Trace of Fever by Lori Foster

Trace of Fever. Lori Foster. Harlequin Books. June 2011. 400 pp.; pb. ISBN #: 9780373775750.

Trace Rivers is playing the role of bodyguard and messenger for the slimy criminal, Murray Coburn. Murray’s wife wants to play with Trace but she’s got some very twisted ideas of how she wants to accomplish that meeting. However, her plans are stalled with the arrival of Priscilla or Priss Patterson, who claims to be Murray’s daughter. No one believes her at all, and even Trace isn’t sure why she’s finally shown up at 24 years of age, a nondescript owner of an adult store selling movies and toys.

Trace has totally fallen for Priss faster than one could imagine, but his feelings are accentuated by his growing sense that Murray is planning something deadly for her and perhaps even for him. Why, for instance, does he sense someone following them by car in more than one place? Priss is expecting everything, but feelings get complicated when she meets Trace’s friends, Dare, Molly, and Chris, a group that feels like a very real family. For this close group is breaking her hard core defenses forged by her own natural and dysfunctional family!

And then the big boys arrive. What is their goal? Can Trace hold them off or discover their extremely aggressive agenda? What about Murray who is taking Trace on a secret mission while his girlfriend is heading off to discover Priss’s real story. By this time, hot, steamy sex scenes are flying every which way among all parties, albeit with and without love flaming the hormones!

Needles, threats, revealed secrets, kidnapping and more fill the tension-riddled pages for the remainder of this part-horrific and part-healing story! Lori Foster has upped the ante on this second novel in the “Men Who Walk With Honor” series. Trace of Fever is an impressive work of romance fiction!