Logan Creed returns to his family's ranch, hoping to settle down. His neighbor is a single mom with two young boys. Briana doesn't trust him initially, but her experience with men is tarnished by her husband leaving her at a Walmart parking lot with her two boys and a dog.
Ms. Miller is one of the best at Western romance books, both historical and contemporary, and this is another of her well-written stories. ( )

A los hermanos Creed siempre los había precedido su fama de rebeldes y pendencieros. Tras pasarse años vagando sin rumbo, Logan Creed, un vaquero licenciado en Derecho, volvía a Stillwater Springs, Montana, para echar raíces, restaurar el olvidado rancho de su familia y tener hijos que llevaran con orgullo su apellido. Briana Grant, madre divorciada, conocía las historias que circulaban sobre su atractivo vecino, por lo que fue una grata sorpresa que éste se comportara con ella y sus dos hijos de una manera tan afable y cordial. Pero cuando su ex marido volvió a hacer acto de presencia y su casa empezó a sufrir los ataques de un agresor desconocido, Logan se encargó de demostrarle a Briana, y a todo el mundo en Big Sky, quién era él realmente.

Briana has tragedy after tragedy surrounding her children and home, finding solace and support in Logan as he works through his past history to bring pride to the Creed name
( )

I loved this book. I cant explain why. It is my first Linda Lael miller book. So far I love her style. Cant wait to plunge into Dylan's Story nxt.

Damsel in distress yet Strong willed: Briana
Hero cowboy with a huge chip on his shoulder: Logan
Three sweet dogs:snooks wanada and sidekick
throw in two great kids: Josh and Alec
and you have have a recipe for a wonderful romance. I love how there was no pussyfooting around the romance. there was an instant and strong connection. I love that her ex didnt mold her into never wanting a guy much less a cowboy ever again. The chemistry was so strong sometimes I even felt it.
You cant go wrong with this book :) ( )

I wavered between three and four stars for this book.

On the one hand, Miller has written a wonderful book of fully fleshed out characters. The children are neither too wise nor too cute. Alec, 8 and Josh, 10 are as exasperating and wonderful as boys that age are in real life. Their mother Briana is holding it together as a single mom after getting dumped at Wal-Mart by her husband. She's not played out as a heroic WonderMom, but as your average woman doing what she must, occasionally doing things wrong, to keep on trucking. She felt real to me, reminding me of my own mom in many ways.

Their neighbor Logan Creed has come back to his family's Montana ranch after two failed marriages, a stint in Iraq in the Army and a law career that netted him 30 million dollars. Somehow, he's still in his early to mid-thirties. The math doesn't work for me, but whatever. God forbid we have working-class heroes. He's estranged from his brothers, Dylan and Tyler, after a drunken brawl the day their boozebag father died twelve years ago. (In another bout of fuzzy math, she says the father died when Logan was a college junior, so age 20-21, right? Now if Tyler is 8 years younger than Logan, as she describes, what were they doing drinking whiskey and brawling with a 12-13 year old boy in a bar? But I digress.)He's come back to make a fresh start of it, reconcile with his brothers, get married again and have kids.

The hero, heroine and the cast of supporting characters felt real to me. I felt Logan's confusion, bitterness, sadness and regret without ever once pitying him. Miller does a great job showing the awkwardness between the brothers when they talk to each other. There's no magical, tear-filled bromantic reconciliation moment. Briana frets about her ex-husband's return and how it will affect the boys. She's wary of Vance, her ex, while willing to work with him for the kids' sakes. Her ex starts the book a self-indulgent boor, and ends it a mere flawed human trying to fix his mistakes. The assorted villains are more pitiable than evil. I could've done without the American Indian grandmother with prophetic dreams, but you can't have it all.

The book failed me near the end. A suspense subplot involving Briana's house getting vandalized was both unnecessary and unresolved. The HEA was not only unbelievable but unwanted. Miller has a divorcee with two impressionable boys marry a twice-divorced man after knowing each other less than two weeks. I don't think that's romantic, I think that's reckless, especially because Miller never spent any of Logan's POV time assessing what went wrong in those marriages, who those women were or what sort of man he was then. We're just supposed to believe he's in it for the long haul this time because He's The Hero.

Despite these somewhat major flaws, the characters were compelling and Miller's voice was evocative, so I couldn't put the book down. I eventually settled on a four because I am invested enough in the brothers to want to continue the series, and that must count for something. ( )