Wild About the Wrangler

Thompson’s second lighthearted Sexy Texans contemporary (after Crazy for the Cowboy) continues the revitalization of a dying panhandle town, thanks to the tourist draw of Wild Horse Canyon Adventures. Artist Anastasia Bickford draws portraits each day in Sadie’s saloon. She also sells drawings of a wild horse called Ghost, based on pictures taken by her good friend Mac Foster, a cowboy who works for the trail ride company. Anastasia wants to overcome her childhood fear of horses and learn to ride so she can attend her sister’s wedding in the canyon and see Ghost in the flesh. Mac agrees to teach her, and their proximity overcomes the objections each has to a relationship. Great kisses and hot sex will titillate readers, but the obstacles to the romance are too flimsy to hang a plot on. The minutiae of horse-ridding lessons will tickle horse lovers, but they slow the pace. Agent: Jenny Bent, Bent Agency. (Nov.)