ROOTED IN DANGER - Terry Odell
Blackthorne, Inc , Book 3
Five Star
ISBN: 978-1-4328-2585-0
May 2012
Romantic Suspense

Aspen Corners, Oregon - Present Day

What was supposed to be a fun vacation for Torie Stoker ends in tragedy when her friend dies after being lost in the jungle.  To honor Kathy, Torie packs up and heads to Oregon , hoping to further Kathy's botanical research.  The timing is also good for Torie because she's probably lived in Miami a little too long.  With her thirtieth birthday coming up, her father is surely going to be trying very hard to find her after her disappearance years earlier.

After pulling a woman out of the jungle on one of his search and rescue missions for Blackthorne Inc., Fozzie Mayhew is asked to track down an heiress estranged from her family.  He figures it'll be an easy case, but from the moment he finds Torie Stoker – being led from her cabin at knifepoint – things get complicated.  Fozzie can't imagine that Blackthorne would be working with Torie's father if the man had also hired another group to take more drastic actions, but who else could be after her?

At thirteen, Torie was sent to boarding school and has been pretty much on her own since then.  Even before that, “family” didn't have too much meaning in her life because of her constant moves and her parents' social-climbing lifestyle.  When her grandfather insisted that she marry a man he approved of so that her husband could take over the family business, Torie chose to leave.  She's never been able to stand up for herself, or be anything other than the proper young lady she was raised to be, but in ROOTED IN DANGER, she begins to change.  Fozzie enjoys the covert operations he does with Blackthorne Inc., but isn't quite as enthusiastic about the more public cases the firm takes.  Torie is nothing like he'd expected when he was first contracted to find Victoria Stokes Hamilton, and he definitely likes the Torie he finds much better than the one he'd imagined.  Vulnerable and lacking in self-confidence, she's also nothing like the women he's usually attracted to – yet he finds himself drawn to her all the same.  As they try to evade the men hunting Torie, they also uncover a passion that cannot be denied.

Though part of the Blackthorne Inc. series, ROOTED IN DANGER can be read as a stand-alone book, and is a captivating blend of romance and mystery.

Jennifer Bishop