When the founders of the Guardian Angel Protection Service realize the success of their business requires the assistance of an organizational pro, they hire one of the first applicants for the job. Lainey Jackson gets straight to work, while managing to avoid personal interactions with any of the powerful men around her. She spends her days helping GAPs get organized and her evenings cooking, and dreaming of the day she can run her own restaurant.
Owen Taylor believed he’d lost everything when he witnessed the violent death of his life-long friend and fellow Marine in Iraq. Determined to single-handedly extract revenge, he signed on for two more tours, only to lose his leg in night raid. As he struggles with his urge to lash out at the hand fate has dealt him, he takes an I.T. job with GAPs in Virginia.
After admiring the extremely hot, but mostly silent new employee for several weeks, Lainey discovers a connection with Owen that shocks and pleases them both. By the time he can admit his feelings for her, he and his fellow GAPs agents are forced to take action when the dangerous secret she’s been running from catches up with her
© Liz Crowe 2016
Lainey frowned and refastened her hair back in a messy ponytail, not willing to recall that bit of the day. She’d met five men, a couple of them in the workout room, and two sitting in Jon’s office poring over files. But one, in particular, had stuck in her head. He’d been in a spare, small office—more like a closet but with less character—in front of a wall covered with different computer monitors set up on a wobbly, cheap-looking table. Like the kind you’d rent for a party and cover with a nice tablecloth.
He’d barely grunted out an acknowledgment of her presence and hadn’t turned to look at her at all—which was too bad because he was quite the specimen. He was wearing a T-shirt and shorts, his dark tanned and tatted biceps covered in a sheen of sweat. She remained in the doorway while Jon and Zane consulted with him about some case or another, taking the opportunity to study his leg—or what passed for it now.
He had one of those blade-style prosthetics from right below his left knee. It was pretty amazing, and she wished it were polite to ask if she could see it closer. By the time she snapped back to herself, she realized the room had gone silent. She blinked and backed away from the man, still sitting at the rickety table, now staring holes into her with the biggest, most expressive pair of blue eyes she’d ever seen.
“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” he’d said.
“This is Owen,” Jon had said then. “You’ll be replacing him as the official FNG.”
She smiled at Owen, figuring he’d do what most men did and freeze like a deer in the headlights for a few seconds. Instead, he frowned at her and turned back to his screens.
“Owen is our IT expert,” Zane had said, filling the awkward silence that followed. “You know computer geeks. No accounting for them, sociability-wise.” He turned to Lainey and guided her down the hall toward a small conference room. Her ears were hot and her mind buzzing with the memory of him—the elaborate, interwoven vines inked on what she could see of his muscular arms were seared in her mind.
It had been a damn long time since Lainey had been physically attracted to a man. The last time it happened, it was an unmitigated disaster, leading her to her current state of broke and always looking over her shoulder. She set her jaw and forced Owen’s tattoos, metal leg, and amazing eyes right out of her brain.
Amazon best-selling author, mom of three, Realtor, beer blogger, brewery marketing expert, and soccer fan, Liz Crowe is a Kentucky native and graduate of the University of Louisville currently living in Ann Arbor. She has decades of experience in sales and fund raising, plus an eight-year stint as a three-continent, ex-pat trailing spouse.Her early forays into the publishing world led to a groundbreaking fiction subgenre, “Romance Worth the Risk,” which has gained thousands of fans and followers interested less in the “HEA” and more in the “WHA” (“What Happens After?”).With stories set in the not-so-common worlds of breweries, on the soccer pitch, in successful real estate offices and at times in exotic locales like Istanbul, Turkey, her books are unique and told with a fresh voice. The Liz Crowe backlist has something for any reader seeking complex storylines with humor and complete casts of characters that will delight, frustrate and linger in the imagination long after the book is finished.Don’t ever ask her for anything “like a Budweiser” or risk bodily injury.
