You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!
This HaBO comes from Ava, who is looking for this romance. Trigger warning for the description below:
Single mother on the run finds work on a remote ranch, where she falls for a broody rancher.
I read this book 10-15 years ago and it was already a few years old so I’m throwing it way back, but I just really want to find it again.
So the female main character is a mom and has one or two little boys and she’s on the run I believe from an ex. She’s trying to go into hiding, so she’s arranged to work as a housekeeper on a ranch out in the middle of nowhere. What I remember is her riding on a bus to reach a small rural town. It’s pouring rain outside and she and her kids go inside a local bar or diner and her son’s sleeping with his head on her lap. The owner of the establishment calls rancher telling him his new employee is there, stranded. Tall, dark and handsome rancher arrives to pick her up and carries her son to his truck. Rancher guy is really quiet and broody, the kid/s are scared but fascinated with him and try and imitate his lasso throwing and stuff like that. He doesn’t know how to interact with them, but slowly learns.
A relevant piece of info is that the male main character is half white, half Native American. His dad was white and rich and had a lot of land. He only took the male main character in as a worker, and always treated him badly and like “the help” and not as a son. As the male main character grows into his looks, some of his dad’s female friends start noticing and treat him as a piece of meat and there is an incident where there was some kind of sexual assault that obviously traumatized him.
In the end, during the conflict and resolution the female main character leaves and then comes back but I don’t remember the particulars.
I really hope someone knows what this book is called cause I’ve been looking for it for years!
Weirdly, I definitely don’t know this one, but I can already think of a few authors who would certainly write something like this.
I’m sure I’ve read this but can’t think of title or author. Could it be a Linda Howard story?
This sounds so much like a Catherine Anderson; she loves ranchers and part-Native heroes and women fleeing abusive relationships. However, it’s been years since I read anything by her. It could be “Sweet Nothings”, although I think the wife was fleeing gaslighting in that one and there were no kids. Maybe “Star Bright”?
I thought it might be something by Kathleen Eagle—a couple of her contemporary romances have heroes with some Native and some white ancestry, but I couldn’t find one that completely fits the brief.
Could it be Beyond All Reason by Judith Duncan? The blurb “With two young sons to look out for and her vengeful ex on their trail, Kate Quinn thought the Circle S looked like the perfect place to hide out. They could build a new life, a safe life. And if love never came her way, so what? But she hadn’t counted on Tanner McCall, the intimidating half-breed who ran the ranch with an iron fist–and a closed heart. Something about Tanner got to her, making her dream of love under the stars and becoming a family at last.”
It was the first in a trilogy published 1994-1995, with two later books around 2001. I read the first three and remember them fondly.
Man the 90s were wild, markerters were unselfconciously putting the term “half-breed” on the blurb of a book.
Sigh. Is that statement from the POV of the heroine? And if so does she ever confront her biases? Is that just poor marketing?
(I don’t like the term or the connotations of it, but I don’t know how to discuss it without calling it out specifically)
I know of two books where the heroine either goes to a remote ranch to work or is hiding out there but neither of the heroines have children. One is the Linda Howard book mentioned above and the other is an old Elizabeth Lowell.
Wondering if this is a Catherine Anderson or a Diana Palmer?
@Yota Armai: They were still putting that word on books well into the mid 00s. Then the whole Cassie Edwards plagiarism scandal hit and Native American romances fell out of style with readers.
It does sound like the Judith Duncan book, Beyond All Reason. I went down to my keeper shelf, and there it was! Silhouettes Intimate Moments #536 from 1993. That was a good book, going to have to reread that one.
Judith Duncan “Beyond All Reason” First book in her Wide Open Spaces series. #536 Silhouette Intimate Moments. Copyright 1993. Recognized it immediately. The series is a favorite of mine.
I may have more than one copy. If I do, I’ll contact you again.
Skin Deep by Pamela Clare? It’s a novella from her I team series.
It absolutely is Judith Duncan’s “Beyond All Reason”. I’ve posted this question on so many platforms for years, and everyone kept suggesting Catherine Anderson and I knew it wasn’t her book. You guys are absolutely amazing! I did remember that it was part of a trilogy and that the second book had a character named Chase. So everything checks out. I am beyond grateful to everyone who responded! Going to read now!