Charged with murder. Betrayed by her lover. Shunned by her friends.
After being acquitted of the murder, botanist Fern Geller runs from her past to learn everything she can about poisonous plants. She ends up doing a six month contract at the Garden of Death before finding the answer she’s seeking…
When she returns to the same conservatory where she’d worked before, the new boss is missing … before, the new boss is missing and several other men are dead. Once again, all eyes turn her way.
FBI agent, London Behring hadn’t expected Fern to look like she does now. Ethereal. Gorgeous. Gentle. Why and how had she been a murder suspect? Even more intriguing, how had she been acquitted of all charges? And more mysteriously, she’d come back to the scene of the crime… at the perfect time to fall under suspicion – again.
What magic did she possess to walk away from such crimes? And how can he stay free of her charms… a lure he’s finding impossible to resist.
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Fern Geller is a PhD botanist who’s been working in England at the Garden of Death. Her specialty is poisonous plants and before leaving the US had been working to find antidotes for them. Her interest in those plants earned her the nickname Dr. Death. Now she’s returned and looking for the director of the Conservatory Reginald Drover. She informed him she needed to talk to him when she landed but hadn’t yet heard back.
As she starts her search for the elusive man she runs into a tour group and speaks with her friend Brittany who’s leading the tour.
She learns there have been a couple of deaths at here that have caused issues for funding. What she doesn’t expect is to run into a couple of FBI agents in the coffee room near Reggie’s office. One of them informs her Reggie is missing and not just for an hour or two. When she sees the other, London, she wasn’t thrilled either. In those agonizing days of her trial he hadn’t helped, he believed what his brother Derek was saying and in spite of the fact they loved each other, he stayed away.
Fern’s next interaction with London was in the backyard of Reggie’s home as she backed away from the porch, she smelled the poison and wasn’t going any closer.
We met FBI agent Grant Summer in ‘Hide’n Go Seek’, in this book Stefan has asked him to talk to Fern. She has an extreme dislike for the FBI and police for the way she was treated. She has an odd sense of déjà vu as bodies start turning up. To add even more angst neither Reggie or Derek can be located.
Thankfully the times of death put her with solid alibis but the use of poison and the connections of the deceased to the conservatory have Fern with London’s help re-examining her past.
I love the way Stefan has helped Fern in the past and the way Grant steps in to help as well.
Twists and turns, suspense and intrigue and a rekindled romance that simmers then sizzles.
Just two more books and I’m caught up! I started this series on book 14.
Botanist Fern Geller was charged with a murder she didn’t commit, betrayed by a lover and shunned by all of her friends. So after being acquitted she ran from her past to continue to learn everything she can about poisonous plants doing a six-month contract at the Garden of Death. When she returns to the same conservatory she worked at before, the new boss is missing and several other men are dead so of course, she is put firmly back into the crosshairs. London Behring is an FBI agent and seeing Fern again he has no idea why and how she had ever been made a murder suspect. But then he also is wondering how she was acquitted of all of the charges too. There is also a mystery as to why she has come back to the scene of the crime at the perfect time to become a murder suspect again as well as how he can stay free of her charms as he is finding her impossible to exist.
This was a great story that had all the necessary elements in vast quantities – murders, mystery, drama, danger, a love story and underpinning much of it was psychic skills and abilities involving some of the main characters of this series. I loved the relationship between Fern and London and the way that their relationship built and developed. The mystery and the murders were a multi-levelled and complicated story that took some careful unpicking to work out and resolve. Well written and easy to read/understand, I loved the story and definitely ignored parts of real life so I could read more of this and find out who was behind the various murders. Contains a little sexual content.