Defended by the Bodyguard

by Caridad Piñeiro

He only intended to protect her

But wound up falling…hard!

After a series of scary social media threats, cyber tech expert Robbie Whitaker decided to lend his services to Selene Reilly. Soon, however, the intimidation toward the lovely musician turned physical, and reality set in. Though he wasn’t trained to be anyone’s bodyguard, in the short time he’d known Selene, Robbie was certain he’d do anything in his power to protect her. And while Selene seemed determined to keep some secrets, the unexpected guardian within Robbie was taking no chances. He’d be defending her day and night.

From Harlequin Seek thrills. Solve crimes. Justice served.

Discover more action-packed stories in the Crooked Pass Security series. All books are stand-alone with uplifting endings but were published in the following

Book 1: Cliffside Kidnapping
Book 2: Defended by the Bodyguard

Genres: Audiobook

224 pages, Mass Market Paperback

Published July 29, 2025

About the author

Caridad Pineiro is a transplanted Long Island girl who has fallen in love with the Jersey Shore. When Caridad isn’t taking long strolls along the boardwalk, she’s also a NY Times and USA Today bestselling author with over a million romance novels sold worldwide. Caridad is passionate about writing and helping others explore and develop their skills as writers. She is a founding member of the Liberty States Fiction Writers and has presented workshops at the RT Book Club Convention, Romance Writers of America National Conference as well as various writing organizations throughout the country. You can connect with Caridad at www.caridad.com. You can also find Caridad on:

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Reviews

[Tina Loves To Read · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a Romantic Suspense, and this is the second book in the Crooked Pass Security Book series. I have not read the first book in this series. I read this book by listening to the audiobook. I am not sure if it is because I did not read the first book in this series, but I felt I was put into the middle of a book when I started this book. I never felt completely found in this book. I also did not connect to the characters in this book. I received an ARC of this book. This review is my own honest opinion about the book like all my reviews are.

[Madison Warner Fairbanks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Defended by the Bodyguard by Caridad Pineiro
Crooked Pass Security series #2. Harlequin Intrigue. Spin off from South Beach Security multiple series. Best read in series order since characters and conversations about the prior case and why they are in Colorado are talked about but not in any detail.
Robbie Whitaker is in Colorado wrapping up a previous case. When he finds out Selene Reilly is being threatened, he jumps in to protect her.

🎧 I listened to an audiobook narrated by Marisa Blake who did the first in this series as well. The performance was great with specific voices for Robbie and Selene as well as a few of the secondary characters. Emotions such as fear and anxiety came through clearly. Spanish phrases were fluent.
I listened at 1.5 and slightly higher to more closely match my reading speed.

Fast action and suspense as Robbie falls quickly for the lovely Selene.

I received a copy of this from NetGalley and Harlequin Audio.

[Becky (romantic_pursuing_feels) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Note: Some of my goodreads shelves can be spoilers

Overall: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔 (I really felt like I should have read book 1 to get the heroine’s (and possibly the hero’s) full story)
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡ (this one is pretty low angst)
Romance: 💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋 (These scenes are pretty short and not a ton of details)
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑 (some are even shorter)
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥ish. There’s a light scene I decided not to count so it might feel hotter to you
Humor: Just a touch, it’s more suspenseful and serious
Perspective: third person from both hero and heroine
More character focused or plot focused? plot
How did the speed of the story feel? medium to fast
When mains are first on page together: immediately
Cliffhanger: No, this ends with a happily ever after
Epilogue: No
Format: voluntarily listened to an advanced reader copy through NetGalley in audiobook form
Why I chose this book: The cover!
Mains: Robbie Whitaker and Selene Reilly – This is a M/F relationship between a cishet hero and heroine
(Descriptions found at end of my review)

Should I read in order?
I think you should. I didn’t….and I wish I had started there. There’s quite a bit of references to events that occurred in the last book, including the trauma this heroine went through. It’s not totally necessary – like this romance does stand alone, but I think there’d be better understanding of the plot and character depth starting there. (Cliffside Kidnapping is book 1)

Basic plot:
Robbie is ready to protect Selene – she has threats made against her and he’s determined to defend her and defeat the threat.

Give this a try if you want:
- contemporary romance
- Denver, Colorado setting
- suspenseful elements – the heroine has a stalker and has been kidnapped in the past
- heroine is a musician
- hero works in cyber technology and is protecting the heroine
- pets – heroine adopts a dog
- lower steam – There’s 2-3 full scenes (I counted 2, one was pretty light) and they are shorter

Ages:
- Didn’t catch either. Would guess 30s? Late 20s?

First line:
Stars exploded across his vision as a fist connected to his left eye.

My thoughts:
I knew this one was going to have suspenseful elements, but I was really hoping for more tension and romance. I felt like this was so low angst and gentle and easy in the relationship department and I wasn’t really interested in the mystery/suspense elements so it was just boring to me.

I think I should have read book 1 – it really seems to pick up on the heels of that story with character crossover and events discussed from that book. And I struggle when someone is in danger or being blackmailed, etc and they just hide it. They hide it to ‘protect others’ or because they don’t want to bother anyone or they think they can handle it or it’s not a big deal. It always puts others in danger, bothers everyone, they can’t handle it and it is a big deal 😂

This relationship was just so easy and low angst and he was content to let her know he wanted her and wait for her and there just wasn’t much tension for me. I get it – the stakes were high in regards to the plot and the suspense, but for me it just wasn’t a favorite.

For those that want an easy relationship with some suspenseful elements and a touch of ‘whodunit’ mystery, you should give this one a go!

As for the narration, I overall liked Marisa Blake. She was fine – I liked her pacing – she was faster which really matched the suspenseful tone of the book. I wouldn’t necessarily seek her out purposefully like I do other narrators but wouldn’t avoid either.

Few random reading stats for this author
# of books read: This is my first
Average rating from me: 3 stars
Favorite book: This one by default

Content warnings: These should be taken as a minimum of what to expect. It’s very possible I have missed some.

- stalking and harassment and threats for the heroine
- arson of the heroine’s music studio
- scenes of violence

Author content warnings? Didn’t catch any (I always encourage you to check author’s websites, since Amazon penalizes authors for certain content warning words in their novels)


Locations of kisses/intimate scenes, safe sex aspects, consent, pregnancy/child in the story:

Safe sex: Condoms used
How’s the consent? It’s pretty good – the hero understands the trauma she’s been through and respects her personal space and takes time/asks for things
Pregnancy/children in story? Heroine’s sister is pregnant, but there’s no children or pregnancy for the mains
Chapter 7 (28% ) – kiss
Chapter 9 (38%) – kisses
Chapter 15 (62%) – kisses
Chapter 16 (66%) – 🔥 missionary
Chapter 18 (77%) – kiss
Chapter 20 (87%) – 🔥 her on top
Chapter 21 (92%)– sex but without many details

Total chapters: 24


Extra stuff like what my review breakdown means, where to find me, and book clubs


Full break down on what my ratings above mean here:
Overall: How I felt about it everything considered!
Readability: How ‘readable’ was the book? Did I fly through it? Did I have to tell myself to pick it back up repeatedly? Were any passages confusing? (I will probably score like (1) is literally unreadable due to formatting/typing errors, etc (2) There were lots of errors that made it difficult to read OR It was extremely confusing and I had to reread passages to make sense of it OR I disliked it so much I had to bribe myself to keep reading (3) I didn’t really want to keep reading and would have preferred to abandon the read and start something else OR some minor continuity issues/confusion (4) I liked it fine, maybe a minor error or 2. I was happy to pick it up when I had time. (5) I never wanted to put this down. I thought about it when I wasn’t reading it. I hid in the bathroom from my kids to read. I threw inappropriate food at my children for dinner so I could read instead.)
Feels: Totally subjective to each person but did the book give me any tingles? Any butterflies? Did it rip my heart out (in a good way?)
Emotional depth: How well do I feel I know the characters at the end? How much did I feel their emotions throughout the story?
Sexual tension: Again, subjective, but how strong was the wanting and longing to me between the characters? A book might have strong sexual tension without a single touch.
Romance: Was there romance? Did romantic things happen? This can be actions/words/thoughts of the characters and again is subjective.
Sensuality: This is how the intimate scenes are written. Kisses and sexual scenes – how sensual were they? Were they on the mechanical side? Was there emotional pull tied in? Were the details explicit or flowery? These are subjective but generally (1) too short to get a good judgment (2) not all what I'm looking for - very vague or flowery prose (3) either not explicit enough or not enough emotional pull (too mechanical/physically descriptive without the emotions) (4) what I love in a scene (5) absolute perfection - perfect balance of emotional longing and explicit descriptions
Sex Scene Length: How long the bedroom scenes are (generally (1) is 1-3 sentences (2) is a few paragraphs to a page-ish (3) is about average, a few pages (4) more well developed scenes, quite a few pages with descriptions (5) the majority of the book takes place in the bedroom. This is always hard to tell for me on audio!
Steam Scale: Generally, each flame is a scene. If scenes are super close together I sometimes combine them. If a scene is super short or so vague I don’t know what’s happening, I don’t count it. There’s some levels of grey but generally the number of flames is how many sex scenes there are (I max out at 5 so I’ll put a + after if there’s more than that)


Find me
Instagram || The Storygraph || Bookbub ||

Book Clubs
The Ton and the Tartans (Historical Romance)
Upturned Petticoats and Undone Cravats (Historical Romance with Steam Requirements)
A Love Less Ordinary (Science Fiction, Paranormal, Monster, Fantasy)
Modern Manuscripts (Contemporary Romance)
Words for the Wicked (Contemporary Romance with Steam Requirements)
Vintage Romance (Old School Romance – published 2000 and prior)

[Ashley Yungbluth · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Defended by the Bodyguard" is the second book in the "Crooked Pass Security" series by Caridad Pineiro. Selene is being threatened and has had to overcome some not so good things in her life. Robbie and his family have a security business, and Robbie helps investigate what is happening. Robbie wasn't expecting to fall for the one he is protecting and vice-versa. I really liked the scene when they went to the animal shelter and saw Lily. This was such a great addition to the series. I bought the paperback to continue in the series. I like that Caridad included Lily and had her get her happily ever after, too.

[Hope · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hot on the heels of events in Cliffside Kidnapping, Robbie Whitaker believes the masked assailant who attacked him may have something to do with the money laundering scheme he and his sister helped uncover. But soon it becomes clear the target is Selene Reilly, the beautiful musician he was serving as an informal bodyguard for. Who is her stalker? Could it be someone she trusts?

Selene Reilly survived an abusive husband and a kidnapping. She's not ready to open up and let a man back into her life, especially not when an unknown stalker could put them both in danger. But the attraction is undeniable. Can she open up her heart and love again?

The book drops the listener right in the middle of events from the previous book, so readers who have not read book 1 may be a little lost. But the threads from book 1 quickly wrap up within the first few chapters and the rest of the story focuses on Robbie and Selene trying to uncover the stalker. While at first Robbie tries to treat Selene with kid gloves due to her trauma, I appreciated that Selene called him out on it and told him how she wanted to be treated. I also appreciated that while Selene was working through her trauma, she refused to let it define her or let others define her by it.

Lucy the pittie mix was also a lovable addition. While this was an open door (to the reader) romance, I chuckled at Selene closing the bedroom door on Lucy because she didn't want her to know what mom and dad were doing. Poor Lucy was left wondering why they were wrestling without her. 😂

The narrator did an excellent job with both male and female voices and with the Spanish sprinkled throughout.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the review copy.

[B. Evans · Rating 2 out of 5]

ACL from NetGalley.

The narrator has a nice voice but not distinct enough between characters.

As a side note, when I signed up for this ACL, I didn’t realize this was part of multiple different series.

This was a DNF at 13%. I was lost. It felt like I was thrown into the middle of a story. The FMC’s back story sounded interesting. I did some digging. Turns out this is like book 2 of ANOTHER series’ book 2! (But the title on goodreads makes it sound like this is book 2 of a different series??) And that other series has different authors??? So bizarre.
I’m not opposed to a series written by different authors, but I feel like they need to be all in 1 book. I read a trilogy like 20 years ago where each book was written by a different author, but they were all in the same book and I enjoyed that. But this… It was very unclear. This should not be considered a stand alone.

After I got over the above, I tried continuing the story, but there was no chemistry or angst between the MCs. I get the impression this is a book about healing, and I may have enjoyed it if I had read the other books before this one (so book 2 of the cold case series, but I probably would have needed to read book 1 of that series first, who knows, and then book 1 of this series, which isn’t even about these 2 MCs??)

If I could’ve found the book that actually has these 2 MCs’ stories, then I probably would have read that one and then tried this one again, but it is so convoluted, I got a headache just trying to figure it out.

By 13%, I was too frustrated to continue.

[Jayna · Rating 2 out of 5]

My review for book one complained about feeling lost from the beginning- that I was missing backstory. Well, I felt that much, maybe more, for this book.

This almost overlaps with book 1, and again, there is so much that I don't know due to the series being spun off of another. (Or, I assume the answers are there.)

To make it worse, the characters from book 1 make appearances, but there is a whole new set of people introduced. TOO MUCH with not enough to support it!!!!!!!

I admittedly get annoyed in series when author's recap the previous books. But, when the books belong to a completely different series, it is kind of necessary.

Basically, if you've read other books by this author, go for it. If you are new to her, this is not where you start. You will just end up frustrated and unable to connect to the book.

Marisa Blake narrates the audiobook.

I received an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Selene Reilly has been through some serious storms and come out the other side shaky but still standing. She is starting to make a name for herself with her music and even has a deal in the works. So of course here comes the rain again in the form of a creepy stalker.
Robbie Whitaker is a tech god white hat hacker. He is smitten by Selene and will do whatever he can to keep her safe and make her feel safe enough to give him a chance.
I felt so bad for Selene. Her life has been one trauma after the next. She really needs someone to love and protect her and Robbie is volunteering for the job. That is if he can keep them both alive long enough to fall in love.
Love, danger and excitement. This tale has it all.

[Karen Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book more than the first one in the series. There is definite overlap so I would suggest at least if reading the first book. Reading the prior series, I don’t think is necessary but it could be helpful. Selene has a stalker and there are plenty of suspects to work through. The pacing is good and I enjoyed the characters. My one complaint would be the title as Robbie is not a bodyguard by a white hat hacker. Looking forward to the next book now that Sophie and Robbie both have their HEA.

[Jeannette Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

ALC Review

Now to start please read book 1 before reading this one because you will not fully understand the full story. But this book also was a bit all over the place and confusing. The plot and idea of this book was great but it felt like there was a lot of backstory missing through the book.

[Michelle Sherlock · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a cute romance. I like how to fmc had gone through trauma but didnt expect to be coddled. Also that the mmc wasn't trying to be overly protective and not let her do anything. Definitely didnt see the twist about who it was about. That was well played. I really enjoyed this book

[Laramee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is book 2 in the series and I highly recommend reading the series in order. It will make more sense that way! I enjoyed how the narrator brought the story to life! A romantic suspense not to be missed!

I received an audio ARC through Netgalley and all opinions are my own.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Defended by the Bodyguard by Caridad Piñeiro is the second book in the series. Narrated by Marisa Blake. This is a romantic suspense. Fast paced. Thank you to #NetGalley and #https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... Audio for this arc. This is my honest review. Released July 29,2025

[Harlequin Books]

Romantic Suspense, Police Procedural Mystery & Detective
Miniseries
Crooked Pass Security (Book #2)

[Harlequin Books]

Romantic Suspense, Police Procedural Mystery & Detective
Miniseries
Crooked Pass Security (Book #2)

[Sheri Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoroughly enjoyable read. it was nice catching up with family members from previous books.