seriously romantic: love runs deep by gail chianese

nic riley and kyle hutchinson hook up at a bar one night before either of them has to report for duty in love runs deep. nic tries to leave it at one night, but it's just her luck that she ends up assigned to the same submarine as kyle, and he ends up as her sponsor on the ship. they have six months of duty to get through, and fraternizing is a definite no-no.

and yet the connection between them is impossible to ignore. kyle does his best to keep things platonic while watching out for nic on the ship, but when he catches a junior officer with an inappropriate recording of nic in the shower this get a little intense. the fallout from the incident is the kind of stuff that makes or breaks relationships. and how nic and kyle deal with the problems created by the subsequent military inquiry and trial is the bulk of the story.

kyle is unequivocally in nic's corner, but they come from two different worlds. nic is military royalty and kyle was lucky to leave behind his rough beginnings by joining up. and yet, those differences don't actually cause the biggest problems between them. their problem is that all too common they stop actually communicating. so when nic has a moment of doubt, kyle is devastated. at the same time her family has convinced him that staying away is the best thing for her at the moment.

until they start listening to other people, nic and kyle's relationship progresses nicely, so eventually they do figure out how to tune others out. it takes a while, but they also cut each other pretty deeply when they doubt one another. but love runs deeper still, and nic and kyle come through it all in the end.

**love runs deep will publish on february 21, 2017. i received an advanced reader copy courtesy of netgalley/kensington books (lyrical shine) in exchange for my honest review.