Why was he alive?

It wasn't fair. Austin Ward had no one. No wife or daughter or even a damn dog. So why was he alive and his partner, the one with all those things, was dead?

Austin wasn't the only one who wanted answers. His dead partner's sugar-sweet librarian daughter showed up at his house and forced her way inside, demanding the truth. Her tear-stained cheeks and red-rimmed eyes gutted him. He ached to wrap her curvy body in his arms and lose himself in her. Erase his pain and hers at once.

But Lacey MacNeil was off-limits. Forbidden. Innocent and too vulnerable for a man like him to take advantage of in her agony. Even if he understood it, shared it.

So Austin did what he had to do and threw her out.

Right into the crosshairs of the man who killed her father.