When newswoman Britt Shelley wakes up to find herself in bed with Jay Burgess, a rising star detective in the Charleston PD, she remembers nothing of how she got there...or of how Jay wound up dead.
Handsome and hard-partying, Jay was a hero of the disastrous fire that five years earlier had destroyed Charleston's police headquarters. The blaze left seven people dead, but the death toll would have been much higher if not for the bravery of Jay and three other city officials who risked their lives to lead others to safety.
Firefighter Raley Gannon, Jay's lifelong friend, was off-duty that day. Though he might not have been a front-line hero, he was assigned to lead the investigation into the cause of the fire. It was an investigation he never got to complete. Because on one calamitous night, Raley's world was shattered.
Scandalized, wronged by the people he trusted most, Raley was forced to surrender the woman he loved and the work to which he'd dedicated his life. For five years his resentment against the men who exploited their hero status to further their careers -- and ruin his -- had festered, but he was helpless to set things right.
That changes when he learns of Jay Burgess's shocking death and Britt Shelley's claim that she has no memory of her night with him. As the investigation into Jay's death intensifies, and suspicion against Britt Shelley mounts, Raley realizes that the newswoman, Jay's last sexual conquest, might be his only chance to get personal vindication -- and justice for the seven victims of the police station fire.
But there are powerful men who don't want to address unanswered questions about the fire and who will go to any lengths to protect their reputations. As Raley and Britt discover more about what happened that fateful day, the more perilous their situation becomes, until they're not only chasing after the truth but running for their lives.
Sandra Lynn Cox was born on March 12, 1948 in Waco, Texas and raised in Ft. Worth. She is nothing if not serious when it comes to her work. As the oldest of five daughters, she was a responsible and mature girl, and always chose to read a book rather than play with dolls. Her responsible nature stayed with Sandra as she graduated from Texas Christian University with a degree in English, and in her job as a contributing feature reporter at the nationally syndicated PM Magazine in Dallas. When the show experienced mass layoffs, however, Sandra found herself out of work.
Sandra married Michael Brown, former television anchorman and award-winning documentarian of Dust to Dust, and returned to Ft. Worth. They had two children, Rachel and Ryan. Though she continued in her occasional position as a showroom model in Dallas, her husband encouraged her to try fiction writing while their children were at school. He had just left a career as a news anchor and talk-show host to form his own production company, so why shouldn't she take a creative risk, too?
Within a year Sandra sold her first novel, Love's Encore, under the name Rachel Ryan (taken from the first names of her two children). Soon thereafter, she was producing a succession of books for six different publishers, culling ideas from briefs in USA Today, television shows, and her own active imagination. She wrote two boosk as Laura Jordan and several books for Harlequin under the name Erin St. Claire.
Since the publication of her first novel in 1981, she has penned well over sixty books. Sandra has over fifty million copies of her books in print, and has achieved some major feats on what is perhaps the most highly regarded bestseller list of all--that of the New York Times. Since 1990, every one of Sandra's novels has appeared on the list. In total, her books have appeared on the prestigious list over thirty times.
In 1992 her novel "French Silk" was made into an ABC-TV movie.
