Cattleman's Choice
1985
- western romance
- fiction, romance, contemporary
- fiction, general
- fiction, small town & rural
- fiction, romance, general
- fiction, romance, western
The story
Carson Wayne had come to Mandelyn Bush with the ultimate request: he needed her to teach him how to treat a lady. No doubt he'd asked the right person - Mandelyn was as polished and feminine as Carson was rough and reclusive. And she was the only person who could reason with him during one of his barroom brawls. It was too intriguing a challenge to turn down. Mandelyn was curious about what lay beneath the outlaw's hard shell. She suspected that the renegade was really a caring and sensitive man. But what she hadn't counted on were her own feelings for this irresistible rebel.
What it’s like
Warm, unhurried small-town Texas romance, the kind of book that smells of dust, coffee and cattle feed rather than anything glossy. The prose is plainspoken and conversational, with close third-person passages that linger on ranch kitchens, dusty pickup cabs, rodeo-season evenings and the quiet of open pasture, so the setting feels lived-in rather than scenic. Its vibe is gruff tenderness with a slow simmer: a long sit-down read for a rainy weekend, a comfort re-read with a mug in hand, or something to keep company on a late-night train. Tension comes from banter and wary glances more than from danger, and the arc follows a prickly, self-protective man slowly learning to soften while a poised, sharp-witted woman discovers her own guarded heart. Bar fights and a few hot-tempered confrontations punctuate the story, and there is some sensual content, handled with fairly frank physical attraction rather than explicit description. Violence is brief and mostly tavern scuffles, not graphic. For readers who love old-school category western romance, where the hero is a reformed wild card and the heroine is more than a match for him.
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