Kailie lives at home with her high society parents who try to run every aspect of her life. Especially her personal life. Her relationship with her last boyfriend, though quite serious, ended as her parents thought he was not good enough for her and bought Doug off. Kailie still wears Doug's locket around her neck and wonders about how it would have worked out for them if only her parents weren't so domineering. Both her parents treat her like a child, although her father has entrusted his whole company to Kailie to run, at least as a way to keep her under his thumb.

Now after the attack, the locket is missing and Kailie's parents are threatening to take away the business. And worse - Kailie is receiving strange, threatening, and terrifying phone calls from an unknown person. But she is finding Officer Adam McQuire a haven in the storm and drawing on his strength to break away from her parents.

The masculine Adam McQuire has pain and heartache of his own. Having a failed marriage and the loss of a child has left him nonetheless open to finding love. When he pulls Kailie over he is irresistibly drawn to the raven-haired beauty. Now they both just have to overcome Kailie's controlling parents and a madman determined to take Kailie away for eternity.

I had problems with this book from the beginning. First after being pulled over Kailie fires off some quip about 'looking in her closet and not finding anything to wear.' This retort to the officer's questioning would have been well and fine if this was a light-hearted romance but it is revealed the reason Kailie was in this predicament was quite serious. She was attacked at knifepoint, made to strip, tied up and the house where she was being held set on fire. She escaped and stole the nearest car, thus speeding through a residential area and getting pulled over by Officer McQuire. She then gives the officer the once over and admires his physique thoroughly.

Now at the police station, she is talking to the officer and exchanging barbs, until her attack is finally revealed. Then it is decided she is too upset to give her statement and it will wait till the next morning. (Statements concerning so serious a crime have to be taken as soon as possible to capture the details while they are fresh and not suppressed by the victim's mind's defense mechanism.)

Not only this but Kailie wasn't going to report her attack as she was worried what her high society parents would think and go through. This might have been well and good if Kailie was a young teen but Kailie is nearly thirty. And her parents were the epitome of cruelty and over-bearing snobs. Her father's capitulation at the end just didn't ring true. The flow of the story was hard to get into, as it seemed the author wasn't sure of the dynamics of romance/suspense versus humor/personal crisis. I did enjoy the secondary characters such as Adam's fellow officer Janine and her down-to-earth attitude. She came across as a real person and good friend to Adam.

Overall rating:
Sensuality rating: Mildly sensual

Reviewer: Torie West
October 18, 2003