Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Publication Date: 6/30/2020
There’s a reason they call
this cowboy relentless
Gil Sanchez was once rodeo’s
biggest and baddest hotshot. Now he's thirteen years sober and finally free of
the pain that ended his skyrocketing career. Given one last, near-miraculous
shot to claw his way back to rodeo glory, he can't let fantasies of
happily-ever-after dull his razor edge...but Carmelita White Fox is every dream
he’s never let himself have.
And from the moment he saw
the spark of challenge in her eyes, he hasn't been able to look away.
Carma may come from a
Blackfeet family noted for its healing abilities, but even she knows better
than to try to fix this scarred, cynical, and incredibly sexy cowboy. Yet she’s
the only one who can reach past Gil’s jaded armor, and the fiercely loyal heart
buried beneath the biting cynicism is impossible to resist. Gil needs Carma
just as much as she needs him, but as the pressure builds and the spotlight
intensifies, they’ll have to fight like hell to save the one thing neither can
live without.
Excerpt:
If following
Carmelita was a bad idea, it was going to be one of the more interesting
mistakes Gil had made. He didn’t just want her. He craved her…and that
rarely boded well for him. But just this one time…
When the back door of
the bar thumped shut behind them, Carmelita stopped and dragged in a long, deep
breath. Her words came out in puffs of vapor. “God, that was suffocating.”
The closeness of the
overcrowded bar? The argument with her cousin? The attention? “Why did you
come?”
“My grandmother
volunteered my services. Fund-raisers are the worst, though. Everyone is so…”
Her hands fluttered in a broad circle, encompassing the tearful outpourings of
gratitude that marked benefits.
“You’re used to being
in the spotlight.”
“I prefer an audience
to a crowd,” she said flatly. And the difference was in the separation. She
could walk off a stage without interacting with the masses.
She tipped her head
back to gaze into the heavens and her body language slowly shifted, as if she
was drawing in the stillness. When she started off through the parking lot, she
once again moved with fluid grace. Gil matched her stride, closing the space
between them so his coat sleeve swished against hers.
“Bing told me about
you, and introduced me to your… friend,” she said.
With that slight
hesitation, she summed up Gil’s uncertainty about his relationship with Hank,
past and future. “I’m his sponsor,” he corrected stiffly.
“Mmm.” A sound that
translated to if that’s what you want to tell yourself. “We lack many
things up here on the rez, but we do not have a shortage of recovering
addicts.”
“I watched Hank grow
up. I understand him.”
She angled a
searching glance beneath lowered lashes. “I see.”
Yes, she did. There
was something in the way she looked at him—through him—that made him
want to both hide and move closer. He did neither. The breeze caught her hair,
sending a strand fluttering and carrying the scent of pine needles and snow
down from the mountains. He swung around to face her as they stopped beside the
door to his truck, and when he looked into her eyes, he felt as if he was
losing his balance, falling into one of the bottomless mountain lakes—only much
warmer. He could just keep sinking and sinking…
She caught him,
pressing her hands flat against his chest, but her smile was tinged with
regret. “I wish I could stay. You and I would be very good together, I think.”
The image of
Carmelita naked and lush under his hands sent heat shuddering through him. Then
he registered what she was saying.
“You’re leaving?” Gil
frowned at her in disbelief.
The hitch of her
shoulder set the moonlight shimmering through her hair. “I can’t leave my
grandparents with a sick baby.”
“His mother didn’t
seem overly concerned.” Gil’s voice was harsh, along with his judgment of her
charming cousin. Even when he’d been regularly popping Vicodin like breath
mints, he’d managed to stay clean on the weekends he’d had his son.
Carmelita smoothed
her palms over the front of his jacket. “Next time?”
“I won’t be back.”
She angled her head to
give him another searching look, then nodded. “You’re taking Hank home. That
explains it.”
“What?”
“This.” Her hand
moved down, pressing with unerring accuracy over the clutch in his gut. She
reached up with the other to brush cool fingers over the knot of tension in his
forehead. “And this.”
He wanted to lean
into that touch—into her—and let her wipe his mind clean for a few hours.
“I’m sorry I can’t do
more.” She stroked a blissful circle on his temple. “But I can give you
something for that headache.”
“A fistful of
ibuprofen?”
“A promise.” Her eyes
were steady, her tone certain. “Hank will be fine. He’s stronger than you
think, and whatever you’re keeping from him, he’ll understand it was for the
best. So will the others.”
Gil jerked his head
back. “I never said anything to Bing about that.”
Her hands fell away
and she angled her gaze upward, eyes going distant. In the Panhandle the stars
were painted on the sky. Here it seemed as if they were standing among them.
“I don’t know,”
she said. “I just feel it. But I’m almost always right.”
Without warning, she
tipped onto her toes and pressed her mouth to his. Her lips were cool, but at
the touch of her tongue the glowing embers they’d been gathering between them
burst into flame, whooshing through him like a prairie fire. His thoughts, the
last of his reservations, the ability to think at all were consumed by a wall
of heat. He gripped the lapels of her coat to drag her hard against him, and
she fisted her hands in the sides of his jacket, pressing even closer. Her
tongue slid over his, the friction setting off more sparks.
A palpable shudder
ran through her. She braced her hands on his shoulders, slowly, inexorably
separating her mouth from his. Then she smiled, a copper-skinned Madonna with
fathomless eyes, and pressed a palm over his thundering heart. “You should get
some rest, Gil Sanchez. You’ve got a long drive tomorrow.”
***
Excerpted from
Relentless in Texas by Kari Lynn Dell.
© 2020 by Kari Lynn Dell. Used
with permission of the publisher, Sourcebooks
Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc. All rights reserveda Rafflecopter giveaway
About the author:
KARI LYNN DELL brings a lifetime of
personal experience to writing western romance. She is a third generation
rancher and rodeo competitor existing in a perpetual state of horse-induced
poverty on the Blackfeet Nation of northern Montana, along with her husband,
son and Max the Cowdog.
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