Only one month before Christmas, and Sydney Steele had only
four weeks left to put together the Wildcat Bluff Fire
Rescue calendar, and she still had no Mr. December. It was
not the day for her precious Celeste -- her 1959 Cadillac
--to sputter to a halt. Thankfully, Dune Barrett was passing
by, and the car had only a minor issue, but Sydney was
nearly overheating. She and the sexy cowboy had been
flirting ever since he came to town. Sydney has been a widow
for two years, she will always love her late husband, but
for the sake of her eight-year-old daughter Storm, and for
her own, she's beginning to question if it's time to move
on or if the sexy cowboy is only a passing fancy.
City girl that I am, I always crave a good cowboy Christmas
romance and this year, A VERY COWBOY CHRISTMAS will be hard
to beat. I have been somewhat disenchanted with so-called
sexy contemporary romances recently, but I will admit that
the cover caught my eye. Too many seem like a bunch of sex
scenes, dirty talk with a flimsy story to hold everything
together, so I figured that if I got bored at some point, I
could always ogle the yummy cover. It turns out that I
barely glanced at the cover while devouring this book.
Needless to say, it was my first Kim Redford book.
Sydney is a strong, confident woman if a bit lonely; she
works hard to give her daughter a good home, but she soon
comes to realize that Dune is a really nice guy, who happens
to be an Adonis, and he takes it all in stride. Dune is
upfront, flirtatious in an honorable manner, but it doesn't
take long before he reconsiders that Sydney makes him happy.
Sydney and Dune's flirtatious banter is really terrific,
and I love how it progressively led to more. They both
acknowledged their pasts, they didn't rush into anything,
because they simply didn't know if there was more to their
obvious attraction.
Ms. Redford's descriptions of the Texas town are so
vibrant, and the characters so genuinely endearing, that I
embraced it all in a heartbeat. A VERY COWBOY CHRISTMAS is a
romance between good, down-home people, and I loved Sydney
and Dune equally; I also found Storm a lovely child.
There's a retro-modern vibe throughout A VERY COWBOY
CHRISTMAS that I found fresh and fun: Sydney has taken to
dressing in vintage 1950s clothes to match her beloved
Celeste, which she inherited from an elderly friend; and the
town itself -- from the drive-in through every shop and the
people -- had this earthy quality that makes a good cowboy
book great.
I wonder if Slade, Sydney's brother, will be next to find
his happy ever after? I hope so, because he intrigued me, in
any case, I will be there for the next Smoking Hot
Cowboys installment, because Kim Redford was a new
author to me, with A VERY COWBOY CHRISTMAS, and she has
gained a new fan!
Sydney Steele needs to wrangle cowboy firefighters to model
for her charity Christmas calendar, and Dune Barrett—who she
has in mind for Mr. December—is just the man for the job.