Two years ago, Charlotte Massey destroyed my life and career with a single story. I rebuilt myself from the wreckage—harder, colder, and closed off to everything but work. Then I was handed a protection assignment, and I opened the file to find her face staring back at me. The woman I’d once trusted. The woman I’d once taken to The Players Club and lost myself inside. The woman who ruined me, in more ways than one.

Now she was my client. An investigative reporter who’d gotten too close to a powerful and dangerous businessman and now had a target on her back to prove it. Every instinct told me to let someone else handle her case, but the moment I saw her again—defiant, fearless, and impossibly beautiful—the anger flooding my veins mixed with something far more dangerous. Desire. Raw, consuming, and completely inconvenient. I still craved her, and I’d destroy anyone who tried to hurt her.

Forced into close proximity in a remote safe house, the tension between us became unbearable as we fought an attraction that refused to die. Her stubbornness infuriated me. Her vulnerability broke through defenses I thought were impenetrable. And somewhere between guarding her body and guarding my heart, the lines completely blurred.

When the enemy abducted her, I shattered every law to bring her home. What we uncovered along the way exposed a criminal empire, devastating corruption, and a family betrayal that nearly destroyed me all over again, making me realize that the woman I blamed for my downfall might be the only one capable of saving me. 

Playing with a Scandal is a high-heat bodyguard romance filled with second-chance tension, dominant protector energy, emotional scars, and a man who would burn down a criminal empire before he let the woman he loves slip though his fingers again.