Extreme Denial - David Morell

When expert CIA agent Stephen Decker is sent on a sensitive mission to Italy the outcome is one he most certainly didn't expect.

Disobeying orders throughout the mission, Decker's incompetent and embittered partner, McKittrick, makes one final, fatal mistake: sleeping with the enemy. It's an affair which almost costs him his life - and which turn costs Decker his job. Fed up with fighting simply to stay alive, Decker decides to resign, put the past behind him and make a new start.

When he meets Beth Dwyer, the elegant widow who moves in to the house next door to him in Santa Fe, Decker almost dares to believe that he could have the things he's always hoped for: a wife, a family and a normal life. For the first time in his life, he lets someone get close to him and allows himself to fall in love. But when intruders with guns burst in on him and Beth - with obvious intent to kill- he realises that he can't live in extreme denial for long. There's a score to settle. And someone's playing dirty...