The Mustanger

She had until November to save her land. He had until October to save his name.

Nevada, 1888. Tess Calloway is the best mustanger in Humboldt County. She traps wild horses in the high canyons of the Santa Rosas and gentles them the way her late father taught her: not by breaking them, but by coming to an understanding. Since he died in January, she has run Calloway Springs with only Charlie Dunn beside her, her father's Paiute partner of twenty years. On the first of November an eighteen-hundred-dollar note falls due, and the cattleman who bought it wants her spring.

First Lieutenant Gideon Rourke, Sixth Cavalry, has been sent west to buy two hundred cavalry horses by October. It is the kind of posting that is meant to fail, handed to an officer who once told the truth about a crooked major and has been paying for it ever since. Gideon can read a doctored brand at forty paces. What he needs are the tall, deep-chested horses running wild in Tess's canyons.

She doesn't trust the Army. He doesn't trust easy answers. They shake on a hard bargain: a hundred and twenty head, gentled, at a fair price and a fair inspection.

Then comes the long summer: brush traps at dawn, a Fourth of July horse race, a waltz, and a kiss by the river followed by the worst possible piece of honesty. A fouled spring, a midnight raid, a crossing of the Black Rock Desert and a stampede in an early storm put everything between them to the test. And when the last horse passes inspection, the hardest thing either of them has to do is ask.

Told through Gideon's eyes, The Mustanger is a clean, standalone western romance of wild horses, open country and two proud, decent people who learn that the best things are gentled, never broken.

Reader note: a clean romance with kisses only and no profanity beyond a rare "damn." It has a gunfight, a stampede and an injury, none of them graphic. Standalone with a full happily ever after.

★ A heroine who catches wild horses for a living ★ A cavalry officer with a career to save ★ Nevada high desert, 1888 ★ A Fourth of July horse race ★ A legendary gray stallion nobody has ever roped ★ A desert crossing, a stampede and a showdown at the stock pens ★ Clean and standalone ★