Phlox Beauty

Jared Connor lost his innocence at the age of 10 when his father poured gasoline around the family home and left his two young sons to die in the flames. Now an adult, he's carefully crafted a pretend life where he can hide his scars and his death row father behind the disguise of a caretaker's pickup truck and a pair of gardening shears. But when a beautiful woman with scars of her own barges into his quiet, solitary life, Jared finds it increasingly difficult to hide from what he really wants.

Adventure journalist Colt Buchanan grabbed his own bootstraps and yanked hard - leaving the poverty of his rural hometown behind for a scholarship to a fancy East Coast college and then the bright lights of the big city. But when an assignment in the Middle East leaves his interview subject dead and Colt's memory riddled with holes you can drive a bus through, he comes back to the only place that's ever felt like home - the Manhattan apartment of a pretty Hollywood princess he never had any business wanting.