Diane Benefiel

Deadly Purpose Diane Benefiel

THE SILVER LININGMeghan Bennett is a desperate woman running for her life, and the one place she's sure she'll be safe is the old cabin in the Eastern Sierras she inherited from her father. Exhausted, and fighting a nasty flu, Meg can't believe someone is squatting in her cabin. The tall, handsome, bearded stranger who answers the door is her worst nightmare. Grumpy, growly and intractable, she can't convince him to leave. When she nearly collapses, she finds herself on the couch in front of a welcome fire. Over the next few days she thinks she can trust this man with more than her safety. Too late, she learns he has betrayed her, and he shatters her trust right along with her heart. Declan Murphy has been trying to rebuild his life, and he revels in the solitude his old friend and mentor's cabin provides. When a gorgeous, pissed-off woman shows up in the middle of a cold, snowy night insisting the cabin is hers and he needs to get out, Dex is ready to shut the door in her face - until he realizes she's sick, and even he's not that big a Neanderthal. When he finds out she's the daughter of the man who'd owned the cabin, and that she's the biggest asset in the investigation he's working on with the FBI, he can't believe how screwed he is. He's fallen hard for the stubborn, independent beauty, yet he can't tell her the truth about what he's doing. He knows when she finds out, he's going to lose the woman he hadn't been looking for but needs more than his next breath.