Jess Carter has spent her life proving that a woman can stand at the centre of power without losing herself.As the Mayor of Charlotte, she is intelligent, ambitious, elegant and fiercely independent. She has built her reputation on integrity, compassion and the belief that leadership is about serving people, not controlling them. Her greatest passion is the charity she founded to help hungry children around the world.But power comes with enemies.After a series of increasingly disturbing incidents, Jess is assigned a highly trained security specialist whose job is simple: keep her alive.Ethan Hayes is disciplined, intimidating and almost impossible to read. He lives by rules, trusts his instincts and keeps emotion firmly outside his professional life. Jess is everything he should keep at a distance: stubborn, independent, unpredictable and completely unwilling to be treated like someone who needs saving.Their relationship begins with boundaries.Then comes attraction.As threats against Jess escalate, Ethan finds himself protecting more than a mayor. Somewhere between late-night conversations, stolen moments, arguments, laughter and the quiet comfort of simply being near one another, duty begins to blur into something neither of them expected.But someone is watching.When Jess is poisoned and later abducted from a supposedly secure hospital, Ethan discovers that the attacks were never random. Someone has been studying Jess, her security team and Ethan himself. There may be a mole inside the circle they trusted, and the people behind the attacks know far more about Ethan than they should.Jess is being held because her captors believe she knows something.Ethan is hunting for her.And neither of them realizes just how far the people behind the conspiracy are willing to go.Separated for the first time since their bond began to deepen, Jess discovers just how much she has come to rely on the man who was supposed to be nothing more than her protector. Ethan discovers that losing Jess is no longer something he can accept as part of the job.Because protecting her was his duty.Loving her was never supposed to be part of the plan.But sometimes the greatest danger is not falling in love.It is having something worth losing.