 by Carly Phillips.jpg)
Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 91622 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91622 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Assistant D.A. Erin Marsden is Serendipity's quintessential good girl. The daughter of the former police chief, she's never made a misstep, content with her quiet, predictable life...or so she thinks. Until Cole Sanders shows up with heated interest in his eyes and shadows in his past.
After seven years of deep undercover work in New York, Cole returns to town to help his aging father and find his moral compass again. Not to get involved with wholesome Erin Marsden. Even as a rebellious teen, he knew a girl like Erin was off limits. But neither can resist their off-the-charts chemistry, and a one-night stand brings complications neither expected.
Then a case puts Erin in a killer's crosshairs, and Erin succumbs to Cole's take-charge attitude. As a bodyguard, he's the best. As a lover, he's even better. But there's more than Erin's safety at stake. And Cole must forgive the sins of his past and prove to himself--and to Erin--that he's capable of the love and the forever she so desperately needs.
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Chapter One
Erin Marsden had always been Serendipity’s good girl. As assistant district attorney in the small Upstate New York town, only daughter of the former police chief, and youngest sibling of two overprotective brothers (both cops, one of whom was the current police chief), Erin always lived up to expectations. She’d never made a misstep, more afraid of disappointing her family than of stepping out of the stereotypical role she’d always, always fulfilled.
Until last night.
She blinked and took stock of her surroundings: a strange bed, walls she didn’t recognize, and a warm, nude male body beside her very naked one.
Cole Sanders.
Staring at his too-long mess of dark hair and the muscles in his upper back, she thought about the way her body ached in all the right places and shivered. No doubt about it, when she finally stepped out of the mold she’d created, she’d not only done a one-eighty but made the most un-good-girl move she could think of. A one-night stand.
A one-night stand.
The thought made her giddy and also slightly nauseous as she silently traced the path that had led her here. She’d started yesterday at her brother Mike’s wedding to one of Erin’s closest friends, Cara Hartley, now Marsden. Erin had been surrounded by friends, family, and happy, loving couples everywhere she looked, making her the odd woman out. Not wanting to go home alone just yet, she’d stopped by Joe’s Bar. Misstep number one.
She’d let Cole Sanders, the man for whom she’d had an unrequited crush as a young teenage girl, interrupt her dance with an old friend. Misstep number two.
He’d pulled her close against his hard body. She’d looked into his dark, almost navy eyes and seen a world-weariness that tore at her heart, then acknowledged the sexual tension they’d both ignored since his return. Misstep number three.
And then she’d gone for the gold, agreeing to join him upstairs in his room over the bar for an all-night session of marathon sex. But she couldn’t label that misstep number four, because sex with Cole had been phenomenal. She didn’t know two people could generate such heat. It had been that fantastic. In fact, Erin thought, she’d stretch and purr in contentment right now if she weren’t afraid of waking the man snoring lightly beside her.
Although their parents were good friends, Erin didn’t know Cole well. Nobody did, not anymore. Not even her brother Mike, who had been one of his closest pals, though Mike seemed concerned since Cole’s return. Cole’s father had been her dad’s deputy chief of police until last year when Jed retired, but Jed Sanders never spoke of his son.
According to Mike, Cole had dropped out of the police academy mere days before his graduation. What Cole did after that was anybody’s guess, but rumors ran crazy in their small town. Some said Cole had gotten involved in organized crime in Manhattan; others claimed he ran drug and prostitution rings. Having grown up around Cole, even if she had kept her distance from the rough-and-tumble bad boy he’d been, Erin couldn’t bring herself to believe he’d gone so wrong.
Call her naïve, but she’d always seen something deeper in Cole, something good, even when he’d clashed with his tough-as-nails father. Which didn’t mean she wouldn’t make her escape as cleanly as possible.
What Erin didn’t know about awkward mornings after could fill a book. The quiet, tepid affairs in her past always ended the same way, with a polite It’s not you, it’s me before she walked away. She’d never had to slip out of a man’s bed undetected before.