Riding bulls was the greatest danger he’d faced Until he met her When Flint McCay finds Madison Taylor hiding in the barn at Holiday Ranch, he knows she’s in trouble. He just doesn’t know what kind. It’s clear that she’s been hurt–and that she’s terrified of opening up to any man. As the cowboy slowly bonds with Maddy, he learns that a powerful man will stop at nothing to destroy her–but … destroy her–but Flint will do anything to save her.
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This latest addition to Carla Cassidy’s Holiday Ranch series is a bit of a departure from the other novels I’ve read in this series, and quite a bit darker than most. While it works as a standalone, to understand references to “Cassie’s lost boys”, I’d suggest reading the novels in this series from the beginning. Nevertheless, it was a good read, dealing with difficult subject matter, i.e. physical violence and rape, and if those issues are triggers for you, I’d suggest you pass this one by. While the subject matter is certainly distasteful, Ms. Cassidy wove a really sweet and sensual romance around these issues and it gets 4 stars from this reader.
The first character we meet in this novel is Flint McCay, one of Cassie’s lost boys, a cowboy through and through, and one who earned great success as a professional rodeo bull rider. As is so common among bull riders, during his rodeo career he broke nearly every bone in his body, and now, at age 34, he’s back at the ranch and in constant, debilitating pain. Cassie’s been giving him some of the lighter chores on the ranch, like mucking out stalls, and keeping the barns and stables clean, and it’s while he’s cleaning out the stifling hot barn that was their winter hay storage facility, he finds a terrified woman hiding there, and recognizes her as Maddy (Madison) Taylor, a clerk at the local grocery store, one whom he hasn’t seen there in some time. She tells him a story about her car breaking down as she was leaving town late the previous night, and since she didn’t have a cell phone, she decided to hole up in the nearest place she could find shelter, which was this barn on the Holiday Ranch. Flint is quick to realize that she’s lying through her teeth, but she needs a place to stay until she can get her car towed and repaired, and Flint, who has built himself a retirement cabin deep in the woods, offers to let her stay there, since he’s still living in the bunkhouse.
Flint knows that Maddy is on the run from something, and she doesn’t place her trust in Flint or give up her secrets easily, but Flint is a good guy, a gentleman, and slowly but surely he gets the full story about why Maddy was running away, why she repeatedly throws up early every evening, and when she eventually admits that she’s been severely beaten and raped, she still won’t name her attacker, but Flint goes out of his way to protect her, encouraging her to get the therapy she so obviously needs after such trauma, but Maddy doesn’t want her attacker to know that she’s still in town. She also doesn’t want Flint to be responsible for her safety and her expenses, and so he offers her a job as his housekeeper and cook, something he really doesn’t need, but as an excuse to keep her safe.
As these two characters begin to open up to one another and develop feelings for one another, feelings that eventually lead them to Flint’s bed, the ease with which Maddy eagerly gave herself to Flint stretched my willing suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. I’ve known victims of rape and violence, and I simply couldn’t accept that Maddy would readily hop into bed and have sex with anyone until she’d dealt with the trauma she’d experienced at the hand of her violent rapist.
Flint finally manages to get Maddy to name her attacker and file a complaint against him with the police, but it’s now more than 3 months since she was attacked, and there’s no physical evidence to support her claims of being beaten and raped, except for the fact that Maddy is pregnant with her rapist’s baby, a fact she’s not shared with anyone but Flint, and it’s at this point that the suspense in this novel ratchets up, because once the investigation begins, her rapist knows that the only thing he can do to protect his reputation and social position is to kill her.
This is a well-written novel of romantic suspense, with memorable characters, and since I don’t do spoilers, I’ll end this review by stating that despite the aforementioned issue I had with this novel, it nevertheless was still a good read, and I’m happy to recommend it.
I voluntarily read an advance reader copy of this novel. The opinions expressed are my own.