So excited that A PRIDE OF BROTHERS: DYLAN is featured today on NNLight’s Holiday Gift Guide – Thriller/Suspense category. Just click on the link and scroll down to find my book ( it’s the third one!)
If you haven’t read this face-paced, bodyguard trope, romantic suspense yet, now’s the right time to do so!!
Cyber-security specialist Dylan Keane is working undercover to suss out a corporate thief. When he zeroes in on Harper Vale, he thinks he’s found his mole.
Harper has a reputation as a coding savant and an introvert. Dylan’s interest is flattering, but after she’s implicated in the theft of the company’s protected software, she doubts everything he’s told her.
When a series of potentially deadly accidents occur involving Harper, Dylan wonders if she is being set up to take the fall. One thing is certain: the more time they spend together, the more Dylan realizes he’s the one who’s falling—for Harper.
Dylan Keane knew if he hadn’t been forced to walk the straight and narrow by his parents and older brothers he would have had a lucrative career as a con man instead of a private investigator.
Both professions required a large amount of personal hubris and, well, confidence in order to get people to drop their guards and divulge things they wouldn’t ordinarily give a voice to. Both required an in-depth knowledge of human nature and the ability to predict what people were willing to do to protect their secrets. And both required an exceptional ability to believe the role they were playing and lose themselves in the character.
Dylan possessed all three qualities and one more extremely important one: he was naturally likable.
The fact he’d been blessed by the Gods of good looks didn’t hurt either.
So, armed with those good looks, likability, and superior acting skills, he skirted the perimeter of the corporate lunchroom until he spotted his mark pay for her lunch and then lift her tray.
Surveilling her for the past three days told him she’d walk directly to an empty table in the corner, not establish eye contact with any of her co-workers, and settle in, facing the parking lot through the room-wide windows to eat alone.
Not today, sweetheart.
He tugged his phone from his back pocket and clicked on one of the apps. Pretending to read it, he moved towards the mark, his apparent concentration focused solely on his phone.
Apparent being the operative word, because his true attention was fixated on the woman now crossing the room on her way to her table.
She dressed for comfort, but then everyone in the tech division of Kirkpatick Industries did. Worn and aged Converse sneakers were the shoe of choice among the twenty and thirty-somethings who made up the bulk of employees, his mark no different from her coworkers. Where they did differ was in the definition of comfort. Where t-shirts and faded jeans were the norm, she routinely wore body-hugging black leggings with oversized, long-sleeved button-down shirts in varying neutral colors. No jewelry, no personal adornments. He doubted she had a drop of makeup on.
That told him she didn’t like to stand out in a crowd, but didn’t necessarily want to be a lemming, either.
Her shoulder-length wavy blonde hair was typically pulled into a messy bun or dangling in a tale down the nape of her neck.
Dylan wondered what it would look like free and flowing down her neck and back.
The few things he knew about her life he’d culled from an in-depth and barely legal digital deep-dive. An only child adopted by a couple who had long since given up on ever having biological children, she’d been the class nerd all through grade school, high school valedictorian and then graduated second in her class at M.I.T with a double degree in computer programming and engineering.
She’d been recruited by ten top tech companies while a senior but had opted to get her Master’s degree before signing on to any.
Daniel Kirkpatrick himself had recruited her after reading a paper she’d penned on the future of the gaming industry for her thesis.
That had been eight years ago. By all appearances, she was a diligent worker, wicked smart, and had perfect performance reviews. She was also a loner and hadn’t moved up the corporate ladder as one would have expected given her educational pedigree, something that alone was suspect.
With a flick of his finger across the screen, giving the impression he was engrossed in what he was reading, Dylan moved with ease and finesse across the lunchroom until he bumped into his mark, clipping her lunch tray and causing it to fall flat on the floor.
“Oh, Jeez. I’m so sorry.” He reached out to grab her forearm when it looked like she was about to follow the tray. A jolt of surprise surged through him when his work-roughened hand met skin spun from silk. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Nothing hot spilled on you, did it?”
Brows the color of unmined gold pulled together over eyes a hue his mother would have dubbed fresh basil. Sitting behind oversized glasses that hid their natural beauty, those eyes now squinted as she peered up at him. Annoyance flicked in the moisture coating them.
Glancing down to where the contents of her ruined lunch sat and then back up to him, she shook her head. “Lucikly, no.” Irritation spilled through the words.
“I’m really sorry,” he repeated. “I was so engrossed in reading an article I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
“There’s a reason you shouldn’t walk and read,” she said, testily. Squatting, she grabbed the tray and began placing the spilled contents back on it.
The subtle chide had him smiling on the inside because it sounded like something his mother would say. And in exactly the same pissed-off tone.
“Here, let me do that.” He bent and took the tray from her. “There’s nothing salvageable here,” he said, inspecting the now-ruined salad. “Let me buy you another one since I’m the reason this one is toast.”
Intrigued? I certainly hope so, LOL. IF you like Dylan, you’ll like his brothers – the rest of the Brothers, Inc. bodyguards in the PRIDE OF BROTHERS series.
Peggy Jaeger, Author 