly the one I wanted. And then one night, I met him. Only he wasn't the hero I always imagined he would be. When we left the forest together that night, I thought I'd escaped the villains relatively unscathed, but my true villain was the man whose arms I felt safest in.