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Informationen zum Autor Linda Howard and Linda Jones Klappentext In the first novel of this steamy contemporary Western romance series by two blockbuster authors! a cowboy and a woman on the run take a stand and fight for love. Carlin Reed lives in fear! off the grid! moving from place to place. So Battle Ridge! Wyoming! a small town in the middle of nowhere! seems like a good place to lie low for a while. But after becoming cook and housekeeper to cattle rancher Zeke Decker! Carlin suspects that she's made her first mistake. Rugged! sexy! and too distracting for his own good! Zeke is pure temptation mixed with something deep and primal that makes Carlin feel almost safe. Soon things are getting way too hot in the kitchen. Zeke doesn't challenge Carlin's terms: cash! dead bolts! and no questions. It is easy to see that she's a woman in trouble. Problem is! he's so blindsided by his attraction to her he can't think straight. Zeke tries to stay all business! no complications-but that game plan is sabotaged the second Carlin gets under his skin. And when her terrifying past follows her to the ranch! Carlin faces a heartbreaking choice: run away from the man she loves! or put him in the crosshairs of a madman. Chapter One 10 months later Battle Ridge, Wyoming, didn’t look like much. Carlin Reed pulled her faded red Subaru into a parking space in front of an empty store and looked around. There probably wouldn’t be any jobs here, but she’d ask around anyway. She’d found work in some of the damnedest places, doing things that she’d never before have considered. Work was work, money was money, and she’d learned not to be picky. She wasn’t above doing yard work, washing dishes, or just about anything else as long as it didn’t involve prostituting herself. Her first attempt at mowing a lawn on a riding mower had been something worthy of a clip on YouTube, but she’d learned. From what she could see, Battle Ridge had fallen on hard times. Her atlas gave the population as 2,387, but the atlas was six years old, and from what she had seen driving in, she doubted Battle Ridge supported that many residents now. She’d passed empty houses, some with “For Sale” signs that had been up so long they’d become dingy and weather-beaten, and empty stores with “For Sale or Lease” notices in the windows. Here in the West it would still be considered a fair-sized town, especially in a state the size of Wyoming with a grand total population of half a million people. Nevertheless, the reality was that half the buildings around her were standing empty, which meant she’d likely be moving on. Not right this minute, though. Right now, she was hungry. Not surprisingly, traffic was light. Hungry or not, Carlin sat in the dusty four-wheel-drive SUV and through her dark sunglasses carefully studied everything around her, every vehicle, every person. Caution had become second nature to her. She hated losing the unconscious freedom and spontaneity she’d once known, but looking back she could only marvel at how unaware she’d been, how vulnerable. The level of her vulnerability might change depending on circumstances, but she was damned if she’d add in the factor of not being aware. She’d already noted that the license plates of the cars and trucks parked on each side of the street were all from Wyoming. There was little chance her movements could have been anticipated, since she hadn’t known she’d be stopping here, but she still checked. Two buildings down on the right was a café, The Pie Hole; three pickups were parked in front even though two o’clock in the afternoon wasn’t exactly a prime mealtime. The name of the café amused her, and she wondered about the person who had come up with it, whether a quirky sense of humor or a don’t-give-a-damn attitude was behind the choice. Her amusement was momentary, though, and she returned to studying her surroundin...
