Reviewed by Kimberley
TITLE: Guarded Desires
SERIES: Uniform Encounters 4
AUTHOR: Morticia Knight
PUBLISHER: Totally Bound
LENGTH: 206 pages
BLURB:
A sexy young National Guardsman, a snarky bear of a DEA Agent and a vicious Mexican drug cartel. Someone’s going to be sorry.
Special Agent Stephen Morris thought his home life had settled into a pleasantly dull routine. Hanging out in his yard and barbequing is a typical weekend for the brawny mid-thirties man—and his partner Rigo from the DEA office is usually there with his family to keep him company. Being assigned to a main border crossing in Nogales, Arizona, keeps him busy enough at work, so he doesn’t have time to worry about love. However, that doesn’t mean he’s not lonely.
Twenty-two year old PFC Guardsman, Joseph Pirelli, is on an active-duty-for-training mission to help support border patrol and the DEA. The Vasquez drug cartel has become even more vicious than ever—going so far as to target civilians on both sides of the border. Joseph and Stephen are thrown together in a direct conflict with the cartel and a part of Joseph’s dark past is revealed.
Joseph is incredibly attracted to Stephen, even though he doesn’t typically go for older men. He longs to find love, but is still recuperating from an abusive past. The idea of becoming close to a man who could physically harm him brings up fears that may ruin his chances at any kind of relationship with the big teddy bear agent.
Sometimes love shows up when you aren’t looking for it and gives you a chance you shouldn’t ignore. Both men will have the opportunity to wonder what it would be like to lose the other and to decide what they’re willing to risk to be together.
REVIEW:
This book veered a little away from the firemen and paramedics in Mesa we saw in the first three books, but still retained the overall feel of the series, if that makes sense. At first I started reading this and thought that the author was taking the series in another direction, I thought, “Okay, now we’re on to the guardsmen phase.” But this story fits in very well with the other books.
This book was pretty darn good! There was a lot of stuff written in the book that I had no idea about; she researched this aspect of the story pretty well. She also did a great job when dealing with the issue of domestic abuse. Joseph’s character was well written. I particularly liked how he was able to get out of that situation and become stronger for it. Knight didn’t dismiss his experience, but wrote the character dealing with the residual effects of that abuse in a way that made it much more realistic. I also liked how she paired Joseph with Stephen who was physically similar to his abusive ex. The banter between Stephen and Rigo (Stephen’s DEA partner) was hilarious and showed the love, loyalty and respect these two men have for each other.
Even though this book is part of a series, this book, like the others in the series can be read as a standalone.
RATING:
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Thank you Kimberley! 🙂