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jackiebcentraltexas

Housewife Blues and Chihuahua Stories

Lifelong Texan, love reading from many genres thanks to early childhood readalongs with my Dad, love cooking for my family, working in my yard, playing with my cats and since being diagnosed in late 2012 with RRMS finding ways to keep body and mind active is even more important.

Rough Rider (Hot Cowboy Nights)

Rough Rider (Hot Cowboy Nights) - Victoria Vane Book Info
Mass Market Paperback, 224 pages
Expected publication: February 3rd 2015 by Sourcebooks Casablanca
ISBN 1492601152 (ISBN13: 9781492601159)
edition language English
URL
series Hot Cowboy Nights #2
other editions None found
Source:Netgalley EARC

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BOOK SYNOPSIS


Two wary hearts …
Janice Combes has two loves, bucking bulls and Dirk Knowlton. But Dirk only has eyes for a dazzling rodeo queen. How can Janice ever compete while mired ankle-deep in manure? Exchanging playful banter with Dirk is all Janice can expect-until the stormy night he knocks on her door dripping wet and needing a place to crash.

Different Dreams…
Dirk Knowlton is living the cowboy dream. Life should be good-roping, branding, backing broncs, riding bulls, but there's a void he can't seem to fill. After getting hung up by a bull, he wonders if this is really the life he wants. Restless and rebellious, he bolts...but there's a certain cowgirl he can't forget.

When a battle-scarred Dirk returns to his Montana ranch he's determined to hang on at any cost. Janice has come back home to lick her own wounds. When old dreams turn to dust, can two wary hearts take another chance on love?

My Thoughts

At 22 Dirk Knowlton is not ready to settle down, nor is he ready to "settle" for being what his wealthy girlfriend thinks he should. That includes dressing to suit her and her family as well as giving up his pursuit of following the rodeo circuit as a bronc or bull rider. Things come to a head with he and his longtime sweetheart Rachel and he spends one stormy night with Janice, a night that neither one expected but both came away from with their perspectives of one another forever changed.

Since she was 16 Janice Combes has been in love with Dirk, never really expecting them of actually having a chance she keeps silent on her feelings for years. Now at 21 Janice is keeping her family afloat by following the rodeo circuit and providing riding bulls from their ranch. It is a totally non glamorous occupation, one however which allows her contact now and again with Dirk as well as his best friend and fellow cowboy Grady Garrison.

After things come to an end with Dirk and Rachel, after the night of bliss that Dirk and Janice share life changes for them both when a fellow bull riding cowboy dies and Dirk finds this to be his wakeup call which prompts him to quit rodeoing and join the Marine Corp.

Janice learns shortly after that her father has cancer where upon she makes the mistake of turning to Grady for help, soon the two marry which is her second mistake. Now long years later, a widow and single mother Janice is back in Montana and also finds herself still drawn to a battle scarred and traumatized ex-Marine Dirk. They have come full circle but will the second chance they both wish for happen or will it be taken away from them by distrust caused by past mistakes, as one who believes that where there is a will there is a way finding the answer is harder than either thought it would be but worth the effort it takes to make happen!

Spanning a ten year period of time we cover a lot of territory for Dirk and Janice, not least of which is a few heartaches along the way that leave them both with a few issues.

The resulting HEA was one a long time in the making but well worth waiting for, not only for the couple but for the reader as well.

[EArc from Netgalley in exchange for honest review]