When Hugh MacCarrick was a young man he did something very reckless with Jane Weyland, the daughter of his superior. While she merely used him as a summer flirtation to practise her wiles on, he fell in love. This was ill-advised because Hugh's family harboured dangerous secrets and was shadowed by a deadly curse. Even if these obstacles were absent, Hugh knew a woman like Jane - heart-breakingly beautiful, rich, and from a prominent English family - would never marry a Scot with no title or prospects. So, to avoid the impossible temptation to kiss her and the misery of seeing her marry another, he left the country. Now ten years later, Hugh is wealthy, an assassin in Her Majesty's Service, and still secretly in love with Jane. When he receives a missive that her life is in danger and rushes to protect her, will he be able to resist the overwhelming need to make her his?

Jane Weyland is furious when her father summons Hugh to London to protect her. Clearly her father has lost his mind, even with his assurances of a speedy annulment when things die down, but why would Hugh agree to this insanity after she all but begged him to say no? How dare he do this to her? Her fury stoked, she decides to torment him just as she had all those years ago with soft touches, whispers and seductive play - that he can do nothing about it without risking marriage to her, a consequence he'd made clear he didn't want. But she soon discovers that Hugh is not the gentle young man he used to be and that toying with the fever-pitched desires of a hardened warrior might get her burned.