Deadly Desire — Brenda Joyce

The time is turn-of-the-century New York City. Society's elite host glittering balls inside sprawling mansions while outside, the teeming streets harbor secrets of their own.

New York City's Police Commissioner Rick Bragg has more than he can handle: in addition to the hoodlums and thugs that populate the city's underbelly, his feelings for Francesca Cahill are becoming more and more complicated. Francesca is an heiress, an innocent beauty who should marry someone other than him. But Francesca has a remarkable talent for solving crimes -- and this puts the two of them too close for comfort. To intensify matters, a Bragg family reunion is taking place in New York. And beautiful, willful Lucy Bragg is being stalked. As the stalking turns to threats, the threats turn to blackmail, and the blackmail turns to something entirely more nefarious than anyone can guess. And so Francesca and Rick begin a harrowing journey through the squalid underworld of the city, as well as the gilded drawing rooms of society. Soon Francesca finds herself irresistibly drawn to two men, to both the dark and the light, to safety and peril, to sensuality and true love...