Rough & Ready Country Small-town cowboys. Second chances. Love that’s earned—and fought for. Welcome to Rough & Ready Country, a connected small-town romance series where rugged men with complicated pasts fall hard for the women who challenge them to heal, stay, and build something lasting. Set in a tight-knit rural community, these stories deliver emotional depth, protective heroes, curvy heroines, and hard-won happily-ever-afters—no cliffhangers, no cheating, and no games with readers’ hearts. Rough & Ready Firefighters They fight fires. They ride hard. And when it comes to love, these cowboy firefighters play for keeps. In the small town of Rough & Ready, sparks fly when rugged heroes collide with curvy…

KYLIE ONE YEAR AND ONE CHRISTMAS LATER Snow hushes the whole mountain, falling in soft spirals outside the bedroom window. But inside the cabin, everything burns warm and golden—woodfire glow, quiet breath, Camden’s big body crowding mine like he can’t bear a single inch of distance. He closes the door behind us with that careful precision he has in everything—not timid, just deliberate. Like he’s measuring the world twice before touching it. Like he’s measuring me. His hands—those wide, callused, impossibly gentle hands—slide to my hips. “You sure,” he murmurs, voice thick enough to melt snow off the roof. “Couldn’t be more sure,” I whisper. The heat in his eyes…

Winter The first thing I feel is warmth. Not the crackling fire. Not the plush blankets. But the heavy, possessive weight of Weston Hale, wrapped around me like a man guarding his favorite secret. Sunrise spills faint gold across my bedroom walls, soft and quiet after the blizzard’s rage. The storm has passed. The world is still. But West? West is wide awake. I know because his arm tightens around my waist the moment I shift, pulling me back into the solid heat of his chest, like he’s afraid I might slip through his fingers while he’s sleeping. “Don’t,” he murmurs, voice gravel scraped over velvet. “Not going anywhere yet,…

Davin One Year Later The thing they don’t tell you about Christmas with a sunshine wife? It’s war. Tinsel war. Cookie war. Garland war. I swear, I’ve fought insurgents with less enthusiasm than Arielle bringing holiday cheer into my mountain cabin. But today? Today, she’s the one sleeping in—curled around my pillow, hair wild, big belly rising under my old flannel shirt like she owns the place. She does. And everything in it. Including the tiny person kicking her ribs with the force of a pissed-off mule. I finish tying the last ribbon around the bannister. Lights glow across the cabin, fireplace crackling, stockings hung, tree lit, pancakes warming, and…

SILAS ONE DAY LATER The storm’s finally spent. Outside, the mountains lie blanketed in white, the pines bowed beneath their new coats. Smoke curls from the cabin’s chimney in lazy spirals, and the world feels soft again—like even the wind’s decided to rest. Inside, I’m warm for the first time in years. Sage stirs beside me, the early light painting gold in her hair. The soft hum she makes when she stretches nearly undoes me. I never thought I’d live to see her like this—peaceful, smiling, mine. “Morning, Cowboy,” she murmurs, voice still raspy from sleep. “Morning, Sassy,” I whisper back, brushing a kiss across her temple. “Merry Christmas.” She…

Wendy ONE MONTH LATER If I could bottle the sound of my mother screaming over the turkey timer, I’d sell it as a holiday alarm. “Wendy!” she hollers from the kitchen. “Where’s the sweet potatoes?” “On the counter … next to the marshmallows!” I shout back, even though she’ll ignore me and ask again in ten seconds. Behind me, Slapshot leans against the doorframe, arms folded over a chest that looks like it was carved by a hockey stick. He’s wearing a red sweater that says Let’s Get Lit with a string of blinking LED lights and an expression that could curdle eggnog. “Your family’s … energetic,” he mutters. “That’s…

EASTON ONE YEAR LATER The mountain’s cozy tonight. The smell of sandalwood and vanilla curls in the air. Fresh snow drapes the pines, the kind that muffles sound and makes the world feel holy. The fire’s burning low, crackling steady, and the cabin glows gold, warmth surrounded by powdery white. I never thought I’d get used to this peace. Never thought I’d earn it. But then again, I never thought I’d have them. Bud’s snoring at my feet, Penny curled by the hearth like a sentry on duty. And in the middle of it all—Everleigh, hair loose, face soft with the kind of peace that still knocks the air from…

Hazel Another pristine Sierra Nevada morning hums with starlight. I hunch over the kitchen counter, sprinkling powdered sugar over half a dozen cooled loaves of pumpkin spice bread. The smell of cinnamon and vanilla wafts through the air, filling the fire-warmed cabin with late-fall coziness. After coffee, pumpkin spice is now considered one of Calder’s favorite human inventions. “I can’t wait for you to try this with coffee. You’re going to be sold,” I call to my alien mountain man. From the living room, deep in his robotics work, he chuckles, brushing a hand through his thick, brown hair. “Barely weeks together and my little Earthling is ready to auction…

Everett The first of them crawls back at dawn. Its plating is scorched, eyes dimmed to a single, flickering glyph—the word for error. The other two follow, limping through the leaf-buried forest floor like wounded animals that don’t understand why they still move. They were built to endure. Built to obey. Built to kill. I watch from the threshold of the old ranger station that I’ve claimed as home. Frost has crept over the broken consoles, and the walls hum with residual static from Harbinger and the god machine. It used to soothe me—its frequency, the voice of order, of purpose, or morality. Now it sounds like rot. The constructs…

Melody The mountains hum differently in daylight.Softer. Gentler. As if the earth itself is exhaling after holding its breath all night. Maveryk’s hand moves lazily over my back, tracing invisible lines along my spine. Outside, roosters call, and a gate creaks somewhere down by the barn. It’s the kind of ordinary sound I used to take for granted. But now, even the quiet feels sacred. Grandma insisted we stay in the guest cabin in the days after the attack to rest while she nursed our burns with healing salve. Maveryk protested at first, but the Wildbloods trickling in offered to help with chores, taking over his ranch’s once quiet bunkhouse…