Perma-Free! 'Her Heart For the Asking (Texas Hearts #1)' by Lisa Mondello

Blurb:

Mandy Morgan swore she’d never step foot in Texas again after Beau Gentry left her for life on the rodeo circuit eight years before. But now her uncle’s heart is failing and she has to convince him that surgery will save his life. She never dreamed the first thing she’d see when she stepped off the plane would be her biggest nightmare...the one man she’d never stopped loving.

Beau Gentry had the fever for two things: the rodeo and Mandy Morgan. But for Beau, loving Mandy was complicated by his father’s vendetta against her uncle. This led him to make the hardest decision of his life and he can still see the bitterness and hurt on Mandy’s face. All these years it has killed him to think Mandy had forgotten him and moved as far away as possible from him. But now they’re back in Texas, and he’s going to do all he can to win back her love.

Read an excerpt:

"What are you doing here?" Mandy Morgan asked, dropping her too-heavy overnight case on the sun-roasted tarmac. After a grueling forty-eight hour work stint and a five-hour flight from Philadelphia, she stood wilting under the brutal Texas sun, facing her biggest nightmare. 

Beau Gentry. 

She groaned inwardly, drinking Beau in with her eyes as if she hadn't had a drop of water in months. Eight years was more like it. If she were eight years smarter, she would be moving her aching feet as fast as she could in the opposite direction. But all she could do was stare at eyes so bright they rivaled the blazing sun. At lips so kissable she'd spent the better part of her adult life trying to wipe the memory clean from her mind.

She had expected Beau would have aged some. When she allowed herself to think about him at all, she reminded herself. The faint lines etched in the corners of his sleepy gray-blue eyes gave a hint of maturity, but most probably caused by long days in the cruel sun.

She fought the urge to take a closer look at his ruggedly handsome features, but failed. How could he have gotten better looking after being abused by every bronc-busting horse on the rodeo circuit? His angular jaw, strong and determined, was shaded with beard growth that was probably a day old, maybe more. Mandy suspected if Beau grew a full beard, it would grow in thick and be the smooth texture of his almost black head of hair. She forced aside past memories that gave her such knowledge with renewed irritation.

The man didn't even have the decency to have a crooked nose. What should have been bent and awkward from being broken a few too many times was instead long and straight, shaped perfectly between high cheek bones most women would swoon over, or kill to have themselves. But on Beau Gentry, it was just one thousand percent robust cowboy.

Damn him. 

"I'm your ride out to the Double T," Beau said, gripping the edge of his white straw cowboy hat and tipping it in a cordial gesture. 

She ground the heels of her low pumps into the soft tar to contain her growing irritation. Did he think she was an idiot? "No way." 

"'Fraid so," he said, his expression slightly askew. 

"Hank didn't mention anything about you coming to get me when I spoke to him on the phone."

"I suspect he thought you would have found some excuse not to come if you knew I was picking you up." 

"He would have been right. Why didn't one of the hands come get me?"

Settling his hand at the base of his neck, Beau replied, "You're looking at him. As of three weeks ago I am one of the ranch hands at the Double T."

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Author Bio:

New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author, Lisa Mondello, is an award winning author and has published over 20 romance novels. Her bestselling series includes TEXAS HEARTS, DAKOTA HEARTS and Fate with a Helping Hand. She’s held many jobs in her life including managing a Boston rock band, selling catering tools and working in special education. But writing novels in the last job she’ll ever have because she’s not retiring! For more information and to get news about upcoming books, visit her at http://www.lisamondello.blogspot.com