Sunday, January 4, 2015

The New Cowboy-Rebecca Winters

The New Cowboy
Rebecca Winters
Harlequin American Romance, Jan 1 2014, $5.50
ISBN: 9780373755516

A year ago in Montana, anthropologist Avery Bannock and former SEAL turned Bureau of Land Management Law Enforcement and Security undercover agent Zane Lawson met at a family gathering.  They rarely see each other except on Skype when he chats with his sister Sadie (see In A Cowboy’s Arms) as he works in another part of the state, but remain attracted to one another.

After successfully working a drug bust near Glasgow, Zane is reassigned to work in the Pryor Mountain region from out of his ranch, which is next to her grandfather’s spread where his beloved lives.  Suffering from a relatively mild form of PTSD, Zane recognizes that Avery faces similar mental traumas, which prevent her from forging a relationship with him.  Being patient with her, Zane learns whatever impacted Avery occurred when she attended Montana State eight years ago.  He persuades her to help him on an investigation into who stole Crow artifacts while also damaging the site of an excavation near Absarokee that Avery works. 

The third Hitting Rocks Cowboy family affair (see A Cowboy’s Heart) is an absorbing police procedural romance.  The protagonists are a captivating couple as each suffers from PTSD but extremely differing degrees and coping measures as she is much more crippled than he is.  Although the lead felon is obvious early on and the leads’ respective families are too upbeat, readers (and the Bannock and Lawson kin) will welcome The New Cowboy and his beloved anthologist to Hitting Rocks.


Harriet Klausner 

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