Montana Justice, Book 2
From the publisher:
He’ll risk everything to rescue her…
Ex-military man Thorn Grayson has debts to pay. So when a plane crashes in the mountains near his cabin, he’s hired to find the wreckage—and the kidnapped woman believed to be the sole survivor. But when he locates Geneva, or “JJ” as she insists on being called, she’s not at all what he expected.
JJ isn’t sure she can trust the mysterious man who’s come to her rescue. But she has secrets of her own—secrets she’ll do anything to keep. So she’ll follow his instructions and keep her distance to get off this mountain alive without blowing her cover. As dangerous conditions force them together—and the undeniable chemistry between them ignites—he’ll protect her at any cost. But when the morning light comes, will the truth tear them apart?
This was my first read by this author. If I had seen this cover, I might not have read the book but I’m glad I did. For what it’s worth, the cover cowboy looks nothing like the description in the book and why they keep calling him a cowboy is also suspect. This is not a cowboy romance; it is romantic suspense with a loner, ex-Military protagonist who owns a couple of horses and lives in solitude in the mountains of Montana. Maybe that makes him a cowboy, but there are no ranches or rodeos or any kind of cowboy activities usually found in these kinds of books. I liked this book but it was not at all what I expected, and I hadn’t even seen the cover when I read it, which would have made my expectations even more wrong.
Thorn’s wife was killed and he hasn’t recovered. He’s had a hard life, and thanks to a judge who sent him to a sort of boot camp, he turned his life around. He joined the armed services, and is now retired and living alone on his mountain. When the judge calls to ask a favor, Thorn can’t say no. The judge’s friend Franklin is a very wealthy man. He lost his daughter to drugs, and now his granddaughter Geneva is out of control. He cuts her off except for a modest allowance, but then he is contacted by a man claiming to have kidnapped her. The kidnapper asks for $10 million dollars in ransom.
But grandpa was pretty smart. He put a high tech tracking device on his granddaughter’s phone, so he is able to see her whereabouts. Turns out she was flown out to the mountains, where the plane has apparently crashed about half an hour away from Thorn’s home. The judge asks Thorn to go check out the plane and rescue the granddaughter.
She is still alive, but is not at all what Thorn is expecting from a spoiled party girl. This girl has swiped a gun from one of her kidnappers who died in the plane crash, and she is not sure if she can trust Thorn so she shoots at him and tries to get away. He manages to get hold of her and get her back, but it turns out she may not be who Thorn thinks she is.
This was a fairly complicated kidnapping plot, with the wrong girl being taken and lots of bad guys popping up and making things worse. The girl Thorn rescued is JJ, a homeless travel agent who was squatting because she had made travel arrangements for Geneva so she knew the girl wouldn’t be home. But Geneva was smart enough to leave her phone behind so Grandpa couldn’t find her.
Thorn and JJ try to find Geneva, thinking her in serious trouble. There are lots of twists and turns and the suspense is high in this page-turner. A happy ending is reached pretty much all the way around, and I ended up enjoying this book a lot. In fact I couldn’t put it down.
8/2021 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch
HEARTBREAKER by B. J. Daniels. HQN; Original edition (March 24, 2020). ISBN: 978-1335045195. 304 pages.
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