I suspected this was going to be an emotional journey but I didn’t have a clue it was going to take me on such a ride that my heart would be cracked open, healed a bit, and then cracked open again even more viciously leaving me in a puddle of pain and despair.

Vaughn runs an escort service that caters to wealthy men who need a bit of arm candy and a little something more. While she doesn’t hesitate to step in when one of girls needs her, she doesn’t personally “date” clients. That is, until everything goes belly up and she’s left scrambling to keep an important new client, one who can escalate her relatively new business. Even so, she should stay behind the scenes, except this particular client challenges her, causing her hackles to rise until she finds herself setting up the date as an alternate persona.

Ryker is a cold, hard, a hole of a lawyer. He’s deserving of his reputation and utilizes it. But after a relationship left him fed up with the lies that women tell, he decides a permanent escort is the way to go. But when the woman he’s chosen is unable to attend their date, he finds himself in a telephone confrontation with the owner. She has a take no prisoner attitude and refuses to meet his challenge, leaving him to meet a replacement for the evening. And then things get interesting.

“ ‘Ryker.’ It’s just my name. Not Mr. Lockhart. Just Ryker. The name I’ve wanted her to call me, and yet when she does, there’s a vulnerability to it that does sh-t to my insides. It makes a man whose heart is cold and dead flicker to life. “

Both Vaughn and Ryker intrigued me. Vaughn, living many lives at once, suddenly finds them all colliding even as her murky past raises its head to taunt her with memories long forgotten. She’s an emotional mess and with each revelation into her character my heart cracked a little more. Despite her tough exterior, inside she is broken, scared, vulnerable, and hopeless. But she refuses to give up. Vaughn is definitely the center point of the story as she battles her past, her present, and is reluctant to look towards the future.

“ This was momentous.
This was something I didn’t expect, but now…now the one thing I would have thought could never happen – my two worlds melding – just did, and the earth didn’t stop spinning. It didn’t even stutter unless you count the way my heart did watching the ruthless lawyer become a gentle giant with the one person I love more than anyone or anything.
This was momentous. “

Ryker (love the name!) had his own issues, but they weren’t anything in comparison to Vaughn’s. He’s actually that hero who just doesn’t recognize what it is he’s feeling and so he tends to act out, inflicting pain when that really wasn’t his intention. At times I wanted to smack him upside the head and yet there were times where I just wanted to sit him down for a good talking to. He was kind of clueless, but very real and relatable. And his interactions with a young Down syndrome girl is absolutely swoony. As for those jealous/possessive tendencies I love in a hero – there were just enough moments for him to shine in that regard.

“ ’I don’t like him.’
She laughs and rolls her eyes. ‘You’re jealous?’ she asks as if I’m crazy.
Not jealous. Just making sure he knows what’s mine. “

Together, this couple were alternately gasoline and matches or vinegar and oil. Every scene is laced with heavy emotion and so much angst that there were times I had to set this story aside so I could give my poor heart a rest from the workout they were giving it. But I couldn’t stay away for long as Vaughn’s pain and Ryker’s need kept pulling me back into the story. While this is a lengthy book, every beautifully written word is necessary to the story.

I knew this was going to be a cliffhanger but holy Hades, Ms. Bromberg gutted me with this ending! I am in serious, DESPERATE, need for the next book and I’m seriously not sure how I can read anything else until I get it. This story is going to leave you stewing, biting your nails, bouncing your leg and cursing the author until we get book 2!