Her Executive Protector Contemporary Romance
The Wild Rose Press
October 9, 2015
155
Madigan Moran walked away from both an alcoholic father, and the man she loved, putting a painful chapter in her life behind her. At least she thought so, until her father died. Returning home for the first time in years, she has a single purpose—sell everything and resume life as an up-and-coming artist. But she discovers nothing is ever simple and inexplicable happenings make her question whether her father’s spirit has actually moved on, or still lingers in her childhood home.
Having given up his career in Executive Protection, Sam Barstow leads an unassuming life despite his high-profile father’s badgering. Regardless of a promise to her dying father, he thought he’d hardened his heart towards the woman who tossed him aside like a half-eaten sandwich. But Maddie isn’t anything he expected and the heat between them burns as hot as ever.
When Sam confesses a secret battle, and Maddie is threatened and later accused of a crime, each has to face their personal fears or walk away. Will the ghosts from their past be the catalyst that holds them together, or the wedge that drives them apart?
Reviewed by: Linda Tonis
Member of the Paranormal Romance Review Team
Madigan (Maddie) Moran left her home ten years ago and now she has returned. She left her drunk father and her high school boyfriend without so much as a good-bye. Now her recently deceased father has left her the home she grew up in. Maddie never forgave her father for being a drunk and leaving her to practically raise herself after her mother’s death. Even when he came to her sober and trying to repair the damage he had done, she turned away from him. He died without getting the second chance he so longed for.
Maddie’s reintroduction to the boy she once loved, Sam Barstow, was not only unromantic but could have been deadly. Sam was working on repairs to the house and did not expect Maddie for another week. Maddie, on the other hand, thought there was a burglar in the house and greeted Sam with a brass lamp to the head. With a bloody head, Sam explained why he was there and who he was. In that instant, both of them realized the past was not dead. Although he spent ten years angry at her for leaving without a word, he couldn’t hate her.
Sam comes from a very wealthy family, a family that always looked down on Maddie as lower than them and certainly not good enough for their son. Sam was never like his father. He went out on his own, never accepting Maddie’s leaving, and never once looking into what could have been the cause. He knows his father is capable of anything when he wants something, so it would not have been too outrageous to think he might have had something to do with what happened ten years ago.
Sam was in executive protection, witness protection, and personal security until a fatal mistake caused him to return home a mentally wounded man. Like Maddie’s dad, he too fell into a bottle, and he knows that it is something Maddie would not forgive after years of living with a drunk. The best thing for Maddie and him is for her to do as she said, sell the house and move back to the city. Maddie is a struggling artist. Even though she sees so much potential in the house, especially where her painting is concerned, she still can’t get the memories she carries with her to go away.
This was a beautiful love story about two young kids whose families drove them apart. It is only after Sam realizes Maddie is in danger that things begin to change. Someone is breaking into her home looking for something, but Maddie has nothing valuable. What could it be? Sam falls back into his executive protection mode and goes after answers. There is a touch of paranormal when Maddie begins to suspect her father’s ghost is in the house. What happens is not for me to say but for you to read.
**Winner: 1st Place – Best Contemporary / Erotic Romance Novel – 2015 PRG Reviewer’s Choice Awards**
