The President's Vow

She has picked exactly three locks in her life and none of them mattered. This one is a clubhouse door at one in the morning, and if she gets it wrong she will be explaining herself to men who do not ask questions twice. A deadbolt at a duplex did not count. Neither did the lockbox at a motel the summer after her mother died, the one with the sticky second tumbler she cracked with a hairpin and a lot of patience. Those were practice. The bathroom window is smaller than she hoped. Rowan has circled the building twice, counting lights and listening for voices, memorising the way the gravel crunches under her boots and where the security floods leave shadows deep enough to hide in. The main lot holds a dozen bikes. She is inside for eleven minutes before somebody turns a light on. Maddox has been president for four years, has never once caught anybody in this building who did not want to be caught, and is going to spend the rest of the book working out which category she falls into. What follows: a lock she was not supposed to pick, a girl who broke in, terms of surrender, the room next to the devil's, an anchor and a chain, secrets kept by women nobody asks, a first ride, and a confession delivered against concrete. *I'm not taking a traitor charge from some piece of—* *You'll speak about her with respect, or you'll speak to my fist.* He crossed to her, took her face in both hands and kissed her, the way a man kisses somebody he almost lost. Dark motorcycle-club romance with a heroine who breaks in for a reason nobody guesses, a president who should hand her over and does not, a club divided against itself, a first ride that changes the arithmetic, forced proximity in a room next to his, explicit scenes, and a guaranteed happy ending with no cliffhanger.