When Harper Lee Crockett returns home to Paradise Ranch, Wyoming, the last thing she expects is to fall head-over-heels in lust for Cole, childhood neighbor and her older sister's long-time boyfriend. The spirited and artistic Crockett sister has finally learned to resist her craziest impulses, but this latest trip home and Cole's rough-and-tough appeal might be too much for her fading self-control.
Cole Wainwright has long been fascinated by the sister who's always stood out from the crowd. His relationship with Amelia, the eldest Crockett sister, isn't as perfect as it seems, and with Harper back in town, he sees everything he's been missing. Cole knows they have no future together—he's tied to the land and she's created a successful life in the big city—but neither of them can escape their growing attraction or inconvenient feelings.
As Harper struggles to come to grips with new family responsibilities and her forbidden feelings for Cole, she must decide whether to listen to her head or to give her heart what it wants.
His dad had owned and worked the neighboring ranch. The Crockett daughters and the Wainwright son had all stayed friends through high school, even though Cole had chosen Amelia, her elder sister by two years, for, first, the homecoming dance, then Snow Ball, and finally prom, and the years of exploring their adjoining ranches on horseback and hanging out being ranch kids had ended. Cole and Amelia had become The Super Couple—gorgeous on gorgeous. Harper had let her secret Cole fantasies fade away, finished high school, gone off to her wild and failed college years and kept track of Cole and Amelia only the rare times she visited Paradise Ranch and they were all home at the same time.
At one point, the family had considered Cole and Amelia all but married. But then, unexpectedly, Super Couple had broken up, amicably they’d insisted, three years ago.
Everyone was still friends.
Well, except for the fact that Harper’s father had purchased Cole’s family ranch the year before the break-up, and Cole had disappeared for eighteen months without a trace.
But he’d come back. He’d worked for Sam Crockett on Paradise Ranch the past two winters, and everyone said he was fine. They loved having him.
“Earth to Harpo.”
Harpo, she mused. He’d given her that nickname . . .
A hand waved in front of her face. She shook her head to clear it, and suddenly she was staring at him, having missed every word he’d said to her. And there were flutters, deep and unmistakably caused by his proximity
“Oh! What?” She blinked.
He laughed again. “Are you all right?”
No. No, no, no. This was unacceptable. As happy as she was to see him, these were not the memories she’d been after. This was not a reaction she wanted—this electric anticipation that had been thrumming through her body ever since he’d walked into the church that morning almost late for the service.
“I’m just fine. Sorry.”
“You still do it.” He peered at her, grinning again.
“Do what?”
“Go off into that little artist’s daze. I always wondered what you were seeing while you were in those trances. Usually you’d disappear after one of them, and we’d find you in some corner painting or drawing. But you weren’t big on showing me your work, so I was left thinking you’d gotten some great vision or prophecy. Like now.”
She nearly choked on her laughter. “I do not do that! And believe me I was having no visions of any kind. I was seeing three chickens laughing at me, so I was plotting revenge.”
That was a lie, but he didn’t need to know it.
Lizbeth Selvig writes fun, heartwarming contemporary romantic fiction for Avon books. Her debut novel, The Rancher and the Rock Star, was released in 2012. Her second, Rescued By A Stranger was a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award nominee. Liz lives in Minnesota with her best friend (aka her husband Jan) and a gray Arabian gelding named Jedi. After working as a newspaper journalist and magazine editor, and raising an equine veterinarian daughter and a talented musician son, Lizbeth entered Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart® contest in 2010 with The Rancher and the Rock Star (then titled Songbird) and won the Single Title Contemporary category. In her spare time, she loves being a first time grandma to Evelyn Grace as well as to hike, quilt, read, horseback ride, and play with her four-legged grandbabies, of which there are over twenty, including a wallaby, two alpacas, a large goat, a mammoth-eared donkey, a pot-bellied pig, three sugar gliders, and many dogs, cats and horses (pics of all appear on her website www.lizbethselvig.com). She loves connecting with readers—contact her any time!
No comments:
Post a Comment