Books ~

Broken by betrayal and loss, Laurel Tanner can't imagine ever again trusting a man enough to let him close.

Cort Morente, trying to rebuild his life from the remains left him, can't imagine getting involved with a woman when he can't even figure out what to do with himself.

But when their shared concern for a troubled boy brings them together, their mutual loneliness and struggles to start over forge a bond between them that overcomes their determination to stay just friends and leads to new beginnings and eventually to love.

Childhood sweethearts, Rafe Garrett and Julene Santiago made youthful vows they'd always be together. But they'd been born to different worlds and what made no difference to innocent children became a chasm between them as adults.

Rafe, part heir to Rancho Piñ tada, hardly feels a part of the family that adopted him. He's determined to prove his worth on his adoptive father's ranch and has bonded heart and soul to the land, the substitute for the woman he couldn't have. His dedication to the ranch has isolated him not only from his family but from friendship and love.

Then the woman he thought he'd lost forever comes back to town to help her father with his veterinary practice. When, after years of separation, Julene Santiago shows up at Rafe's ranch ready to help him cure his ailing bison herd, he sees not only the spirited little girl he fell in love with, but the beautiful and accomplished woman she has become.

Jule is everything he wants in a woman, yet everything he cannot have.

And Jule's best childhood friend has become everything she dreams of in a man, and everything she will have.

Sawyer Morente's speciality was saving damsels in distress. But Maya Rainbow wasn't his typical rescue. The hippie girl he barely remembered from high school had transformed into a woman unlike any he'd ever known. And when a car accident forced Sawyer to deliver Maya's premature baby, his profession concern for the boy soon blossomed into something more - for the boy's mother.

Strong-willed and stubborn, Maya always stood on her own two feet. But having a shoulder to lean on felt good and having the rest of Sawyer would be even better. Still, Maya had long ago stopped believing in heroes, and no one, not even Luna Hermosa's resident knight in shining armor was going to change her mind.

Maya is afraid to trust any man again. And Sawyer, haunted by the shadows of the past, doesn't know if he can be the man she needs - lover, partner and father to her son - to heal her heart.

Only their love and faith in each other can overcome yesterday's heartaches and bond them together as the family the three of them were meant to be.

They were meant to be friends, linked by marriage - but not to each other.

Katerina Whitcomb-Salgar was his brother's fiancé and Blake McCord had no business thinking of her any other way.

Katie was destined to marry Tate McCord, her childhood sweetheart and long-time lover. Thoughts of his elder brother as anything other than an old friend were definitely forbidden.

But a passionate kiss, never meant to be, changes everything . . .

From the day she looked in her mirror and saw more cowboy than girl reflected back, Hallie Ryan gave up any dream of love and committed herself to her family and ranch.

From the first time Jack Dakota slid his fingers through a deck of cards, he gave up any desire for commitment and abandoned himself to the excitement of chance.

Then fortune made them unlikely partners.

She never meant to deceive him.

But when Katlyn McLain finds herself stranded in Cimarron with her desperately ill mother, robbed of her money and belongings, she doesn't hesitate when Case Durham unwittingly offers her the answer to her prayers.

Even though it is as someone else.

As the new owner of the infamous St. Martin Hotel, Case is determined to rid the hotel of its unsavory clientele and restore it to glory. To help him, he hires the famed St. Louis Songbird. Except the red-haired beauty who shows up to claim the job is nothing he expected.

Everything Katlyn knows about being a saloon singer she learned from watching her mother. Taking her place, she prays by the time Case discovers her fraud the St. Martin will be so successful he'll forgive her anything.

Case, though, isn't the forgiving kind.

Until Katlyn sings to him from her heart, and he realizes her sweet serenade is the only music he wants to hear for the rest of his life.

Life on the run suited Jake Coulter. In his years of calling the trail home, the only rule he'd left unbroken was never to remain in one place a minute longer than he had to.

He certainly never intended to depend on any woman for his life. But when a bullet stops him in the New Mexico mining town of Whispering Creek, Jake finds himself in the hands of a healing angel with the power to tempt him to linger longer than his wanderer's resolve warned him he should.

The last thing Isabel Bradshaw wanted in her life was another man who would take off like a wild mustang the first chance he got. And she knew Texas Ranger Jake Coulter was just that kind of man.

When the renegade lawman ends up under her roof, though, the caretaker in her can't turn him away. She gives him all her healing skill, expecting he'll hit the trail again the minute he's able to ride out of town.

Until she meets Jake, Isabel thinks nothing and no one can ever convince her to leave Whispering Creek.

Until he meets Isabel, Jake knows nothing but a bullet could have forced him to stay there.

Yet in time she realizes she could follow him anywhere. And in time, he realizes where she stays is the only place he wants to be.