The Guardians Series: A Romantic Thriller Anthology Books 1-3. The Guardians Series, #4.5

Get lost in this collection of intense, compelling romantic thrillers by award-winning author Hope Anika.  Book One: The Bequest2016 Finalist, The Daphne Du Maurier Award For Excellence in Mystery/Suspense  Cheyenne Elias has inherited a child. A boy she doesn't know and doesn't particularly want; a boy whose mother was once Cheyenne's most hated person in the world. There are a million reasons to walk away: her anger, her past, her certainty that there is nothing benevolent in this act by a woman who almost killed her.
But abandoning the boy to a system she barely survived is not an option. Will Blackheart has lost everything. His SEAL team, his country, and-upon occasion-his mind. Worse, he's lost something that has the capacity to kill thousands. Left for dead in the Afghan desert, Will has risen solely to regain that which was taken...and to punish those who dared take it. His only lead is the son of a dead woman.
Her only goal is to save a child. As they come together in a clash of anger, mistrust, and potent, unwanted desire, Will and Cheyenne must put aside their differences and navigate the endgame of a woman for whom nothing was taboo.Book Two: BlindsidedWhen the boy who broke her heart crashes back into Ruby Jones's life, she's determined to give him the boot. There are some things a girl simply can't forgive, and being forgotten is at the top of the list.
The last person CIA Agent Rafferty Blackheart expects to find while retrieving the message left for him by his dead partner is the childhood friend he left behind two decades earlier. But the woman he discovers bears little resemblance to the girl he remembers, and even though the sight of her breathes life into everything he's spent years fleeing, walking away from her is an impossibility. Because Rafe is on a mission, one he can't complete without Ruby.
So no matter their dark history, their mutual distrust, or the intense, unwelcome pull between them, they must come together. To avenge the death of an innocent; to save a child. And to stop a madman bent on reshaping the human race. Before it's too late. Book Three: Hallowed Ground2022 Finalist, Daphne Du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/SuspenseAfter Ellie Broussard saves Sean McDougal's son from drowning, she walks away, unwilling to involve herself with the rakish Irishman and his charming boy.
Ellie has suffered a devastating loss, and her world is one of chosen isolation and calculated vengeance. She has only one focus: to find the monster that stole her child and turn his world to ash. Sean can relate to Ellie's suffering. Having lost his wife to cancer, his sole focus has become raising his boy, and love.well, love can take a long walk. He's in Louisiana to locate a cache of stolen art, and even if he's taken aback-and reluctantly intrigued-by the mysterious and chilly Ellie Broussard, he knows better than to tumble down that rabbit hole.
But when they're thrown together on assignment to recover the cache, Sean and Ellie have no choice but to put aside their mutual misgivings and work side by side. To share; to trust; to discover they are not as separate as they appear. And as Ellie's deadly hunt approaches its culmination, they must risk everything they hold dear to stop a murderer who is readying his next strike, and to save an orphaned girl whose only hope lies in their willingness to defy the darkness and step into the light.