Tropes:
✨ Cowboy meets city girl
✨ Opposites attract
✨ Grumpy sunshine
✨ Teacher / student
✨ Fish out of water
✨ Spicy slow burn
🐴 Clay Calhoun used to be the hottest bad boy on the professional rodeo circuit but a career-ending injury has dragged him back to Wyoming and the family dude ranch he escaped a decade ago. The washed-up bronc rider doesn’t want to babysit tourists pretending to be cowboys while he’s licking his wounds and dodging regrets. Then a record label drops a city girl straight into his pasture.
🌸 Reluctantly famous country music sensation Stephanie “Stevie” Everhart needs authentic cowgirl cred to go with her shiny golden Grammy, so her label sends her and her helicopter mother to Wyoming for a month to get some mud on her boots. Unfortunately for Clay he’s given the job of teaching her how to ride a horse.
Clay doesn’t do babysitting. Stevie doesn’t do bad boys. But beneath those big, reckless skies, good girl Stevie discovers a streak of wild she’s never dared unleash and Clay finds grit and warmth that slip past his defenses. What starts as image control ignites into sparks neither planned.
Who knew going a little wild meant you might just end up wanted – for keeps.
I liked Clay a lot. He did have an ego, but I think that actually was part of his appeal, the belief that he was Stevie was a little more of a struggle for me. She is young, and sheltered, but I still struggled at times to feel connected with her. Part of the focus of the story was her growing up and becoming an adult no longer in the shadow of her sister, so I saw the reason for it, but I did want her to be a little more of an adult at times.
As the characters started to open up to one another, I was more connected, and I wish that had been more of a focus of the story for longer, as getting to know them as a couple was the part of the story I enjoyed the most.
I am definitely interested in reading the next story in this series as I enjoyed this one enough to want to read others by this author and see what happens to the characters at the ranch.
