Kiya Bradshaw has spent most of her life wondering how much of what she has earned belongs to her—and how much came with her last name.
So when an opportunity takes her from Texas to the Double-D Ranch outside Sycamore Ridge, Arizona, she gives herself one year to find out. One year to learn the business, coordinate livestock marketing and transport, and prove she can build something without the Bradshaw name opening the door first.
She arrives with a plan. Cole Cedar is not on it.
Cole is the independent hauler the Double-D trusts with its cattle. He is quiet enough to seem rude, competent enough to make difficult work look easy, and far more comfortable with horses and bulls than with explaining himself. Kiya is used to men who know livestock. She is not used to one who makes her want to stop and watch.
Their jobs keep putting them together. So does Easy, Cole's dapple-gray gelding, who decides almost immediately that Kiya's office window is a perfectly reasonable place to request peppermints.
As weeks turn into months, the ranch begins to feel less like an internship and more like a life. The Davidsons pull Kiya into their orbit. Sycamore Ridge starts treating her like she belongs. And Cole—who has spent years keeping one foot pointed toward the door—begins making room for her in ways neither of them is ready to name.
Then a cattle run to Texas turns dangerous, and the instincts that have protected them all their lives become the very things that threaten what they have built.
Kiya has spent years believing she must be useful enough to deserve her place. Cole learned long ago that leaving hurts less when you never unpack completely.
Above the Ridge is a closed-door contemporary Western romance about two capable people learning that love is not something they have to earn, fix, or protect by walking away. Expect real ranch work, long highways, meddling family, hard-won vulnerability, a happily ever after—and one extremely opinionated gray horse.
Genre: Romance
So when an opportunity takes her from Texas to the Double-D Ranch outside Sycamore Ridge, Arizona, she gives herself one year to find out. One year to learn the business, coordinate livestock marketing and transport, and prove she can build something without the Bradshaw name opening the door first.
She arrives with a plan. Cole Cedar is not on it.
Cole is the independent hauler the Double-D trusts with its cattle. He is quiet enough to seem rude, competent enough to make difficult work look easy, and far more comfortable with horses and bulls than with explaining himself. Kiya is used to men who know livestock. She is not used to one who makes her want to stop and watch.
Their jobs keep putting them together. So does Easy, Cole's dapple-gray gelding, who decides almost immediately that Kiya's office window is a perfectly reasonable place to request peppermints.
As weeks turn into months, the ranch begins to feel less like an internship and more like a life. The Davidsons pull Kiya into their orbit. Sycamore Ridge starts treating her like she belongs. And Cole—who has spent years keeping one foot pointed toward the door—begins making room for her in ways neither of them is ready to name.
Then a cattle run to Texas turns dangerous, and the instincts that have protected them all their lives become the very things that threaten what they have built.
Kiya has spent years believing she must be useful enough to deserve her place. Cole learned long ago that leaving hurts less when you never unpack completely.
Above the Ridge is a closed-door contemporary Western romance about two capable people learning that love is not something they have to earn, fix, or protect by walking away. Expect real ranch work, long highways, meddling family, hard-won vulnerability, a happily ever after—and one extremely opinionated gray horse.
Genre: Romance
Used availability for Kayce Lassiter's Above the Ridge