This is book one of the Lone Pine Cowboys series and the main characters are rancher Callum Coleman (previously Kyle) and Kelly Harper, works for an ad agency designing image concepts, whose Uncle Ernie has died and left her his ranch, but with a few unusual conditions. Callum has lived and worked full time on the ranch for four years, but has worked on the ranch since he was a troubled teenager. He had the fortune to meet John Henderson, who became his contact at the DA’s office, when he entered an ‘At Risk Kids’ program and managed to escape the city gang he had been reluctantly part of. In fact he was the one that testified against the gang leader and others, getting them sent to prison. He has been working hard to start making a profit on the ranch after it had gone downhill with Ernie’s illness. He takes in neglected or abused horses and rehabs them, before finding forever homes for them. Kelly used to come to the ranch every summer as a child and loved it, but had been too busy with her job to come much over the last few years. Now she has taken off early on a Friday to get to the ranch and sort everything out before returning to work for Monday. She wants to check everything out and get it ready to sell, before getting back to the city.
She has arranged to meet the ranch foreman, Callum, but gets no answer when she knocks or calls out, so she makes her way into the home. Hearing noise upstairs, she goes up and continues knocking and calling, opening the bedroom door, to find a naked man with his back to her and earbuds in, explaining why he didn’t hear her. She runs back downstairs embarrassed, but not before getting a good look at him! He isn’t very pleased with her barging into his home like that and both of them have a fiery attitude, with her beign quite rude to him! He gets so annoyed at her attitude, he tells her he will get his horses packed up and leave, but that she needs to contact the lawyer, Tome Bateman, before she does anything else. The lawyer has been trying to reach her for weeks, but she has mostly ignored it all, too busy with work to do anything until she got up there. When she tries to catch him by the barn after taking to the lawyer, she has a lot of questions. She must stay on the ranch for a full year, from Monday, if she wants to inherit the ranch, otherwise it will go to Callum. If they both leave the ranch, then it will be sold. As she speaks more calmly to Callum, she recognises his eyes and gets a shock when she realises he is Kyle from her last summer on the ranch. She had finally got the courage to ask him to meet her that evening, but her father got called back a week early and she got stuck with her mother and wasn’t able to let him know. He wasn’t around when they left the next morning and she has regretted it ever since. He has certainly never forgotten about her and even Ernie thought the two of them would make a great couple.
When she finds a photo of someone in Ernie’s study standing next to Kyle, as he was, Callum explains that it was David McGee aka Smiler, the leader of the gang who he put away. Kelly recognises him and thinks she saw him that morning her family left the ranch, at a petrol station two hours away. Turns out that was Smiler’s younger brother Jeff, who has now taken over the gang, building up its numbers and is looking for Callum, to get revenge! Callum senses that trouble is coming and it seems like he is right to worry. He warns his part time stable hand Matt Thompson, who lives in a cabin on an acre of land, on the other side of Lone Pine Hill. Matt is ex-Marine Corp Special Forces and had his own personal link with Ernie, who helped him when he was suffering from PTSD. Callum’s former gang are hunting him down and have discovered his location. Just when he had got Kelly back in his life and it seemed like she might stay! Lots of sizzling and steamy moments between Calum and Kelly as they settle into their life together on the ranch. The gang are coming, but now they know they can prepare for it and they do so in a hilarious manner, catching out those who wish them harm and make them fear ever returning! A fun romance with a touch of danger and a liking for spanking. I received an ARC copy of this book from BookSprout and I have freely given my own opinion of the book above.