A no-strings kinda guy and a forever kinda woman…what could go wrong?I had a stalker and I knew just who to ask for help—Detective Dalton Neary. My own personal Prince Charming. The problem was, he turned out not to be so charming, at least not in the forever kind of way I was looking for. He was a good-time guy with a sexy smile and a goat game that should be illegal. But not the man for me.I should’ve told her no. I had no business playing bodyguard to a woman I’d spent months trying to keep my hands off of. But I couldn't fight the pull of Vanessa Hale. She was a weakness that turned into an obsession and when her life came crashing down around her I couldn’t walk away.Lies and family secrets turn into a life-or-death situation threatening to destroy Vanessa's entire family and rob Dalton of his second chance at love.

It’s strange how quickly life can go from predictable and boring to…not. How a chance meeting can set off a chain reaction. How a single moment can offer much-needed clarity. How a kiss can alter the course of your life. Valentine Malone fell into my life…correction, I fell into his in the aisle of a grocery store. I fell, not in love, but literally into him right before I stumbled into a display rack of parmesan cheese. Our second run-in had me on the floor slipping and sliding in broken party tubs of margarita mix. And if the first two encounters weren’t embarrassing enough, the third left nothing to the imagination when I walked in on Hot Cop in all his magnificent glory in the shower. Not exactly the meet cute I’d always dreamed of. Three chance meetings was all it took for my perfectly uninteresting life to take a turn. From the moment she backed into me at the grocery store, I couldn’t get Sophie out of my mind. Beautiful, funny, sweet. And it turns out, brave in the face of sudden danger. She’s everything I ever wanted, and a woman I’ll never deserve. If she knew my secret, sweet Sophie would run and never look back. But even if I can’t keep her, I’ll do anything to protect her from her own family’s decades-old secrets and an unknown past that leaves her at the mercy of a mysterious enemy. It’ll take everything I know about being on a SWAT team to save her. But will she still want me when my secrets come to light?

Tucker Mitchell was the one who got away. Not that he knew he’d plagued my dreams for the last decade. A run-in here, a run-in there, kept those fantasies alive and well. Or maybe it was the memory of the night we gave in to our attraction, only to come to our senses the next morning. A moment of weakness for both of us. Our lives were too complicated—we were too complicated. But ten years later, I couldn’t get him out of my mind and now I had to work with the former DEA Agent. Not only that, we were going undercover as fake husband and wife. Professionalism wouldn’t save me—not when I was already in love with a man who I couldn’t have. But my past could—I’d hold on to all the heartbreak and keep myself safe. Tucker was a means to an end—nothing more. He couldn’t be. ATF Agent Liza Monroe was the very definition of bad timing. From the moment I laid eyes on the woman, I knew letting her walk away would be my biggest regret. And over the years, those regrets compounded as our lives remained out of sync. I thought I had my shot—going undercover is the perfect opportunity to remind her how good we were together—only to find out she wasn’t the same feisty, open-book, beautiful woman I’d met. She now had thorns and walls, and the harder I tried to break through her boundaries, the harder she pushed back. Unfortunately, life proved our luck hadn’t changed and bad timing took on a whole new meaning when I finally put a few cracks in Liza’s armor just when she caught the attention of the ruthless cult leader we were after. Liza or the mission? The choice should’ve been easy, but just like everything else with us, it was anything but. Playing with Love is a second chance, friends to lovers romantic suspense with a closed off heroine who fights to keep her heart intact against a hero who will stop at nothing to win her. Be warned, Tucker takes fake dating to extreme steam with his dirty mouth and persuasion.