Hiding from your past can be exhausting and dangerous but facing it can be just too scary. Vanessa Rodriquez doesn't do relationships -- relationships involve trust - something she has in short supply. She has to be in control for fear that her life will once again become a dangerous spiral of violence. So it just doesn't make any sense why she finds herself in a neighborhood bar dressed to kill, drinking and dancing and out to seduce this gorgeous stranger. Well sense is highly overrated when the need to escape fears hidden for several years strikes. To escape from her abusive stepfather and her disbelieving mother Vanessa, then Trudy Valdez, ran away and wound up dancing at a strip club run by a man with a violent temper Carlo Vega, out of the fat into the fire as they say. As an eye witness to a murder Trudy is instrumental in putting Vega in jail for fourteen years. Fast forward to the present and Vega has been released and Vanessa is frightened that he will make good on his promise to get even. As a medical school graduate and doctor at a well known plastic surgical hospital she thought she had safely distanced herself from her past but a phone call telling her "it's not finished" is proof her past has caught up to her.

Tanner Doyle is the object of Vanessa's planned seduction. Unknown to Vanessa he has been hired to protect her by the same anonymous benefactor who paid her way through medical school. But protection seems to be the least of Tanner's thoughts when faced with the undeniable and unpredictable sparks that are flying between him and the woman he is assigned to. Putting ethical issues aside there is the emotional price that he is not willing to pay. But all that basically goes up in the flames of a lustful affair that might prove to be more than either Vanessa or Tanner bargain for. And the price includes developing the trust to get all their truths out of hiding. Between Vanessa sharp mouth and brain she proves to be quite a challenge for the very cool Tanner. One he is truly up for.

Not until I finished this book did I realize it was the second of a three book series. You never felt as if any facts were lacking in the storyline. Wilde did a really good job of giving life to her main characters. The sex was hot and at times raunchy but definitely fit the characters. Grab a latte to keep cool. Although the main crisis was resolved at the end of this installment it did leave an ongoing unresolved mystery to be tackled in the next book in the Perfect Anatomy miniseries due out in October 2008. Definitely on my list! Enjoy.