Undercover for the FBI, the heroine will stop at nothing to apprehend the art thief known as the Magician. The criminal is responsible for the suicide of her dead parent as the man has the gift, if seems, to make people think and do whatever he wants them to. Staking out a bar where the Magician is known to frequent, the heroine instead finds herself in the presence of a very hansom, very rich, very alluring Englishman. Dedicated to her job and not one to engage in one night stands, the heroine surprises herself by agreeing to join him at his penthouse for sex. Something about him draws her in and in his arms she has a cure for the loneliness she feels-even if it is just for the night. The next morning, she's gone and back on the hunt for her thief. Staging a trap with an ancient manuscript as the bait, the heroine is stunned when her one night stand shows up. While he is seducing her in the back room, the book is stolen. And to top it all off, her lover admits to being the thief she's after but not the one who has stolen the book. That is his enemy- a cousin who shares a deep seeded hatred and bitter sense of betrayal towards the two of them over a woman. Blackmailed by a third party to steal back the stolen book else the hero's people and the heroine's new partner be killed, the hero is forced to kidnap the heroine to Rome in search of the artifact. From the first second the hero laid eyes on the stern no nonsense red head, he felt a connection to her that he's never felt for any other woman. She's immune to his charms and compulsions and at first this is the source of his intrigue. But quickly his feelings for her go far beyond intrigue or even hurt pride over the fact that she left him the morning after their love making without a word. Instead, he grows to love her almost from the jump despite the fact that she's human. Despite the fact that she's stubborn and completely disregards his claims to be a vampire. Despite the fact that she also disregards his claim to love her after only days of knowing one another. No, the man who's been thinking of nothing else but getting the book and seeing his love again for so many years realizes what true love is and that it's right in front of him. But the heroine is a completely different story. Though she desires him and secretly holds feelings for him, she is far too level headed to make such a fool of herself. She was so funny. In fact, her even keel personality and cop mentality kept me smiling from start to finish. She didn't roll over for anyone and spoke her mind quite frankly in every situation, calling the hero delusional for the longest time for believing himself to be immortal. And every time the hero makes a stupid choice, like drugging her to make her sleep or trying to lock her in the apartment without any clothes, she let him have it. She even fought him when he denied being involved in the death of her partner. I adored her as a character. It had me smiling at the fact that being surrounded by dramatic and childish feuding vampires saw her be the middle man-the one person with a cool head and zero tolerance for their stupidity. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised just how much I loved this story. This author for me hadn't had a very good rating average-at least in my books, but this I felt was a home run. It was so funny without being a 'comedy' and I thought the characters were well developed and well suited for one another with a great degree of chemistry between them. The one flaw I found was the heavy amount secondary characters and just how much time was spent on them when instead I would loved it spent on the two main characters. But regardless of that, I thought this was thee best book by this author that I've- by far. ( )