I’m celebrating this weeks, my P&P friends. The Cowboy’s Comeback, Book 2 in my Juniper Falls Ranch series released this past Thursday and wow, I’m just over the moon about how much readers are loving Cassie and Bo’s story.
This one was a little bit of a departure for me—I’ve never used the enemies-to-lovers trope before. Mostly, I think because I really hate confrontation. I mean seriously hate it. I’ll go out of my way to avoid a confrontation in my real life, so writing a story based on one was a little uncomfortable.
My heroine, Cassie Franklin, has no qualms about saying exactly how she feels. A journalist and World Champion barrel racer, she’s had to make her own way for most of her career. She faces life head on. When horse trainer Bo Kennedy’s accusations destroy their relationship and they go their separate ways, the embers of her anger continue to burn for five long years. All it takes is seeing him again to stoke those embers back into flames, and she’s furious with him all over again.
The muscle in Bo’s jaw worked as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Look, Cassie, it’s been five years. I’ve forgiven you. Can’t we put it all in the past and start new?”
“You forgive me?” It was the last straw after he’d practically wrenched the painful story of losing Pierre from her. “You … you …” she spluttered, too angry for words. She shoved the comb in her back pocket, clipped Storm’s lead under the mare’s chin, and unhooked the crossties. “Stick your forgiveness where the sun don’t shine, George!” She yanked on the lead and started to stalk out but stopped in a few feet, took a deep breath, and patted Storm’s neck. “Let’s walk, baby,” she said quietly. “Good girl. Let’s walk.”
As they try to work together to get her new horse ready for competition, Cassie is alternately cold as ice and yet so ticked off, she steams, so she gets really snippy to Bo. And that’s the part that I had to pull from a place inside me I didn’t know existed. Well, I knew it was down there somewhere because I can be really snippy in my head if provoked, but I can’t think of a time when I’ve brought that attitude to my real life. I’m always the peacemaker, even in an argument I win. I don’t hold a grudge and I’d almost rather cut my tongue out than say something that might make someone be mad at me. Cassie has not such compunction with Bo.
All this to say, Cassie comes at life (and Bo) with metaphorical guns a’blazin’. After a lot of years of being pretty passive, who knew I could write confrontation so convincingly? Go figure. We writers often discover new things about ourselves as we create characters, and sometimes, readers discover something new about themselves, too, when they read our stories. I like that, don’t you?
The Cowboy’s Comeback
It’s an enemies to lovers showdown between the cowboy who can’t trust and the cowgirl who won’t forgive.
Injured rodeo cowboy, Bo Kennedy, takes a job as a horse trainer at a Montana ranch. His skills training cutting horses are in high demand, but he’s holding out hope his days of competing aren’t over. Then his first client arrives, desperate for help with her mare. One problem, she’s his ex.
When World Champion barrel racer Cassie Franklin needs a new horse quickly, her last hope to rebuild her career is to switch to cutting competitions. She brings her new mare to Juniper Falls Ranch, hoping the highly hyped horse whisperer can help. She’s stunned to see Bo. They haven’t spoken in five years after he wrongly accused her of sabotaging his horse when he saw her flirting with his fiercest competitor.
Working together seems impossible, especially as the chemistry still sizzles. Will one of them finally lower their guard and admit they were wrong?
I’ve got a couple of e-books of The Cowboy’s Comeback to give away to two lucky commenters. Just tell me below if you’ve ever discovered something new about yourself that surprised you.
Confession? I don’t know any real cowboys. I’ve read about them in the novels that my fellow western romance authors write; I’ve watched myriad TV westerns both new and old and rodeo videos galore. We had horses for fifteen years, so I’ve met lots of horsemen, some may even have thought of themselves as cowboys, some sure acted as if they thought they were. But a cattle drive in Montana is very different from riding the horse trails in a state park in the Midwest.
But as I learned more and more about cowboys, I discovered that “alpha” didn’t really define the cowboy heroes I was reading about and watching. The swaggering stereotypical cowboy I’d always imagined was so far off the mark that I was actually shocked … and delighted. That quiet strength, that determination that I’d written into my beta winemakers, veterinarians, carpenters, college professors, and chefs were also hallmarks of the cowboy persona. When I created bronc rider Del Foster and rodeo cutting champion Bo Kennedy, those qualities—gentleness, intelligence, supportiveness, loyalty, steadiness, awareness of their own emotions as well as others—were all things my cowboys could be … and are.
The Cowboy’s Comeback