Published by: The Wild Rose Press
Publication date: March 3rd 2025
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance, Suspense
Synopsis:
Annie O’Toole is St. Louis Public Defender, passionate about fighting for the underdog and determined to prove herself as the badass trial lawyer she knows she can be. Getting assigned to defend the kid charged with shooting billionaire businessman, Michael Grayson, is a big step up for her career. At least until the hot guy she seduced at the Justice for All Ball shows up at her office in response to her deposition subpoena. Turns out the sexy stranger who introduced himself only as ‘Mick’, the guy she’s been fantasizing about since slipping away while he slept — is none other than the billionaire himself, Michael Grayson.
She’s horrified. He’s furious. He thinks she set him up. She thinks he’s an arrogant ass in a Savile Row suit. Sparks, intrigue, and bullets fly in a mix of swoon and suspense as the two battle each other, the bad guys, and an off-limits attraction neither can ignore. When the evidence leads back into Michael’s inner corporate circle, the two are plunged into a world of international intrigue, corporate espionage, and murder — with a side dish of unresolved family drama as Annie is forced to turn to the only expert in corporate intrigue she knows, her own uber-wealthy, estranged grandmother. Now all she has to do is solve the case, escape her grandmother’s plans to take over her life (again), and save her client, her career, and the man whose lifestyle she despises . . . and whose touch she can’t forget.
Excerpt
“You had me investigated?” Annie swung her legs around and pushed herself off his lap. “What, do you have a file on me in your office somewhere?”
He was silent.
“Oh, my God, you do. You have a file on me? So, what’d you do?” she prodded. “Have me followed? Interview my neighbors? Talk to my co-workers? Dig into my transcripts?”
Silence again.
“Holy shit. You did!”
“I didn’t know who you were or what you were up to. Whether this whole anonymous one-night-stand thing”—Michael made a vaguely circular motion— “was real or some kind of set-up.” His tone was wary, defensive.
She narrowed her eyes. “When?”
“When what?”
“When did you have me investigated?”
“Well, an investigation spans time. It’s a little here and a little there as things are uncovered.”
Now he had the audacity to mansplain to her?
“Defense lawyer here, remember? I investigate cases all the time. My question is when did you start investigating me?” She bit off the ‘asshole’ that ended that sentence in her brain.
He ran one hand through his hair. “When I found out you were representing the kid who shot me.”
She supposed that was fair, though it still rankled. And why the hell hadn’t he told her about it? “When did you end it?”
“End?”
“Yes, end as in stop, quit, finish investigating me?”
Silence again.
“You haven’t ended it?” She stared at him, incredulous. “He’s still investigating me?”
“In my defense—”
“There is no defense,” she snapped. “You invited me to Johannson’s fundraiser, flirted with me, kissed me, all while you were having me investigated? Was someone in the bushes taking pictures of us so you’d have your own little stash of blackmail with which to destroy my career just in case?”
“If you will recall”—his words were now clipped, formal, and frustrated—“I found out all of yesterday that you were Eleanor Barlow’s granddaughter. A not- insignificant fact, by the way, and not a discovery likely to motivate me or anyone with half a brain to pull the plug on an investigation of your involvement in her merger scheme. Within hours of that lovely discovery, I learned that my company is the target of Russian espionage, and someone is very likely trying to kill me, so forgive me if I haven’t stopped to send Jacobson a memo on the appropriate time to wind down this particular assignment.”
She kind of had to give him that. But she sure as hell wasn’t ready to let him off the hook. Not by a long shot. “When was his last report?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean. I work with investigators all the time, remember? They do investigations and then prepare reports about the results of those investigations. When was the last time you got a report from Streeter about me?”
Michael took a slow breath, closed those beautiful grey eyes, and said, “Last night.”
For a nanosecond, there was silence.
Then Annie breathed, “You son of a bitch.”
Her mind raced and she began pacing the room. “That’s why Streeter drove to Chicago instead of flying up with you, isn’t it? He wasn’t up there on some ‘organization- wide investigation’ you weren’t up to speed on. He followed Carter and me up there, didn’t he?”
Michael sat silent.
“Didn’t he?” She practically screamed the words.
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “When he ran the plates on Carter’s car, it came back registered to Barlow Industries. I had just been invited to come discuss a business deal with Barlow Industries, so yes, finding out you had an unexpected connection there was worthy of follow-up in Streeter’s mind.”
“So, he was sitting outside my house just watching me? He had to have been, to be there when Carter arrived.”
Michael didn’t say a word.
“For how long? How long has that man been following me around and spying on my every movement?”
Michael didn’t reply quickly enough.
“Answer me!”
He ran his hands over his face. “I don’t know. I leave the details of Streeter’s investigations to him. I just asked him to find out what he could so I could figure out if you were who and what you said you were or if there was some kind of subterfuge at play.”
She flashed to Michael lifting her chin to meet his kiss in her bedroom at Barlow House.
‘I may not know fully who you are, Counselor, but I will figure it out. It’s what we princes do.’
Oh, God. She’d thought it so romantic, so sweet, the beacon of hope that they might have a future after all. But he was just waiting on his goddamn investigation results!
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