It takes courage to decide what to do with your life, especially if the two things you want most are mutually exclusive. At least that is what the situation looks like to Marshall. But he isn’t the only one who has to decide what the future will hold for him. Indigo used to be a bullrider, but an injury took that dream away from him and he doesn’t really know what to do other than run his ranch. This is the story of two men who need a major change in their lives for them to be happy, but it will take courage for each of them to make it happen, and a minor miracle if they want to stay together as a couple. Andrew Grey sure managed to keep me wondering until the very end!

Marshall is passionate about his music, and he has been trying to get the conductor’s position he wants for a very long time. It is exhausting to always come up as second best, but he is determined. What makes it worse is that his parents don’t understand or support him. He needs a break, and ends up on Indigo’s dude ranch for some peace and quiet. Not that he finds it. Instead, he meets Indigo and is totally intrigued by the outwardly friendly host. Marshall senses there is more to the man than meets the eye, and over a week of more and more intense encounters, he ends up falling for the ex-bullrider. There is only one problem: Marshall still wants to be a conductor, and that can only happen in a city, and Indigo lives and breathes his ranch.

Indigo used to be a confident man, and he loved bullriding and the rodeo. He can’t even walk without a limp, and while he rides horses to accompany the paying guests on the ranch he has turned into a business, he has not been back on a bull. Even the mechanical bull owned by his friend Dante (from books one) on a neighboring ranch scares Indigo. Marshall intrigues him, but he can hardly believe the sophisticated guy is interested in him. And even though they clearly “click” and get along really well, Indigo’s home is right there on the family ranch. It may tear him apart but he can’t stand in Marshall’s way and ask him to give up his career to stay in a place that can never give Marshall what Indigo thinks the man needs.

These two guys tore at my heartstrings. Both know so well what they need, and it seems they can never have it and be a couple. Or they can be a couple but one of them will have to give up his ambitions. The quiet pace of this gentle story inexorably pulled me into the slowly emerging emotional thunderstorm their lives become as they meet, get to know each other, and fall in love. As usual with Andrew Grey’s books, these men and their issues are real, and he manages to bring out how extraordinary they are when they are together.

If you like cowboys who need to figure out what’s next after their last rodeo is over and done with, if an aspiring conductor with a love of music searching for his purpose in life sounds interesting, and if you want to see what an emotionally explosive situation they end up in together, then you should definitely read this novel. It is hot, deeply emotional, and adds another wonderful love story to this series about ex-bullriders and the men they fall in love with.


NOTE: This book was provided by Dreamspinner Press for the purpose of a review on Rainbow Book Reviews.
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