All Night Long with a Cowboy

Crews’s irresistibly sizzling second Kittredge Ranch romance (after Secret Nights with a Cowboy) returns to idyllic Cold River, Colo., where a pair of unlikely lovebirds must learn to drop their guards. Jensen Kittredge, a smoke jumper and in-demand ladies’ man, hides his grieving heart—broken by tragedy when he was young—and his quick-thinking, ranch-running acumen behind a clownish good ol’ boy facade. But his walls start to crumble when Harriet Barnett, a be-cardiganed high school librarian and five-cat cat lady, accosts him in the disreputable Coyote Bar, demanding he help with her do-gooder scheme to straighten out her rebellious teenage summer students. Jensen’s immediately intrigued, sensing a “sex bomb” ticking beneath Harriet’s repressed exterior. As Jensen ignites Harriet’s “personal, internal wildfire season,” her bluestocking assaults on his devil-may-care posturing leave him helplessly smitten. Crews works in convincing local color by surrounding the duo with helpful friends and family who push them toward each other until their masks—and everything else they’re wearing—are finally flung aside in scenes that scorch the pages. Balancing emotional depth and sexual tension, this steamy tale proves opposites attract. (Aug.)