This HaBO request is from Mara, who is searching for a western romance:
CATTLE DRIVE. Basically. If I’m remembering correctly.
This is a Western/American Frontier book published in the 90s or earlier, about a woman who has either ordered or pushed her way onto a cattle drive. The man is responsible for the cattle drive, the leader or possible guide, who doesn’t like the intrusion of a female. I remember class differences (upper classy lady vs Western dude’s dude).
I can only remember two scenes:
1) Her trying on jeans for the first time since she was used to dresses because she might be upper-classy? She was all feeling the illicitness of having clothes outline her curves, and he was feeling samesies, as he noticed. Fluttered my middle school/high school heart!
2) Rainstorm out on the range. The cattle drive people are riding horses, rain storm comes on quick, the lovebugs race towards an abandoned shack and get separated from the cattle group, so they’re alone in the shack and steaminess occurs. It was a pretty scene with pretty details about the colors of the sky before a storm. I live in Texas, so I think I felt a connection.
I’m sorry that I have more questions than clues! I don’t know if they are both white, since I know a lot of westerns have an American Indian theme. I don’t know what part of the country they’re in. I’ve bought many books thinking they were the right one. I’ve scoured websites, HaBOs, GoodReads, and AAR trying to find this book with no damn luck.
Feel free to spam me with any and all books related to cattle drives! I’ll go do more research if need be!
Heroes just can resist a woman in pants.
Samantha and the Cowboy? Tall, Dark, and Lonesome?
When I read this HaBO, I immediately thought of Louis L’Amour. Don’t get all squinty-eyed, y’all. L’Amour had a lot of romance in his westerns! His rugged cowboys were almost always tamed by a woman. Just sayin’… Off the top of my head, there’s WHERE THE LONG GRASS BLOWS (cattle drive on the Chisholm Trail, he’s just a cowboy with goals, she’s “well-bred”) might fit. I don’t remember if there was a cabin involved, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Could it be YA/teen romance? It sounds vaguely like Buffalo Gal by Bill Wallace, which I read as an actual child in the ’90s. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/125015.Buffalo_Gal
It’s her mother’s crazy idea: a trip to Texas to save the buffalo. Amanda Guthridge just wants to ride horses with her boyfriend Philip and plan her coming-out party. But suddenly they’re facing alligators, rattlesnakes, and stampeding buffalo on the Texas-Oklahoma frontier with David Talltree, the half-Comanche cowboy who thinks she can’t even ride!
So she challenges him to a horse race, no-holds-bared. He’s handsome, arrogant, and much too self-assured — and she’s determined to won. She expects adventure. But she hasn’t planned on danger — or romance…
McKettrick’s Choice by Linda Lael Miller? Can’t remember if it’s a cattle drive but the posh-ish heroine does go on an epic horseback journey with the rugged hero and a ragtag crew.
Both scenes seem like something I vaguely recall from a Johanna Lindsey western, but I don’t recall a cattle drive as the main focus of any of her books.
Lorraine Heath’s “Never Love a Cowboy” has a cattle drive (and stampede!), but the hero’s upper-class and heroine isn’t. And I don’t remember a cabin, but I think there’s a storm.
I have totally read this one, ugh!
I don’t think it’s any of Elizabeth Lowell’s westerns, might be a Johanna Lindsey, or Miller’s “Choice”.
“Never Love a Cowboy” by Lorraine Heath, fits except I can’t remember if the heroine has worn breeches.
I might be getting two different ones mixed up, but I’m pretty sure the heroine actually owned the cattle.
Or like Carly suggests, it might be “Samantha and the Cowboy” by Lorraine Heath
I don’t know if it is the right book, but your description made me think of “Anything For Love” by Connie Brockway.
I remember them going on horseback together and I think it was for a cattle drive though I don’t know that for sure. I know they got separated from their group and there was rain and a flood.
Second vote for Buffalo Gal. I still have a battered copy of that book somewhere. I loved it so much. Although I don’t recall any actual steaminess on the page, just a lot of repressed YA Feelings. 😉
Some of the details fit, but others don’t – but possibly The Best Man by Maggie Osborne? Description below:
I leave all my worldly goods to my worthless daughters, but they got to earn it. If you three want an acre of my ranch, you got to drive a herd of longhorns to Abilene, Kansas. If you fail, then my fourth and worst wife, Lola, gets everything. May the best man win. Your Pa, Joe Roark
Neither Freddy Roark nor her pampered, high-strung half-sisters, had even been on a horse! And they despised each other almost as much as their Pa who wanted only sons. An actress, Freddy especially felt her sisters’ cold disdain. Now a fortune depended on the three working together-and finding a trail boss to teach them to rope, ride, and herd cattle across seven hundred miles of open plains.
He’d have to be one desperate man…
Dal Frisco needed the job bad enough to deal with the devil-or the Roark sisters. But before their dangerous journey began, he found himself blindsided with desire as searing as a red-hot brand. Freddy’s beauty and maverick spirit had him both hogtied and filled with hope…as they all headed into the hidden places of the heart.
Adding my vote for “Tall, Dark and Lonesome” by Debra Dixon.
What I remember best about this book is that the heroine’s laptop continued to function for DAYS AND DAYS during the cattle drive, without the battery going dead. Yeah. Right.
From Debra Dixon’s website:
http://www.debradixon.com/books/TallDarkandLonesome.html
Tall, Dark and Lonesome
Bantam Loveswept #655
December 1993
ISBN: 0-553-44396-8
Awards:
1992 RWA Golden Heart Finalist
1994 Published Finalist – Colorado Award of Excellence
#6 Waldenbooks List
ZACH – A Confident Cowboy Who Staked His Claim, Then Dared Her to Deny It…
He was the perfect symbol of the West, columnist Niki Devlin decided, but rugged trail boss Zach Weston made her forget to breathe! Still pained by the scandal that haunted her past, she’d reluctantly returned to Wyoming to write about his vacation cattle drive, but from the moment he pulled her from the mud into his arms, she wanted to scorch his iron control–to play with the fire in his gray eyes.
He Branded Her with His Gaze, and with His Lips
Zach wasn’t looking for a trail romance, but he couldn’t hold the feisty flirt and not kiss her until she moaned his name. He wanted all of her, every bit he could touch and taste, every secret and every sigh, but Niki knew she’d destroy his dreams of happy-ever-after once she confessed the truth. Zach told her she could keep running forever, or she could finally stop–but was she ready to be lassoed by love?
Not sure what it is, but I know it’s definitely not Samantha and the Cowboy!
I feel like I know this one! Cannot for the life of me remember the author or title. If I remember correctly, the rancher was guardian to a younger brother who cooked up a scheme on the internet to host a cattle drive vacation. The recently jilted or unemployed or some other trope heroine was friends with a sibling and as a favor to them went to the ranch. It was totally my jam because the rancher was all ornery and whatnot. I remember there being subsequent books in this series. Drat! I read too many of these things!
@ karen – are you thinking of Kiss Me from Susan Mallery’s Fools Gold series? Would be from last year’s trio and is a really fun read. The heroine is a tenderfoot from L.A. helping her friend. The grumpy rancher’s brother decided to host a cattle drive as a money-maker. Hilarity and true love ensue. If you haven’t read it, I recommend the book.
I read too many cowboy books, too, but don’t remember this particular one from the 90s.
So, I’m sure this isn’t it, but I have a beloved 60s romance inherited from my grandmother that includes a cattle drive and a heroine that may have worn jeans for the first time just for said cattle drive. Except it’s set in Australia, not the American West. Anyway, it’s called A Singing Bird by Stella Frances Nell, and it’s so very 60s and caricature Aussie. Girl from Scotland gets engaged to a guy, they move Down Under, he becomes paralyzed, she falls in love with his older and manlier cousin during cattle drives, hospital visits and swimming with a platypus. (Seriously, those are all plot points.) And the poor paralyzed guy has somebody else to love him and take care of him, so don’t worry about the spare.
I have loved this novel since I was a teenager, and it is crazypants. Anyway, I’m sure that’s not it, but it does feature a cattle drive.
For some reason, I am thinking Catherine Anderson… I read a bunch of here books, one right after the other, so they have all blurred together. I remember one and I can’t remember the title, of a woman foisting herself on the cattle drive and the mean boss of the drive, naturally her love interest eventually, who assigned her to the drag. The drag is the tail end of the drive, behind the cows in lots of dust, riding back and forth across the end of the drive to keep cattle from straying.
I remember that Iris by Leigh Greenwood had a cattle drive with a heroine who had been wealthy at some point. My memory of the actual details of the book are hazy though. It was part of a series, each book was about a different brother and the brides all has flowers names. The description I found reads:
Monty Randolph plans to take a herd to Wyoming. He means to start a ranch for the family and one for himself so he can get out from under the irritating and watchful eye of his older brother, George. He’s determined that nothing will stop him from succeeding, especially his neighbor, Iris Richmond, who wants him to take her herd to Wyoming along with his. The last thing he needs is a southern belle, steeped in flirting and vanity, on the filthy, exhausting trek over a thousand miles of dangerous, unsettled country. Her kind is strictly for looking at, not for buying. Neither does he need double the cows and double the responsibility. He already as three brothers along to worry about.
Iris Richmond has nothing left of her father’s fortune but a herd of cows. And if she doesn’t get them to Wyoming, rustlers are going to take that. When Monty refuses to take her along, she puts her herd on the trail ahead of him and mixes the herds together. The continual danger of stampedes, rustlers, and Indian attacks drive the couple together, forming a relationship neither welcomes nor is able to deny. Beset by a thieving foreman and a long lost brother, Monty is the only person Iris can trust. And she means to trust him whether he likes it or not.
HI!!!!!
Y’all are an amazing group – thank you so much for your help and guesses and book recs!
I’m going to go buy them all now and start some research! Yes, very serious, serious research required:-)
Buffalo Gal looks so so so familiar. Could it have been a YA that was the gateway drug to my romance world? I hope so! I’ve read a few books thinking that they were THE ONE, but have been disappointed that they were very similar (Johanna Lindsey westerns, I’m lookin’ at you!).
Thank you all again!!
I have so read this but I can’t remember title or author. Western cattle drives are my jam. I second the Leigh Greenwood as a possible one. Also, you might try Jodi Thomas – Texas historical westerns, although most of hers have weddings first, romance developing later.
I was thinking Every Cowgirls Dream but it doesn’t match exactly…
A few other authors who have random historical westerns: Jill Gregory, Julie Garwood, Jill Marie Landis, Robin Lee Hatcher (had more mainstream romance in the 90s vs. Christian romance now), Brenda Joyce, and Jill Barnett.
If you figure it out, let us know!
The Goodnight Loving Trail by Faye Adams and Purity (Dangerous Virtues #2) by Elaine Barbieri both feature cattle drives, but for the life of me I can’t recall any other details. A Heart So Wild by Johanna Lindsey has a scene where the heroine wears pants for the first time and the hero checks her out, but there aren’t any cattle on their trip west.