Tightrope

Renowned fashion designer Brinn Gallagher's life is upended when she is ensnared in a risky cat and mouse spy game involving an old college acquaintance. Paired with her archnemesis, cunning undercover CIA operative Carmen Foxdale, Brinn is carted off to Sicily and forced to walk a tightrope between self-preservations and self-destruction. Watched closely and bereft of family support for weeks on end, Brinn licks her wounds from a recent breakup, adding to her misery. An unrelenting Mediterranean heat wave and the unwanted advances from an entitled entrepreneur amplify her discomfort and push her to the brink of madness. Lawyer Palmer Westicott throws himself into his work to take his mind off his heartbreak. His arrival in Italy to negotiate an international contract is complicated when he is brought face to face with the woman who ghosted him. Worse still, he must watch Brinn interact with the new man in her life and the sly spy who had almost gotten her killed. Ross Gallagher, chief financial officer of Gallagher Incorporated, a Chicago-based, family-owned fashion house, returns home from an off grid retreat only to find his sister missing and staying with the one man he had beaten up years earlier in a fit of rage. Worried and guilt-ridden by his decision to withhold what had happened to Brinn during that long-ago night drives him to enlist help to rescue her. Private security contractor and former hostage negotiator, SPNI Agent Nadia Kapoor, poses as Ross's fiancee on a mission to extract Brinn. Their arrival in Sicily makes it clear that they are in over their heads and will need to pull out all the stops to survive. Fleeing in the dead of night through a treacherous stormfront leaves the group stranded in the Republic of Tunisia, Africa. Wounded and out of options, they take refuge with a person from Nadia's past with whom she had lost all contact her mother. Tightrope is the second book in the Sultry Chicago romantic suspense series. The characters face personally intense, challenging situations and are confronted by the darkest aspects of society. Fighting off dangerously unwelcomed advances and more that place their lives on the line, they are compelled to set aside their differences and work together in order to make their escape.