Format read: ebook provided by the publisher
Formats available: ebook
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Western romance
Series: Copper Mountain Rodeo, #2
Length: 129 pages
Publisher: Tule Publishing Group
Date Released: September 21, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

Champion barrel-racer Tegan Ash has nothing left to go home to in her native Australia and every reason to stay in the USA. But her visa is about to expire, and her prospective groom has called off their green-card wedding.

Jamie MacCreadie doesn’t actually want to marry a woman he can’t stand, but his best friend and fellow rodeo rider Chet has just let her down and, somehow, he finds himself offering to do the deed instead.

There’s no chance it could turn into the real thing, because they have nothing in common… do they?

My Review:

A western romance combining frenemies-to-lovers with just a hint of arranged marriage. It’s an arrangement that works pretty darn well!

Tegan Ash starts out the story planning on a green-card marriage with her rodeo buddy Chet Wyndham. This isn’t a love match. Tegan and Chet aren’t even friends-with-benefits. Tegan has been a barrel rider on the rodeo circuit for almost two years, and her visa is up. Her dad and step-mum have sold the family farm in Australia, and she feels like she has no home to go back to. But her rodeo career in the U.S. hasn’t been quite splashy enough for the owner of the rodeo to be willing to sponsor her for an extension of her work visa.

That’s where Chet was supposed to come into the picture. Tegan, Chet and Jamie have been the Three Musketeers for almost two years. Solving Tegan’s problem with a green-card marriage should have been a piece of cake. Except for two things.

Tegan and Jamie scrap like a pair of five year olds every time they’re within talking distance. Or even glaring distance.

And Chet backs out of the ceremony at the last minute. The very, very last minute. Leaving Tegan with less than six weeks to sell her horse, her half of her trailer and everything else she has in the States, and go back to a family she’s lost complete touch with.

Chet finally admits that he won’t marry Tegan, even a half-baked, half-faked marriage, because he’s gay. (About time he made that admission, it’s screamingly obvious what his secret is by that point.)

But Chet leaves behind two friends who suddenly no longer have a wedding between them to hide the other elephant in the barn. All that scrapping has been a dust storm to hide the real heat they feel for each other.

The only problem is that now Tegan and Jamie only have six weeks to undo all the learned fighting behaviors that they’ve always engaged in with each other to see what else they might have besides boiling hot sexual chemistry.

Can they manage to talk to each other? Enough and in time to see where this might lead before Tegan has to go back to Australia for good?

Escape Rating B: The story is all about Tegan and Jamie adjusting their thinking towards each other. Actually, it’s mostly about Tegan adjusting her thinking, Jamie’s is pretty well adjusted. In fact, it’s his supportive reaction to Chet’s reveal of his big secret that turns the tide in his favor.

Tegan doesn’t want to go home because she had originally planned to stay in the U.S. for two years and then go back to her family’s farm. She just hadn’t been ready to settle down when the rodeo offer came along and she thought her father understood that. However, he sold the farm while she was gone, and her stepmother made it seem like it was because her half-brother needed the money for law school. Her relationship with her family is strained.

Jamie’s relationship with his own family is equally strained. His folks weren’t happy he chose a rodeo career either. They wanted him to stay on their ranch and help out, and seemed to be equally of the belief that by the time he was done with his rodeo career, he’d be too banged up to help them out. But when the rodeo comes to Copper Mountain, he and his family manage to come to an understanding.

He thinks that maybe Tegan can find some middle ground with her folks, but only if she goes there in person. He knows that telephone call don’t really connect people who aren’t good at talking much about their feelings. Like him. And probably like her dad.

Sex turns out to be pretty easy once Tegan’s fake engagement to Chet is out of the way. But a relationship is difficult to work out. Tegan doesn’t want to reveal where her broken places are; she’s afraid of being vulnerable. And she thinks there’s no time for them to be more than sex buddies.

She turns out to be wonderfully wrong.

~~~~~~GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

The author is giving away an ebook copy of Marry Me, Cowboy and an ebook copy of Tempt Me, Cowboy by Megan Crane (reviewed last week) to a lucky winner! To enter, please use the Rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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