Dark Hero

Married to a stranger . . . she awoke in his bed with no memory of their love . . .

Elizabeth is a survivor. Her very existence has balanced on the edge of a knife for much of her life--a knife held by her cruel stepfather. Betrayed, kidnapped and left for dead, she awakens on a ship bound for the Indies in the bed of a stranger claiming to be her husband. She can’t forgive her stepfather for selling her to a stranger to settle his debts. As her mind and body heal after her harrowing ordeal, peculiar talents emerge--the gift of the seer and the ability to speak with the dead. There’s just one problem with those extraordinary gifts—her husband could claim she’s insane deposit her in a madhouse.

Can Elizabeth trust this Dark Hero who emerged from the pages of those Gothic romances she devoured as a girl? Will he prove to be honorable, as he claims? Or will he be just as unscrupulous and deceptive as the man who sold her to him to pay off his debt?

Donovan survived betrayal, imprisonment and torture. Deception and subterfuge are weapons used to keep people at a distance as he maintains separate identities on his island estate--The Mysterious Masked Count, a reclusive French nobleman rumored to be badly disfigured and The Charming Mr. O’Rourke, the count’s servant who goes about pretending to be everyone’s friend. Donovan’s penchant for deception may be his undoing; the woman he loves can’t recall their first kiss or their courtship in England. She claims to not remember meeting him before waking in his bed.

Will he be able to rekindle the love Elizabeth once had for him?

Or is Donovan condemned to a different kind of prison, one without walls but one that holds his heart . . . a loveless marriage to a woman who fears him and cannot abide his touch?

The Reluctant Heroes Series: Bold Men, Independent Women . . . . Finding True Love was never in their plans!