This is the second installment in Dimon's Corcoran Team series. Ruthless picks up a few months after the end of Fearless and features Davis’s brother Paxton and coffee shop owner Kelsey Moore. Paxton is recovering from the injuries he sustained in Fearless and keeping an eye on Kelsey, whose brother Sean has disappeared with valuable corporate secrets.

The book opens with what I’ve come to consider a Dimon trademark: Kelsey is going about a normal day at the shop when two men in suits come in and they aren’t there for the pastries. She senses something is wrong and heads for the back door but isn’t able to shake them, and when Paxton tries to whisk her away to safety she fights him too, unsure that there are any good guys in this scenario.

Of course we know there are, and Paxton’s ensuing actions lead her to trust him, so she soon makes the acquaintance of two more of the core members of the Corcoran Team, techie Joel and the leader, Connor. The author is very good at giving us bits of information about supporting characters and weaving them into the main storyline without making them obvious sequel bait or info-dumping. If you haven’t read the first installment you’ll miss some of Paxton’s family history, but that information is briefly reprised here and then further developed.

Kelsey’s and Paxton’s family issues provide somewhat parallel backstories, although Kelsey’s are more developed and drive the plot line. I enjoyed the additional reveals in the Weeks brothers’ family history, and I’m hoping they continue over the course of the series. We get to see some of the action from Sean’s point of view and he came across to me as basically a kid who hadn’t sorted out his life yet; he was both sympathetic and frustrating. Dimon does a good job of showing how siblings can still turn to each other in a crisis even when events have driven them apart, and the father is genuinely frightening. The mystery plot is tightly constructed and works well within the category constraints, although as usual the ending is more rushed than I would have liked.

I gravitate toward Harlequin Intrigues because the mystery is front and center but there is always supposed to be a credible romance as well, and I think Dimon executes this form as well as anyone writing in the line. She manages to write a compelling suspense plot with a romantic relationship that grows organically as the mystery unfolds. Sometimes this is achieved by giving the couple a previous history, while at other times they are drawn together by a shared history or interests (as I think Paxton and Kelsey are here). Either way, the physical attraction doesn’t spring out of nowhere or have nothing else to buttress it, and so despite the short word count I finished the book feeling confident in what the future holds for the relationship.
mystery ( )

Very good book, full of action from the very beginning. Kelsey loves her coffee shop and for a bonus the last two weeks there have been daily visits by Paxton Weeks, a definitely sexy guy who has been flirting with her. When two guys try to kidnap her it's Pax who comes to her rescue and then whisks her away to protect her from the people who are after her to get to her brother. I really liked Kelsey. She had a crappy family life thanks to her con man father and has been estranged from him and her brother for years. She doesn't trust easily and when Pax suddenly turns into a fighting machine and tries to get her to leave the shop, she isn't going to go easily. I loved the way she stood up to him and fought back until she was convinced he was at least the lesser of two evils. It was even better when he got her back to Corcoran's headquarters and she stood up to all of them. I loved the way that she had them cooperating with her. She does a great job of handling the stresses of being attacked. She also goes from not trusting Pax to trusting him pretty quickly. The attraction between them has been building during his visits to her shop, and now it really takes off. They have to try to keep a lid on it as they try to find her brother and figure out who is after Kelsey. I also liked the way she seemed to understand Pax pretty well.

Pax is a great hero. He was injured saving his brother's girl in Fearless. Now he's recovering and has been given the job of staking out Kelsey's shop to see if her brother shows up. When two guys try to kidnap her he breaks cover to save her. Even though he gets frustrated when she doesn't just do what he says, he's pretty impressed with her self-preservation skills. When he finally gets her away he ends up telling her more than he's supposed to because he understands that's the only way to get her to cooperate. He really wants to keep her safe and her insistence on being an active participant makes it much harder. It also makes it hard to fight his attraction to her, which can be a distraction under the circumstances. I loved his protectiveness and the way he got angry on her behalf over the way her father and brother treated her. His vulnerability showed at the end, and he was able to show her that he really cared.

The mystery itself was pretty good. Of the secondary characters, I really liked Joel. His work as the tech and communication guy put him in the spot for some marvelous lines. I'd love to see him get his own story soon. ( )

In Dimon’s romantic suspense novel, coffee shop owner Kelsey Moore was attracted to Paxton Weeks and looked forward to his daily visits. Unknown to Kelsey, Paxton’s daily visits were to protect her from potential harm. When two robbers hold Kelsey hostage, Paxton is there to save her even though he blows his cover to do it. Now that his secret is out in the open and Kelsey really is in danger, they will reluctantly team together to fight the danger head-on.

A strong addition to the Corcoran Team series. ( )