Every Inch of Open Ground: A Christian Cowboy Romance (The McCord Brothers Book 1)

He has not asked another human being for help in three years. At 11:47 on a Wednesday night, he is going to have to.

Cade McCord runs four thousand acres he will never own. He keeps the books, calves the heifers, walks the fence lines, and answers to an absentee owner in Cheyenne who has never set foot on the place. It is a good life if a man does not look at it too closely, and Cade has gotten very good at not looking.

He has not been home to Antler Ridge since the morning he found his father on the hay barn floor. He has not said the name of Jesus in a prayer with a request attached to it in three years and four months. He does not need anybody. That is the whole arrangement.

Then his mare goes down colicking in the dark, and he calls the new veterinarian in town.

Tessa Greer drove out of Kentucky looking for a place that needed her. Three weeks into her own practice, she takes a midnight call from a foreman with a sick horse and a voice like a shut door — and she does not leave until the sun comes up.

Six weeks later the owner calls to say he is exploring his options. Which means the Bar M is going to a developer, or to a fund out of Omaha, or to anybody at all who is not Cade McCord.

He has one shot, no money, and a lifetime of deciding things alone. She has a legal pad, a sharp pencil, and the unshakable conviction that he is not going to do this by himself.

Then the storm comes in ten inches heavier than the forecast, and everything Cade has built comes down to whether a town he never asked for help from is willing to give it anyway.

Can a man who has spent three years proving he needs no one learn to let himself be carried? And can he get home before the road runs out?

Every Inch of Open Ground is Book One of the McCord Brothers — a clean, Christ-centered ranch romance with a slow burn, a whole town worth loving, and a happily-ever-after.