Judith’s review of I Cross My Heart (Sons of Chance #10) by Vicki Lewis Thompson
Self-help guru Bethany Grace has returned home to clean up the now-decrepit family ranch after her father’s death. Rather than just set the whole place ablaze (her first choice), she settles for a nice symbolic little blaze outside until things get out of hand!
Cowboy Nash Bledsoe is working at the Last Chance Ranch next door when he sees the smoke. Bethany is the last person he expects—or wants—to see. How can he explain that she’s indirectly responsible for ruining his life?
Still, there’s an opportunity for Nash to buy the ranch if he can help restore it, and the two strike a deal. But there’s a whole lot of chemistry in the fine print, and Nash is about to discover that where there’s smoke, there’s fire!
This 10th novel in the Sons of Chance series from Ms Thompson continues the saga of the Chance Family as well as the on-going story of their ranching enterprise and the men and women who are connected in one way or the other. Bethany Grace is a published author and a well-known TV personality in the national talk-show venue but she wants her presence in her home town to remain a quiet secret. Her dad had sunk to the depths of a bottle in his depression over the death of Bethany’s mom, had left their ranch in shambles, and now she didn’t want this family embarrassment to be a blot on her career. Public media, she knew, was merciless. Yet when she decided to set her father’s old, broken-down recliner ablaze in her front yard, little did she realize that the smoke would attract the folks at the neighboring Chance ranch. Sending one of their hands over to check it out may have been one of those life-changing occurrences. At least, it became the incident that brought Bethany and Nash Bledsoe together.
This is a story about a man who had been screwed, blued, and tatooed by his rich ex-wife, a woman he loved but who had soured and killed their marriage with her attitude of superiority over his humble roots, whose fascination with and hunger for material wealth had superceded her desire to nurture her marriage to a kind and caring man. Now Nash is starting over. Because of the pre-nuptial agreement, he came away from the marriage with nothing and sometimes he wasn’t even sure his pride was intact. But he was working hard and hoping to buy a small ranch for himself. This is also the story of a woman who wants to help people, whose self-help books found a home in the hearts of millions of readers and viewers, but she was a woman who hadn’t really lived out all she taught. Her dad and her home town were an embarrassment, she was overwhelmed with getting it all put behind her after his death, and she was fearful that a new career opportunity would be yanked out from under her if she didn’t get shed of all that was her past.
As always, Ms Thompson has delighted her readers with a warm and winsome romance, full of sexual tension and bedroom antics, revisiting old friends and reminding her readers of others in the Chance Family whose stories were featured in previous books in this series. Nash and Bethany lit up the skies with their passion, but both agreed it was “no strings” and just for the duration of the weeks she was in Parable. But even here Bethany received another much-needed lesson in the value of friendships, the authenticity of the communal bonds that held a town like Parable together, and the generosity of her neighbors when she was really in need. It was also a reminder that the road to True Love is never smooth and in the case of Bethany and Nash, it was fraught with boulder-sized potholes.
I hope those who have been following this series will make every effort to read this novel. I think it’s a really fun story and I enjoyed it a lot.
I give it a rating of 4 out of 5.
You can read more from Judith at Dr J’s Book Place.
This book is available from Harlequin Blaze. You can buy it here or here in e-format.
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