Read an excerpt from Trapped by Rhonda Pollero

Lured into danger, trapped by desire . . .
Chasyn Summers has a target on her back. As the key witness in a murder case, she's risking her life to testify in court--and she needs protection. But when she's assigned a personal bodyguard who's disarmingly tough--and distractingly gorgeous--it's not just her life that's in danger. It's her heart . . .
 
Declan Kavanaugh works strictly by the rules. Never get too close to a client. And never, ever, fall in love. But he's never protected anyone as beautiful, or as intriguing, as Chasyn. Surrendering to passion is a risk they can't afford to take, especially when danger meets desire and Declan realizes Chasyn Summers may be the ultimate trap.

Excerpt

“You know you can take Burrows up on his offer,” Declan said after they pulled out of the parking lot.  “I won’t take it personally.”

“Get locked away in some house in God knows where with the occasional police cruiser driving by?  Besides, when I’m with you I can be active in the investigation.”  And have great, if temporary, sex.

“Good to now you have so much faith in me,” he said as his hand slipped over onto her knee.  Using his fingertips, he bunched up the fabric until he was touching her bare skin.  He began making maddeningly sensual circles with his thumb, inching it up higher and higher.  Chasyn’s breath caught in her throat when reached her thong.  Her body was fully alert and she tensed with need.  

“Don’t” she said on a rush of breath.

“You’re wet.”

She reached down and pushed his hand away from her.  “And you’re driving.”

“I keep telling you I can multitask.”

“Well, maybe I don’t feel like being a distraction,” she told him as she straightened her clothes.

“You really do have a problem with spontaneity, don’t you?”

“I have a problem with how fast all of . . . this is happening.”

“We’re two consulting adults who happen to have some great chemistry.”

“That doesn’t mean we have to act on it,” she countered even though her nerve endings still sizzled from his touch.

Declan placed his hand back on the wheel.  “Sorry if you felt pressured.”

“I didn’t feel pressured,” she assured him.  “I just haven’t had enough time to process this yet.”

He chuckled.  “What’s there to process?

“I need to make a pro-con list to put this all into perspective.”

“Tell you what,” he began easily.  “You make your list and I’ll restrain myself until you’ve beaten this dead horse.”

“That was condescending.”

“It wasn’t meant to be,” he said.  “I’m just saying I’m willing to give you time.”

“How much?”

“However much you need.”

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About the Author

After selling her first romantic suspense in 1993, Rhonda Pollero has penned more than 30 novels, won numerous awards and nominations, and landed on multiple bestseller lists, including USA Today, Bookscan, and Ingram’s Top 50 List.  She lives in south Florida with her family.
 
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Spotlight: A Wedding At Two Love Lane by Kieran Kramer

Never say never when it comes to love.

Greer Jones has made a real name for herself at the elegant matchmaking agency Two Love Lane. For a lot of reasons—including a past engagement she broke off—practical tech expert Greer is more interested in the business of love than the experience of it, but she can’t help but covet a gorgeous wedding gown that’s the prize in an upcoming cocktail-party contest. In a moment of brazen inspiration, Greer asks a handsome Brit she’s only just met to accompany her to the party. He agrees—and Greer believes her date is a starving artist. Little does she know the truth. . .

Ford Smith, as he calls himself, is actually Stanford Elliott Wentworth Smythe, the Eighth Baron of Wickshire. Fresh off a breakup with a money-grubbing siren who deceived him all the way to the altar, Ford has no desire to fall in love—especially with Greer who, like the desired wedding gown, is beautiful but only skin-deep. But soon Ford realizes that there’s more to Greer than meets the eye. Her professionalism is matched only by her passion for life and love. . .and, best of all, she has no idea that he’s to the manor born. Could it be that true love is priceless after all?

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About the Author

USA Today bestselling author Kieran Kramer is a former CIA employee, journalist, and English teacher who lives in the Lowcountry of South Carolina with her family. Game show veteran, karaoke enthusiast, and general adventurer, her motto is, “Life rewards action.” Find her on Facebook, Twitter, and at www.kierankramerbooks.com

Spotlight: The English Wife by Lauren Willig

From New York Times bestselling author, Lauren Willig, comes this scandalous novel set in the Gilded Age, full of family secrets, affairs, and murder.

Annabelle and Bayard Van Duyvil live a charmed life in New York: he’s the scion of an old Knickerbocker family, she grew up in a Tudor house in England, they had a fairytale romance in London, they have three-year-old twins on whom they dote, and he’s recreated her family home on the banks of the Hudson and named it Illyria. Yes, there are rumors that she’s having an affair with the architect, but rumors are rumors and people will gossip. But then Bayard is found dead with a knife in his chest on the night of their Twelfth Night Ball, Annabelle goes missing, presumed drowned, and the papers go mad. Bay’s sister, Janie, forms an unlikely alliance with a reporter to try to uncover the truth, convinced that Bay would never have killed his wife, that it must be a third party, but the more she learns about her brother and his wife, the more everything she thought she knew about them starts to unravel. Who were her brother and his wife, really? And why did her brother die with the name George on his lips?

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About the Author

LAUREN WILLIG is also the author of the New York Times bestselling Pink Carnation series and a RITA Award-winner for Best Regency Historical for The Mischief of Mistletoe. She graduated from Yale University, and has a graduate degree in English history from Harvard and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. She lives in New York City, where she now writes full time.

Spotlight: The Crown Prince’s Bride by Donna Alward

A Crown Prince gets a second chance at love with the woman who’s always been there - in the next book in the prince duology from Donna Alward!

The Crown Prince of Marazur is suffering from a broken heart. After losing his wife and future queen, he knows he’ll never find love again with a partner as wonderful as her. He’s thrown himself into his duties and is trying to be a better father to his two children, but he’s lonely. Even though falling in love seems impossible, so does spending the rest of his life alone.

Stephani has been Raoul’s assistant for years. Smart, loyal, and discreet, Stephani is fantastic at her job. Except for the fact that she’s been in love with her boss since her first week of employment, not that she would ever act on it. Besides, Raoul is first in line to the throne and she’s his assistant. If Raoul ever marries again, it’ll be with someone who can be a future queen. Not someone like Stephani.

When Raoul’s date for a state dinner is unable to attend, he invites Stephani. She’s well-versed on the issues and castle protocol, and Raoul’s always been comfortable with her. But when Stephani arrives, Raoul hardly recognizes her. Is this stunning woman the same one who’s run his office for years?

The Crown Prince’s Bride is the ultimate fairy tale for readers looking for Cinderella to get her prince—and be able to keep him past midnight.

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About the Author

A busy wife and mother of three (two daughters plus the family dog), Donna Alward believes hers is the best job in the world: a combination of stay-at-home mom and romance novelist. Donna loves being back on the East Coast of Canada after nearly twelve years in Alberta where her romance career began, writing about cowboys and the west. She is the author of Somebody Like You, Somebody's Baby, and Someone to Love.

Spotlight: The Darkling Bride by Laura Andersen

Three generations of Irish nobles face their family secrets in this spellbinding novel from the award-winning author of the Boleyn King trilogy.
 
The Gallagher family has called Deeprath Castle home for seven hundred years. Nestled in the Wicklow Mountains of Ireland, the estate is now slated to become a public trust, and book lover and scholar Carragh Ryan is hired to take inventory of its historic library. But after meeting Aidan, the current Viscount Gallagher, and his enigmatic family, Carragh knows that her task will be more challenging than she’d thought.
 
Two decades before, Aidan’s parents died violently at Deeprath. The case, which was never closed, has recently been taken up by a new detective determined to find the truth. The couple’s unusual deaths harken back a century, when twenty-three-year-old Lady Jenny Gallagher also died at Deeprath under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind an infant son and her husband, a renowned writer who never published again. These incidents only fueled fantastical theories about the Darkling Bride, a local legend of a sultry and dangerous woman from long ago whose wrath continues to haunt the castle.
 
The past catches up to the present, and odd clues in the house soon have Carragh wondering if there are unseen forces stalking the Gallagher family. As secrets emerge from the shadows and Carragh gets closer to answers—and to Aidan—could she be the Darkling Bride’s next victim?

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About the Author

Laura Andersen is the award-winning author of the Boleyn King trilogy (The Boleyn King, The Boleyn Deceit, The Boleyn Reckoning) and the Tudor Legacy novels (The Virgin’s Daughter, The Virgin’s Spy, The Virgin’s War). She has a B.A. in English (with an emphasis in British history), which she puts to use by reading everything she can lay her hands on. She is married with four children and lives in Boston.

Spotlight: Fall From Grace by Michelle Gross

Our first goodbye wasn’t our choice.
Our second was…
What do people say about third chances?

I would never forget the moment I met Noah at six years old,
nor would I forget the way I grew into myself next to him; with him.
I didn’t want to forget the way he kissed me for the first time or the way we were two kids pretending it was okay to do adult things.
What I did want to forget was the reason I walked away… and how he had to let me go.
Loving you had a consequence that was too much to bear.
Now I was an empty shell, half of who I was, who I want to be…
And I came back home after four long years and this time, I knew you weren’t going to let me go.
I’m afraid… because remembering why I walked away from our love in the first place was the hardest part of all.
But in order for you to understand my relationship with Noah, I have to start from the beginning… Before our love had a price, before they called our love “puppy love”, before I fell from grace…

I was the happiest when I was with him.

Funny how my feet felt like lead the days I left you, Noah… But now that I was back, they only felt like running.

This is a standalone romance that tells Grace and Noah's story starting at age six, but don't let that detour you from reading their story. This is a book meant for adults, and deals with mature themes. It's a story about two kids loving each other and proving that maybe when you meet the one, you just know, even if you're a kid.

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About the Author

Michelle is from a small town in Eastern Kentucky where opossums try to blend in with the cats on the porch and bears are likely to chase your pets—this is very true, it happened with her sister’s dog. Despite the extra needed protection for your pets, she loves the mountains she calls home. She has a man and twin girls who are the light of her life and the reason she’s slightly crazy.

As a kid, she was that cousin, that friend, that sister and daughter, the talker who could spin a tale and make-believe into any little thing so it was no surprise when she found love in reading, and figured all these characters inside her head needed an outlet. They wanted to be heard, so she wrote.

The voices keep growing faster than she gets the time to write.
The stories are never going to end. That’s perfectly okay, though. We never want to stop an adventure.
She writes and loves many different genres so sign up to her mailing list to keep updated on her releases!

Connect: Facebook | Goodreads | Instagram: @michellegrossmg | Twitter: @AuthorMichelleG