A town called End Of The Line, Montana is the nearest stop
to the Kinnison Ranch, on the slopes of the Continental
Divide. With snow coming in, near Christmas, Wyatt Kinnison
wants to separate a calf from a wire fence and ride home.
He barely gets hot food on the table however when a strange
woman dressed in city casuals knocks at his door, lost. He
tries to advise her on weather preparedness and directs her
to town. She's the new second-grade teacher, and Aimee
Worth is her name, though Wyatt hadn't asked, unused to
female company.
Wyatt's brothers Dalton and Rein complete a trio of RUGGED
HEARTS but the other two are away closing a deal for
cattle, and a major storm front closes down, making it
unlikely they can return for a while. Wyatt heads to town
to pick up groceries before he gets snowed in, and he meets
the mouthy, pretty, fluffy woman, as he thinks of her, at
the store. Both of them are surprised when he kisses her
outside. Wyatt doesn't trust women - his mother left
unexpectedly and his cute wife whom he met at the local bar
headed back there to meet other men during their brief
marriage. So he has no intention of getting any closer to
this sassy little lady. Of course the whole town knows
everyone's gossip, so soon Aimee does too. Wyatt keeps in
touch with the world over the internet, closing the
distances for him, and privately he's also taking an online
creative writing class. Not that he'd ever admit it....
Amanda McIntyre has placed two distinctly different but
modern characters in her Western romance and played them
against each other. There is a Christmas which turns out
to be much more interesting than the reticent rancher could
have imagined, and deferred romance although the pair feel
sparks from early in the story. I enjoyed the wildlife
descriptions and the backdrop of the mountains, and the way
that the modern technology can connect people who would in
previous years have been isolated. I was dubious that
everyone Aimee met would instantly tell her all about the
personal lives of other locals, and I also thought that the
new teacher might have done better to make friends with the
ladies in town before asking a shy, introverted rancher to
have coffee with her. RUGGED HEARTS is an enjoyable
character-based adult novel which makes us see that the
times they are a changin'.
Rugged, quiet, hardworking, Wyatt takes his position as head
of the Kinnison family seriously. But the scars of betrayal
by the women to whom he once trusted his heart now prompt
his stark, simple game plan, and no one in hell is going to
convince him any differently. What matters most, besides the
welfare of his brothers, is to manage the ranch left to him
and never risk his heart again to something as foolish as
love—but after meeting Aimee, Wyatt begins to realize
that a man should never say never to a determined second
grade teacher.
When vivacious, resilient Aimee Worth loses her twin sister
in a tragic accident, she makes the choice to live out her
sister's dream of teaching in the small mountain community
called End of the Line, Montana, never suspecting she'd meet
her Mr. Right in the middle of nowhere—he just doesn't
know it yet. Used to challenges, her spirit shatters the
perceptions that have kept him isolated from living life
beyond the ranch, proving to him that when it comes to love,
the greatest risk is not taking one.
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