Rough Around the Edges — Patricia Keelyn

A protector whose touch was as seductive as it was dangerous . . .

Alejandro (Alex) Jamison grew up on the rough side of Miami. As a teenager, he'd been arrested repeatedly for petty crimes, and then at eighteen, he was caught breaking into a jewelry store, and it seemed his life was set in a downward spiral of ever-increasing lawlessness. Then a judge offered him a choice: military service or jail time. He enlisted, and it woke him up and changed his life.

Now he runs a youth center in his old neighborhood where he's determined to prevent other young people from traveling down the path he almost took.

Then, Dr. Kristen Helton walks into his life, disrupting his carefully built world.

He knew the first time he met her that she spelled trouble. She was an outsider, a rich do-gooder he expected to run when things got rough on the mean streets he called home. But she was his equal in courage and determination, a woman as stubborn as she was beautiful, but could he ask her to share a desperate struggle that risked their future, even their lives?

Kristen Helton had defied her wealthy parents only twice in her life: once when she went to medical school instead of taking her place in Palm Beach society, and then when she'd accepted a position in a free medical clinic in one of Miami's roughest neighborhoods. Then she met Alex Jamison, a man from a different world, a man she knew her family would never accept.

Despite all the reasons to keep her distance, Kristen is drawn to the haunted hero whose powerful body awakened a hunger too strong to resist as she joins his fight to keep kids out of trouble.

Could a woman who'd always played by the rules help a renegade battle the odds and win?