Eight months after Becca Ford helped her team take down club owner Jarrett Holt, she finds herself on the run as one of the only remaining survivors of her team. All the rest of her team has been eliminated, and there have been attempts on her life as well. Knowing that the only safe place for her is inside Jarrett's club and behind his security, she goes to him for protection while she gets to the bottom of what is happening. Jarrett has already been burned by Becca and he knows better than to let her under his skin again. But when she shows up at his club, he can't help but let her stay. He makes her the deal of protection and a place to stay, but she will be his to use as he pleases. As Becca tries to figure things out, things between Becca and Jarrett start to return to the way they were before and soon they are both starting to rediscover the feelings they shared before things went bad. Can Becca figure things out before someone tries to end her life? Can Jarrett ever trust Becca again after everything that happened?
Becca and Jarrett's relationship was really interesting to me because of everything that had happened between them. Becca's team had put Jarrett in jail for what she thought was several things, drugs being one of them. She saw things and discovered things that made her assume a lot about the person that he was. She had started to develop real feelings for him while undercover though, and the person she thought she knew was different than that of what her team was telling her. There was also a lot that Jarrett had assumed, and it would have done both of them well to just have a conversation with each other and listen. Despite everything that had happened between them though, there was still a connection and a huge amount of chemistry. These two couldn't keep their hands off each other, and both were still clearly drawn to one another. I wanted them to just lay everything out there and listen to each other, but there were still a lot of trust issues and naturally they both thought that they knew everything. I did enjoy watching them figure things out between them though, and the more that they learned about each other again and saw the truth the better their relationship got.
My main issues with this book were not the relationship between Becca and Jarrett or even the side story of Elijah and Wade. I thought that the relationships were written well and were interesting. They kept me turning the pages, and I really enjoyed seeing the depth to each of the relationships. I had problems with the suspense portion of the story as well as the beginning of the story. I thought that the beginning seemed to just almost drop us into the middle, and it felt like we had missed a huge portion of what was going on. I kept trying to figure out if this was a sequel and I had missed the first book. I understand a lot of this story was trying to figure out what had gone down with Becca's team and the operation, but it really felt as though we had missed a huge part of the story with the way this one was written. I felt like not only did we start the story in the middle, but we also missed the development of the relationship between Becca and Jarrett. I wanted a flashback or prologue or something to go back and give us the start of it all without revealing what had gone bad. I also felt like the suspense part and the investigation into the operation was slow and drawn out. It didn't really go anywhere for the first 3/4 of the book, and by the time we got any real cooperation or a start to resolution the book was pretty much over. It seemed to really be just sort of stuck and static because the entire book takes place within the walls of Jarrett's club and the floors/living quarters above the club. I just kept waiting for things to pick up, but it didn't happen for quite some time. While I enjoy a good sex scene and plenty of them, I felt like it got a bit repetitive and I was left waiting for more development and advancement. I would still say that this is not only a book that I enjoyed, but one that I think fans of romantic suspense will enjoy. I thought that the characters and relationships were interesting and the story is worth reading even if it was a bit predictable and slow moving. I will look for more from HelenKay Dimon in the future.
**ARC Provided by Publisher**
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I reacted close to the same way, Casey. I felt the balance was a bit off in the plot even though it fell on the side of a likeable read.
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