There wasn’t a lot that surprised me. My years in the Navy taught me a lot, my years hunting human traffickers taught me the rest. Meeting a beautiful woman in a bar and spending the night with her should’ve been a blip on my radar. Instead, I spent years trying to forget her. In the middle of a rescue operation, fate dropped her back into my life, but there was a twist—she wasn’t alone.

Loner Boone Hendrix left the military with ghosts that haunt him. He lives with his dog Atlas on a farm in Vermont. Alone. Just the way he likes it. Until he rescues a half-drowned, beautiful brunette from his river. Gemma Newhouse is the daughter of the richest man in America, and from the abrasions on her wrists and her drugged state, she’s on the run from someone dangerous. She’s nothing like Boone expected—sweet, smart, and likes baking—and she ignites a fierce need inside him.

When the unthinkable befalls Alaska during a trip to Russia, it’s Drake’s turn to drop everything and race to her aid. Safely back at The Refuge, he just as quickly realizes what he’s failed to see for two decades—his oldest, dearest friend is the love of his life. A revelation that may be too little, too late. Because Drake’s brought the enemy right to their door.

Brady Hewitt was all too familiar with the horrors of war. They clung to him, or maybe he clung to them, using the nightmares as an excuse to keep others at bay—especially his boss’ daughter, Hadley Walker. Beautiful, sexy, ambitious, and forbidden. Not just because the former Special Forces soldier respected her father and liked his job, she was too good for him—all sunshine and smiles while he was darkness and filth.

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.

Riggs “Chappy” Chapman didn’t expect to be disrupted at his remote cabin in the woods. But when a stray dog arrives on his porch, he winds up finding a stray woman, too, trudging through the snowstorm in search of shelter. His military days may be behind him, but Chappy is hardwired to protect her from the storm and whatever it is she’s running from.

Tatiana Jones is no stranger to the battlefield. One look at her scarred flesh tells the tales of her time in captivity. But it’s not only her skin that bears the marks of her failures; doubt and a healthy dose of cynicism now cloud her vision. She has also mastered the fine art of deception. In her line of work it is a necessity.  

CEO Lainie Madden has her hands full. In charge of a growing tech company, her work and her employees are her life. She’s sworn off love, because the sad reality is that she stinks at choosing men who aren’t self-absorbed cheaters. But when she starts receiving disturbing death threats and her company’s website gets hit with relentless cyber-attacks, she’s in over her head.

David Xavier - and all those he loved or counted as friends - would forever be mouth-watering targets to men of evil intent. His wealth could settle a small country's foreign debt. Because of this, from the moment of his birth, his mother obscured his identity. Reborn as the man named Gabriel, however, he walked free into a world where the innocents and the weak cried out for a defender, for the hand of justice, for a guardian angel.

Sometimes you need to crash a funeral to experience happiness. At least Kissimmee Singh, aerial artist for Singh Circus, the most sought-after traveling circus of all time, keeps telling herself that’s why she crashes funerals. In reality, she’s lost and confused. Sometimes it’s nice to experience other people’s grief and be reminded that life isn’t as bad as it could be.