Description

The Strickland ranch runs on old-fashioned rules. Lee Strickland, a cowboy of the stern, few-words school, raised his sons the way he was raised and it shows: Wyatt, the oldest, is the kind of man who rides out to mend a fence rather than take the truck. Natalie Taylor has been quietly, hopelessly in love with him since she was sixteen, when she first saw him working shirtless in the summer heat on a lumber delivery with her father. Years later, nothing about that has changed. Except that Wyatt still barely sees her.

To him, Natalie is the sweet local girl, his younger brother Logan’s friend, and absolutely not his type. He goes for experienced, worldly women and he has convinced himself that whatever stirs in him around her is something to ignore. She, meanwhile, is done waiting to be noticed. What follows is the slow collapse of every assumption the two of them have made about each other, helped along by an interfering brother, a formidable father, and one thoroughly ruined truck.

This is comfort-read romance done with real warmth: the ranch setting is lived-in rather than decorative, the family dynamics between the Strickland men give the love story its spine, and Wards lets the tension simmer properly before it pays off. It is also the kind of book that explains why free online romance built such loyal audiences in the early ebook years, a full novel, freely given, that reads like a small-town summer. The question underneath is one every quiet admirer knows: what happens when the person who never noticed you finally, properly looks?

A warm-hearted cowboy romance with a slow burn and a satisfying payoff.

For adult readers of contemporary romance. Contains explicit scenes, 18 and over only.