He's got callused hands, a slow smile, and a way with horses that makes her forget how to breathe.
Isobel didn't expect much from a trip to Wears Valley with her best friend and a troubled buckskin mare. She definitely didn't expect Ryder Callahan.
He looks like a cowboy through and through. Faded Wranglers, dusty boots, hazel eyes that see straight through you. But there's something underneath the easy drawl and the barn lot dirt that doesn't quite add up. A Rolex hidden under a shirtsleeve. A voice that carries the sharp edge of boardrooms alongside Tennessee grit.
He's keeping something buried deep, and she's getting too close to stop herself from wanting to dig.
Ryder came back to this valley to heal. Not just his body, but everything the rodeo and the life he left behind tore open. Training horses gives him quiet. Isobel gives him something he wasn't looking for.
But secrets don't stay buried forever. And when his two worlds collide, the only question left is whether she'll still want the man standing in the wreckage.
Sometimes the hardest eight seconds aren't in the arena.
