Protecting What's His

Ginger Peet finds a purse in Nashville with $50,000 inside, and she keeps it. The money could give her and her teenage sister a fresh start. She packs up the cash, her goth sister and a life-sized statue of Dolly Parton, and drives out of town for Chicago.

The new city comes with a complication living next door. Derek Tyler is a homicide lieutenant, and he is intense, good-looking and plainly interested in Ginger. For a woman on the run with stolen money, a police officer in the next apartment is a real problem.

Derek suspects she is hiding something, and he has no plans to back off. His interest in her goes well past curiosity, and he treats what he wants as already his.

The contemporary romance carries a comic, flirtatious tone and a spicy edge to the attraction. The question driving it is how long Ginger can keep her secret from a man who is watching her this closely.