The Guardian by Kimberly Kincaid

I love this series! Author Kimberly Kincaid delivers such a wonderful weave of keep-you-on-the-edge-of-your-seat-guessing suspense with some of the best curl-your-toes, steam-up-the-windows romance I have read. The Guardian is the second in the Remington Intelligence Unit stories and this one, like The Grifter (okay, I’m reading these in reverse order), kept me in my seat turning the pages until I reached the most satisfactory end. (Yes, it was another, “nah, I’m not going to stop reading, go get yourself a pizza” night for the hubby.)

This time around, we have hero Matteo Garza—a broody, workaholic, relationship-phobic, dedicated-to-the point-of-all else cop—and heroine Delia Sutton, who is brilliant, quirky, and loves to color outside the lines. She’s the best friend of Detective Garza’s younger sister, and also happens to have a mad crush on the detective ever since they crossed paths when she roomed with his sister in college. Add in a mugging, a sociopathic mobster, a money-laundering scheme that is damn near impossible to track, and a few villains who are complex, scary, and so realistically portrayed you are not sure who in the end will be the true baddest of the bad. Then, of course, my favorite part: the burgeoning, intense chemistry between Matteo and Delia, two people who, despite their best efforts, cannot seem to keep their relationship on a strictly professional level regardless of the mounting danger closing in.

The Guardian is a scorcher of a story in more ways than one. I highly recommend this delicious tale. I’ve already ordered the first in the series. Just a heads up: each one of these in the series can be read as a standalone!