Keeping Caroline

The K-9s Are Coming! #2

by Vickie Taylor

IN FROM THE COLD...

Hostage negotiator Matt Burkett couldn't have said what had drawn him back to the wife he'd lost when tragedy tore their world apart. All he knew was that he had to see her. And the moment he did, he realized he had to make her his again....

Caroline Everett was torn by his sudden reappearance in her life. She wanted desperately to believe that they could overcome the past and make a future together. But so much pain stood between them now -- and so many secrets....

And what would happen to their undying yet fragile love when he learned the most painful secret of all -- about the precious child he didn't know was his...?

256 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published March 1, 2002

About the author

Vickie Taylor wrote her first novel in 1997. Upon completion, she was too chicken to give the manuscript to anyone she knew to read, so she sent her baby off to a few contests to get some anonymous feedback instead. Little did she know how her life was about to change: a few months later, she had won all four of the Romance Writers of America chapter contests she’d entered, was a Golden Heart finalist and had sold the book to Silhouette Intimate Moments!

Since then, Vickie has written numerous romantic suspense novels for Silhouette Books and Berkley Sensation, garnering such recognition as the Daphne du Maurier Award of Excellence in Romantic Suspense, a four-and-a-half star “Top Pick” review in Romantic Times, and a coveted RWA Rita nomination for her work.

In 2006, Vickie continued her acclaimed paranormal series featuring Les Gargouillen (the Gargoyles) with FLESH AND STONE, the sequel to the smashing debut CARVED IN STONE. The third book in the series, LEGACY OF STONE, is now on bookstore shelves everywhere.

Vickie lives in a small town in north Texas dubbed “The Heart of Horse Country” where she rounds out her writing days raising horses, volunteering with the local Humane Society, and serving on a K-9 search and rescue team

Reviews

[Saly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a second chance at love book, the hero and heroine had been in love with each other forever. She fell for him at sixteen but she was too young so the hero left to join the army and returned for her five years later and she waited for him, they got married and she was pregnant and they were happy together despite the fact she couldn't have a second baby but that all changed when their eleven year old son got leukaemia, the hero the big hostage negotiator felt helpless and withdrew emotionally into his work and so did Caroline and when their son died a year later both couldn't share their grief especially the hero, so they lived like shadows for a year, the heroine wanting a baby again but the hero shut off, so she left.

The hero comes to see her again a year later, he is still closed off and depressed, he has given up on faith, life, happiness and has even thought about pulling a gun to his head. He comes to free his wife, to let her find happiness atleast that is what he tells himself and sees how his quiet wife has changed, she is planning on opening up a place for special kids and is moving forward in life and then he learns their last time produced their daughter and he is so encased in ice that he plans on getting out of their life because he has nothing left within himself and the heroine wants to let him go as well because when he closed himself off she started questioning his love, that maybe he married her because she was pregnant and she wants to live for the future.

Both the hero and heroine were people in pain and the love was buried under it, it is almost at the end the hero has to come to accept that he cannot fix everything and that the reason he was the way he was, was because he was suffering from depression and that he needed his wife and baby with him and that memories of his son were good. He starts of wanting to get a divorce and then wanting a second chance and we experience the tumult of emotions these two go through. Of course all of this is aided by some danger.

[Bobby Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slow starting. Got better after about halfway through.

[Deanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those book that stays with you long after you first read it and that often calls to you to read it again and again.