Earning Tia’s Trust by Mariella Starr

Tia Kingston wasn’t an ordinary girl. She’d had a good life, some would say privileged until her mother died. Despised by a father who wouldn’t even look at her most of the time, Tia had never known why. She knew her mother was there to protect her. Then suddenly, she wasn’t. Thrown into a man’s world, she learned to do the chores of a rancher. She knew how to care for horses and cattle. By age twelve, she could outride and outshoot most of the men. She could fix fences and stand by when a mare needed help birthing a foal. Her only restrictions were based on her petite frame and weight, rules that were enforced by the ranch manager. By that time, her father, who was ill and a drunkard, tried to force a marriage on her. When Hayward Kingston died, Tia thought she would finally have control of her life, but nothing could have been farther from the truth.

Robert Grayson was an attorney who’d built a reputation for defending political men who he truly believed were idiots. He managed to save their reputations, although it was costly for them. Good at his job, Robert had finally reached a point where he had difficulty looking at himself in the mirror. He was successful, but this wasn’t why he’d gone to law school. When a friend from college sent him a letter about thugs invading his friend’s small town, he was interested but didn’t know what he could do about it. Reading on, Robert realized there was more going on. There was a crooked uncle, a judge who had gone rogue, and a town lawyer involved, but now missing, and was rumored to be dead. Meanwhile, a young woman had been forced out of her rightful inheritance. She’d taken her younger brother and gone into hiding. Nodding as he finished the letter, Robert wrote back immediately. He had a lot to do to untangle himself from his current job, but he would do it quickly. A young woman needed legal assistance, and he was going to Stone Falls, Texas, to help her.

What happens when two stubborn people meet and sparks fly?