She’s a former CIA agent with a badass reputation.
He’s a wealthy FBI agent
with a knack for taking down serial killers.
When the holidays come,
their chemistry is UNSTOPPABLE.

CASPER

It’s hard to shake the pain. Losing my husband destroyed me, and now, I’m still picking up the pieces and trying to move on. Helping the Invicibles keeps me active—and sane. Let’s be honest, I have to take one day at a time. But now, they want me to come to their holiday party and frolic in the festivities of the season. And that’s the last thing I want—especially since for the first time in ages, I’m starting to crave someone else—someone who isn’t my husband.

SPIDER

With a serial killer caught and behind bars, it seems like the perfect time to celebrate the holidays. And teaming up with the determined and fiery Casper has me longing for more this season. Taking her to the Invincibles’ party seems like just thing she needs. But when it all blows up and she disappears, I’ll do anything to make this the start of a very MERRY time.

The Invincibles are having a Christmas Party and they’ve made attendance mandatory. There two people who really aren’t happy about that.

Calla ‘Casper’ Rey doesn’t go to parties. She doesn’t do workplace social functions. Not since her husband died. The Invincibles are the ones who uncovered the truth about his death and others, but it doesn’t really ease Casper’s grief.

Corbin ‘Spider’ Vaughn is hoping to change Casper’s mind about going to the party. He has feelings that are more than friendship for her. He just doesn’t know if she’s ready to move on with her life. He invites her to dinner and takes her to a wonderful and exclusive Russian restaurant where they enjoy great food and a bottle of vodka.

This is a favorite scene.

The drive back to Di Lido Isle, one of South Beach’s Venetian Islands, took ten minutes. Five in, Casper’s head was on my shoulder, and she was fast asleep. I hated waking her when we arrived at the gate, but I had to since I didn’t know the code. Before I did, though, I leaned down and pressed my lips to her forehead. It wasn’t the first time I had, either. Casper was one of those people car rides put to sleep if she was tired. I’d taken advantage of it each and every time it happened.

“Hey, sweetheart,” I whispered. “We’re back.”

She jolted upright and surveyed our surroundings. “The code is 2328,” she told the driver. It wasn’t hard to figure out the numbers corresponded to her dead husband’s name if typed into a keypad. It reminded me of how I’d changed my own the day I returned from Canada Lake to a house I rarely occupied.

I shook my head, chastising myself once again for falling for a woman there was no prayer would ever be interested in me. I couldn’t help it, though. I’d missed her and had to see her.

It dawned on me then that we never got back around to the reason I’d invited her to dinner. My proposition. Given how tired she was and how much we’d both had to drink, I wouldn’t bring it up now. If I did, I had little doubt she’d dismiss it out of hand without the slightest consideration. Maybe rather than returning to Palm Beach tomorrow, I’d wake up early, get a ride to Raspoutine to pick up my car, then swing by here and invite her to breakfast.

“I’ll walk her in, then be right back,” I said to the driver when he pulled up in front of her house.

“Wait,” said Casper, putting her hand on my arm before I had a chance to get out.

“I’m walking you in. That’s nonnegotiable, sweetheart.”

“That wasn’t what I was going to say.”

“What, then?”

She leaned closer to me. “You don’t have to find a hotel. You can stay here,” she whispered.

“Are you sure about that?”

“Why not? I mean, we stayed in the same cabin for weeks, right?”

We had. And every night was torture for me. However, like then, I would do it again just because it meant I could be with her, close to her, a little longer.

I thanked the driver, got out, walked around the car, and opened her door, holding my hand out like I had at the restaurant. Also like then, I didn’t let go until we reached the entrance to her house.

She started to enter a code into the keypad, but stopped.

“I’m not looking, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“That isn’t it.”

“What, then?”

Casper turned her head toward me and did the very last thing I ever expected her to. She kissed me.
Heather Slade. Merried (Kindle Locations 279-301). An Unstoppable Christmas.

Calla had already decided to go to the Christmas party and when Spider suggests they go together she agrees. She’s still working on her grief though and events at the party bring it all to head.

I loved the way Casper deals with her grief to make way for a new relationship. Spider is awesome in spite of being embarrassed by his wealth. It was a process of laughter, tears and romance that helps these two get together.

I can’t wait for the next book in this series!

5 Contented Purrs for Heather!

Heather Slade

USA Today and Amazon Top 15 Bestselling Author Heather Slade writes shamelessly sexy, edge-of-your seat romantic suspense.

She gave herself the gift of writing a book for her own birthday one year. Forty-plus books later (and counting), she’s having the time of her life. The women Slade writes are self-confident, strong, with wills of their own, and hearts as big as the Colorado sky. The men are sublimely sexy, seductive alphas who rise to the challenge of capturing the sweet soul of a woman whose heart they’ll hold in the palm of their hand forever. Add in a couple of neck-snapping twists and turns, a page-turning mystery, and a swoon-worthy HEA, and you’ll be holding one of her books in your hands.