Twelve weeks of brutal morning rehab. Forty yards across the creek. And one reckless, sweet-talking cowboy she refuses to clear.
Eight months after a career-ending Cheyenne bull-riding wreck left him with eleven inches of surgical scar tissue and four titanium screws in his right femur, Rhett Dalton has everyone in Pinehollow, Montana fooled by his easy, crooked grin. All he wants before hanging up his spurs for good is one clean eight-second charity ride in his late father's memorial exhibition-so his hometown's last memory of him isn't an ambulance spine board. All he needs is a quick five-minute medical sign-off from the new physical therapist on Main Street.
Dr. Tessa Monroe didn't blow up her high-profile Denver sports-medicine career refusing to falsify an athlete's clearance just to rubber-stamp a charming rodeo dinosaur with a thirty-five percent quad deficit. Unmoved by warm bakery bribes and glacial blue-green eyes, Tessa locks Rhett's entry waiver inside her steel desk drawer and pockets the brass key:
- 7:00 a.m. sharp Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for twelve unforgiving weeks.
- Zero shortcuts, zero cowboy charm, and every torque benchmark passed by June fifteenth.
- Miss one morning, and his waiver goes straight into her shredder.
It's a rock-solid clinical boundary-right up until an eighty-year-old pipe bursts above Tessa's apartment, and Rhett's gruff older brother moves her into the restored line-cabin forty yards across the footbridge from Rhett's horse barn. Between dawn colt-starting sessions, chaotic Dalton family suppers, and a midnight May thunderstorm that shatters eight weeks of restraint, protecting Rhett's leg becomes nothing compared to surviving what he does to her guarded heart.
Roped & Reckless is a full-length, steamy, dual-POV small-town Western romance featuring an injured ex-bull rider hiding behind charm, a no-nonsense sports physical therapist who sees straight through his armor, meddling rancher brothers, forced proximity, and a guaranteed Happily Ever After. Book Two in the interconnected Alderhorn Ranch series-can be read as a complete standalone!
