June's Cowboy Jace

He doesn't want to be seen. She doesn't know how to look away.

My life runs on two rules: make sure Mustang Mountain's rodeo stays on schedule and keep my teenage daughter safe. I'm the man behind the gates, the plans, and the systems nobody notices until they fail. That suits me. I've spent years building a life nobody looks at twice.

Then Bella Robbins ends up in the apartment over my barn with a press pass, a telephoto lens, and gorgeous brown eyes that see too much. She's here for a few days to do a magazine spread on the soul of a small-town rodeo. Then she'll be gone.

But three days becomes a week. Her assignment extends. Her truck stays parked outside my barn long after the rodeo dust settles, and I keep finding her in places I never invited her into like on the paddock rail with my daughter, in the quiet parts of my morning, and in the pieces of my life I thought I'd locked up tight.

She sees the way I carry everything in my shoulders. She sees my daughter—really sees her, the way nobody has in years. She lowers her camera at the exact moments she should be raising it, like she already knows which parts of us aren't hers to take.

Bella doesn't just see the cowboy everyone depends on. She sees the man underneath. And I'm running out of reasons to keep her from seeing the rest.

The Cowboys of Mustang Mountain carry regrets, rivalries, and reputations they've never quite outrun. They're the men who fix fence lines by day, fight their demons by night, and swear they don't need anyone. Their pasts are messy. Their scars are real. And their hearts are locked down tight.

Until the right woman walks into their path and shakes the dust off their hardened hearts. Women who aren't afraid to push back, dig deep, and call these cowboys out on every wall they try to hide behind.

On Mustang Mountain, even the roughest cowboy can find a future, but only if he's brave enough to love the woman who won't let him walk away.