Dear Reader,
Simona came into Deadly Rescue already armed.
Not only with the pistol strapped to her body, but with the sharp edges she used to keep everyone safely out of reach.
Especially doctors.
She had good reasons for that. Simona had spent years surviving in a world where trusting the wrong person could get her killed. She knew how to disappear, how to spot surveillance, how to break into a locked room, and how to put a bullet exactly where she wanted it.
Then I put Dr. Jameson Scott in her path.
Scotch is a former Navy trauma surgeon with an easy Southern drawl, enormous shoulders, and the maddening habit of staying calm when Simona wants him rattled. She calls him arrogant. He calls her Sprite, mostly because he knows she hates it.
Naturally, they’re perfect for each other.
But the idea behind this book wasn’t simply an enemies-to-lovers romance between a spy and the doctor determined to get under her skin. What interested me was taking away the one thing Simona had always depended on.
It happens in a single gunshot.
One moment she’s charging into danger with her weapon raised. The next, she’s bleeding in the back of an SUV while Scotch presses his hand over the wound.
This woman has survived things that would break most people, but when she looks at him and admits, “I’m scared,” everything between them changes.
That was the moment I wanted to build the book around.
Because Scotch doesn’t answer with a grand declaration. He gives her something much simpler.
And then he proves it.
He keeps her alive in the back of a speeding vehicle. He operates on her when there is no one else qualified to do it. When he learns she’s allergic to opioids, he has to find another way to get her through the pain.
But the physical rescue is only the beginning.
Simona can tolerate being shot more easily than she can tolerate needing someone. She doesn’t know what to do with a man who sees her frightened and doesn’t think she’s weak. She certainly doesn’t know what to do with one who can handle every weapon she points in his direction and still come closer.
Scotch understands something about her before she’s ready to admit it herself.
She doesn’t need a man who will take over her life.
She needs one strong enough to stand beside her while she fights for it.
That distinction mattered to me because Simona is never helpless. Even wounded, she is watching, calculating, and making plans of her own. The mystery surrounding her past belongs to her, and she isn’t about to sit safely at home while someone else untangles it.
So she does what Simona does.
She runs.
Across Paris, through back alleys and hidden apartments, and eventually toward the pieces of a childhood she never fully understood.
Scotch follows because there is no version of this story where he lets her face it alone.
I loved putting these two together because their strengths are so different. Simona survives by remaining suspicious of everyone. Scotch saves lives by asking people to place themselves in his hands.
He needs her to trust him.
She needs him to understand what that trust will cost her.
And every time she thinks she has slipped away, there he is again, infuriatingly steady, refusing to be scared off by the danger or by her.
Especially by her.
Of course, this is an Agile Security & Rescue book, so their journey gets much bigger than either of them expects. The hunt through Simona’s past exposes a secret that reaches far beyond one former spy. There are people searching for her, questions about where she came from, and a discovery that changes everything she thought she knew about herself.
But beneath the gunfire, pursuit, and international mystery, Deadly Rescue is about a woman learning that accepting love isn’t the same as surrendering her freedom.
And it’s about a man who knows how to repair a wounded body, discovering that the woman on his operating table is about to crack his own heart wide open.
Scotch saves Simona’s life after that gunshot.
That was the part I loved writing.
Simona and Scotch’s story is Deadly Rescue, and you’ll find it on Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited.
Jenna Gunn
