Title: Breaking Free
Series: Colorado High Country
Author: Pamela Clare
Read copy: eBook (Kindle)
Published: April 28, 2021
Publisher: Pamela Clare
ASIN: B0917T2FG3
He’s the one man she can’t have...
Winona Belcourt left the Pine Ridge Reservation to become a wildlife vet in the small Colorado mountain town of Scarlet Springs. She now leads a busy life caring for sick and injured animals and watching over her aging grandfather. Apart from a complete lack of romance, her life is close to perfect. She doesn’t have time for dating, even if there were available men in tiny Scarlet who interested her. Then Jason Chiago comes to town, one of many volunteers here to help rebuild her family’s summer camp. Tall, dark, and hot as hell, he’s the friend of some friends and a member of the legendary Shadow Wolves, an all-Native unit of expert trackers who patrol the US-Mexico border. Sadly, he’s also taken—or so her friends say. Winona would never get involved with another woman’s man. Still, she can’t turn off the longing she feels for him—or stop herself from imagining the heat of his kisses.
She’s everything he wants...
As a Tohono O’odham man, Jason knows that life’s journey is filled with unexpected twists and turns. Still, he never expected to be where he is now—his ex-fiancée in prison and his job with the Shadow Wolves on the line. On administrative leave for taking out a killer on the wrong side of the border, he has come to Scarlet Springs to help rebuild a kids’ camp that burned to the ground—and to clear his head before his disciplinary hearing next month. Yet, from the moment Winona stumbles into him, he can think only about her. With her big heart, sharp mind, and sweet face, she is everything he’s ever desired in a woman. But he made a deathbed promise to his grandmother that he would never abandon his responsibility to the O’odham people and move away from the reservation like so many others have done. It’s his duty to pass on traditional lifeways so they won’t disappear and to be a role model for O’odham youth. Winona deserves better than a fling with a man who can’t stick around. That’s why he’s going to keep his hands to himself, no matter how much she makes him burn.
A love that won’t be denied...
When a wealthy rancher asks Winona to help find a wolf that is killing his livestock, Jason and Winona join forces to solve the mystery. There haven’t been wild wolves in Colorado for eighty years. But working closely side by side has consequences. As they move in on the wolf and uncover a more shocking truth, their attraction ignites into passion. Jason realizes he has a choice to make. He can either keep a vow he made long ago and break both of their hearts by walking away—or he can turn his back on his duty and his people to seize a chance at true happiness in the arms of the woman he loves.
My rating:
Jason Chiago is in deep doo-doo. On administrative leave without pay for taking down a criminal on the wrong side of the border, he's more than happy to get together with his buddy, Zach McBride, and help rebuild a Colorado camp for Native kids that's recently burned down. There, he meets Winona Belcourt and everything changes.
Winona has almost given up on meeting her half-side. Until the day she runs into Jason Chiago. At first, she thinks he's taken and she isn't a poacher, and even when she learns he's free, she knows they have no future. He made a promise to his grandmother not to abandon his people, and she cannot leave Scarlet Springs.
Another great read. A straight-up romance with just a tad of suspense with the whodunit sub-sub-plot.
Great characters, even though Jason came across as a bit of a stuck-up at the beginning, but once he saw the possibilities, the close-knit community that didn't really see ethnicity, he loosened up and it was (almost) smooth sailing from that point forward.
He and Winona complimented each other, this rather reserved Shadow Wolf and a big-hearted, warm "Wolf Whisperer" and their romance was cute and sweet (albeit a little instantaneous) with just a smidgen of bitterness because of the star-crossed nature of their relationship. He made a promise to never abandon his people and she couldn't abandon her home and work.
Once again, Scarlet Springs and its community shone brightly. This "weird" little town with its motley crew of inhabitants, their bonds and connections and care for one another. And the Team...I really hope we get more stories. I think of the original crew only three are unattached.
5 stars, bodyguard/military/merc/gov/cop/spy, contemporary, contemporary romance, favorites, firefighters/EMT/ERU/SAR, Pamela Clare
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