Theres a thin line between love and hate, and the last person I want to cross it with is my best friends brother.

Brandy Rose never opens up to anyone—not fully. She’s content to keep her feelings under lock and key, but when her dad shows up in town years after disappearing, her carefully crafted walls start to crumble.

Reed Bronson keeps everyone but his family at arms length, never offering more than a grunt or broody stare. After his little brother suddenly quits rodeo and moves back to town, Reed is tasked with getting to the bottom of his disquiet. The only problem is his brother wants nothing to do with him.

When things start to escalate with her dad, Brandy turns to the one person who understands her past the most: Reed. But ever since that one night six years ago, they haven’t been able to set aside their feud for anything. Not even for each other.

Hurt people know hurt people.

Years ago, Sage McKinley thought settling down in small town Bell Buckle was the only way to protect her daughter. It didnt hurt that she managed to get a job at the local cafe, doing what she loved most: baking. The perfect life shed built for them was all that mattered—until everything was turned upside down.

All his life, Callan Bronson has upheld the expectation of being the caring brother in his large family of seven. If anyone needed a shoulder, he'd lend it. If they needed an ear, he'd listen. When a past ultimatum wrecked his confidence, he accepted that was all he'd ever be—the caretaker. But after his first, and hopefully last, visit to the local coffee shop ends with spilled coffee and broken glass, life proves to him that keeping people an arms length away doesn't always work.

The two are pulled together when Sage's daughter finds an unlikely horseback riding mentor in Callan. Can the two of them accept they might be right for each other, or will their pasts lead to them parting ways—or worse?

Don't talk to strangers. Unless, of course, they're wearing boots and a cowboy hat. Then definitely talk to them. My life was perfectly fine. Well, at least up until the night I found out my boyfriend was sleeping with half the damn town. With nowhere to go, I holed up in a motel with whatever I could fit in my car. But not even twenty-four hours after moving into said shit hole, a burly stranger breaks in wearing a skeleton mask. It couldn't get any worse, right? Wrong. Because now this masked man is demanding I move in with him until he gets what he wants—and the thing about cowboys and ranchers? They never back down from a challenge.