Book picks similar to
Rafe by Kathy Ivan


romance
romantic-suspense
contemporary
western

The Fireproof Girl


Loretta Lost - 2016
    When the constant danger became too much to bear, she ran away, thinking she could survive on her hacking skills alone.That was until she met Cole Hunter. He became the only person she could trust: her family, her friend, her partner-in-crime. Her everything. After struggling through college and starting their lives together, she believed that nothing could ever tear them apart. Until it did.When news of a brutal murder reaches Sophie, she’ll do everything in her power to fix what is broken. If it isn’t too late…---------When Cole was nine years old, he watched his whole family burn to death in a house fire. Fueled by years of obsession, he started one of the world’s leading architectural firms, with a mission to design homes resistant to fire, earthquakes, floods, and every threat known to man. Sophie was his secret weapon. She was his purpose. Since they were teenagers, he was determined to build a better life for her, so she could finally be safe, and they could be together. But disaster has always followed Cole around, ripping away everything he loves. This time, if he isn’t careful…His enemies might just take him down.

The Lake


AnnaLisa Grant - 2013
    Having lost both her parents and grandparents, and with nowhere else to go, Layla is moving from Florida to a small town in North Carolina to live with the only family she has left: her estranged uncle and aunt.The last five years of Layla’s life were spent appeasing her less-than-loving grandmother, followed by being her grandfather’s caretaker. Growing old before her time, Layla lost her identity. Now she must learn how to allow herself to be the one cared for and loved.Life takes an unexpected turn when Layla meets Will Meyer. His breathtaking good looks are enough to catch her eye, but his sincerity and passion are everything she needs to find the strength and confidence she lost — and lead her into love.When tragedy once again strikes Layla’s life, her hope is all but completely crushed. Through it all, Layla learns what it means to truly love and be loved.

Adam


Jennifer Ashley - 2015
    He settles in to heal at his family's ranch, where his four brothers, famous trick riders, train horses.Adam is stunned to find Bailey Farrell working there—she was the shy girl who'd helped Adam graduate high school so he could run off to Hollywood. Except the budding Bailey, with whom Adam had a brief but intense affair, has blossomed into a beautiful woman. Now the sparks that had once ignited between them threaten to explode.Adam is beaten-up, broken-down, and has lost his nerve—the stunt that injured him also killed his best friend. The only one he can turn to is Bailey, but will Bailey, who has come back to Riverbend to lick her wounds after a painful divorce, be willing to help him again?Book 1 of Riding Hard. A 230-page (approx) novel—20 chapters, plus bonus sneak peek at Grant's book and a recipe for Mrs. Ward's Harvest Pie.

The One for Me


Rachel Hanna - 2013
    Unattached and not interested in falling in love, he dives head first into his business in the small coastal Georgia town.Jenna Davis's life has come to a screeching halt. After making the worst decision on her life during college, she now finds herself a single mother about to lose her home over a decade later.When these two cross paths after many years, sparks fly and Kyle puts up a brick wall to protect himself. In this sweeping romance, emotions run high as the two try to find themselves, and each other, again.

Let Me Be the One


Lily Foster - 2014
    Her boyfriend? The guy who came off as sweet and devoted, the life of the party? Try obsessed, out of control and hell-bent on ruining her life.One year later, a new and improved Darcy Donovan is back on campus and she’s got a plan. That plan doesn’t include Tom Farrell, or any other guy for that matter. He’s surfer-boy hot and he talks a good game, but don’t they all?Hell to the yes…She’s back.Going after his friend’s girl is wrong, but Tom is too hung up on Darcy to care. Screw principles, screw ethics, screw the bro code. An hour in her presence would lead the best of men to veer off the high road.And he has his work cut out for him. She still thinks he’s a joke, nothing more than a walking, talking one-night stand. What she doesn’t know is that Tom has spent the past year changing his ways. He’s not all talk, and he’ll do whatever it takes to prove it.But when a menace from Darcy’s past resurfaces and Tom’s past comes back to bite him hard, their one shot at happily ever after may be shot to hell.What you don’t know? Turns out that it can hurt you.Let Me Be the One is the first book in Lily Foster's Let Me series. Gripping and emotional, these stand-alone romances are intended for the 18 and older crowd due to mature language and sexual content.

Love, Chocolate, and Beer


Violet Duke - 2014
    After moving his chocolate shop, and newly single life, to the quirky town of Cactus Creek, Luke wants nothing more than to devote all his energy into making his business a success—by taking the romance market by storm. But his grand plans get thrown for a loop when he locks horns with the feisty beer-brewing beauty next door who calls his ‘romantic idealism’ a load of fairytale bull. Soon, driving the woman sparking nuts becomes another wickedly fun priority he simply can’t get enough of.In his defense, she’s addictively easy to incite…and plain impossible to resist.Beloved local brewmaster Dani Dobson is beyond riled up. It’s bad enough the new shop owner in town comes locked and loaded with both a distractingly rugged charm and sexy flashing dimples, but the whole only-in-the-movies variety of romance he’s selling—the kind her world has been crushed by before—is really doing a number on her allergy to unrealistic clichés. What’s worse, he’s created an annoyingly clever ad campaign that dubs ‘beer joints’ like hers as the “cave where romance goes to hibernate.” The nerve of that man.Combustible chemistry or not, damn it, this means war. The stakes…very likely, her heart.

True-Blue Texan


Linda Barrett - 2001
    Brave. Bold. Brainy. One woman reached for the gold, one for the law, one for the university, and one ran as far from home as possible. But often, the best laid plans fall apart, and Starting Over is the only thing to do. True-Blue Texan, Book 1 -- A fish out of water. University instructor, Katherine Kirby, reluctantly faces a new city and a new job. How could she, who was used to teaching eager undergraduates at a prestigious college, relate to a class of adult high school dropouts seeking an equivalency diploma? She has no family, no love in her life, and no choice but to jump into her new position and do the best she can. After all, it's only temporary while she gets her career back on track. Her new students, however, begin to touch her heart. Especially the tall, dark Texan in the second row. Nick Martinelli's presence in her class is a secret -- from his parents, his customers and the entire city. But his interest in Katherine is no secret. In his desire to teach the teacher, however, Nick learns a little something himself.

Watching


Calle J. Brookes - 2012
     That thought drove Dr. Georgia Dennis in every decision she made, personal and professional. A profiler with the Complex Crimes Unit of the FBI, she was tired of being second-guessed by her boss Michael “Hell” Hellbrook. Once they caught the sociopath responsible for stoning teenaged girls, she was gone from Hellbrook’s team faster than the ink could dry on the transfer papers. Georgia and Hellbrook are hot on the trail of a sadistic killer targeting women and girls with brown hair and brown eyes—women with a striking resemblance to Georgia. Hellbrook will do anything to protect his team, even the woman he never wanted on it in the first place. By keeping her at his side, he grows closer to her until the flame between them erupts and consumes them both. As they get deeper involved with the case and with each other, they do not realize someone else is watching, someone whose descent into madness threatens everyone around them. Is this watcher their killer, or someone much closer? PAVAD: PREVENTION & ANALYSIS OF VIOLENT ACTS DIVISION: PAVAD—the Prevention & Analysis of Violent Acts Division—is a special directorate of the FBI located in St. Louis. PAVAD was formed by Edward Dennis to combat today’s modern crimes in a modern nation. PAVAD consists of only the best of the FBI’s best, and addresses cases involving everything from kidnapping, money-laundering, extortion, all the way up to RICO violations. The PAVAD directorate has more than a dozen teams ready to mobilize at a moment’s notice to every corner of the United States…

Father Found


Judith Arnold - 1997
    Never did he expect to find the unplanned result of that fling - a healthy, wailing baby named Samantha - strapped into a car seat on his back porch, along with a suitcase full of diapers and infant apparel and a note informing Jamie that he’s her father.Maybe he is and maybe he isn’t. But first things first. He’s never fed a baby or changed a diaper in his life. He doesn’t own a crib or a stroller. In a panic, he phones the nearest hospital, where neonatal nurse Allison Winslow takes his call and tells him about a class she teaches called the Daddy School.Classes on how to be a dad are exactly what Jamie needs. But when he attends his first class and sees the tall, earnest, amazingly beautiful and even more amazingly competent Allison, he realizes that he might just need more from her than her lectures on how to hold a baby.Jamie’s efforts to be a father to this precious baby touch Allison. His sense of humor amuses her. His striking good looks turn her on. But how can she trust the sort of guy who’d sleep with a stranger on vacation, without giving a thought to the consequences? How can she give her heart to such a reckless man?

Securing Caite


Susan Stoker - 2019
    It is a spin off of the original SEAL series. It will have a whole new team of Navy SEALs (that you have already met in Protecting Dakota) and takes place in the same city and Navy base as the original. This is Caite McCallan and Blake "Rocco" Wise's story.Caite McCallan is a Department of Defense admin working in Bahrain when a glitchy elevator, of all things, leads to an unexpected invitation to dinner by a gorgeous Navy SEAL. When he later stands her up, Caite’s understandably upset… until she overhears a plot that confirms Rocco didn’t blow her off. Instead, he and two fellow SEALs are in danger — and Caite is forced to put her career and her life on the line to save them. Blake “Rocco” Wise never expected his routine mission to go sideways, but he was even more surprised to find himself and his teammates rescued by the adorably shy woman he met in a stalled elevator. Caite’s selfless act saved his life, but when attempts on her own make it clear someone wants her gone, it’s Rocco’s turn to protect the brave, sweet, sexy woman. The longer he knows her, the more he wants her… but keeping Caite close could bring her nearer to the enemy than ever before.**Securing Caite is the 1st book in the SEAL of Protection: Legacy series. Each book is a stand-alone, with no cliffhanger endings.

Bennett


Seraphina Donavan - 2015
    She takes care of her ailing mother, she manages PR for the family’s distillery, Fire Creek. And every day she quietly resents the fact that he stepped in and kept her from being with the one man she loved… a man who still lives there in their small town of Fontaine, Kentucky and who haunts her every minute of the day, waking or asleep. Bennett Hayes has loved Mia his whole life, and for one brief moment, when they were young and full of hope, it seemed like even the long history of bad blood between their families wasn’t enough to keep them apart. But he’d been wrong. Mia never showed the night they were supposed to run away together and when he confronted her about it, she broke his heart. But fate and circumstance throw them together again and the fire that raged between them at eighteen is even hotter now. The burn is inevitable. But there are forces at play, people on the periphery of their lives whose agenda goes far beyond just keeping them apart… they will stop at nothing to keep their secrets, even if it means murder.

The Prince & The Player


Tia Louise - 2016
     Until she walks into the room. Dark hair, luscious lips, gorgeous curves…Ava has every part of my body standing at attention.She consumes my thoughts, my desires… I will possess her.I’m the future king, dammit.If only her sister would get out of the way.ZeldaIt was a simple job, in and out. Seduce a crown prince, humiliate him in front of his people, get out of jail free. Finally, I would keep my promise to my sister: Ava would be safe.I never saw the tables turn.I never saw him coming.Cal was only looking for a party… Until he found me.He’s the Playboy Prince, the brother of my target, the object of my lust.Ripped, lean body, talented fingers, talented tongue. He’s wickedly smart and completely irresistible. He’s ruining my job… he’s ruining everything. Now I’m staring down the barrel of a gun, and I have only one choice… RUN.(PRINCE is a thrilling action-adventure romance full of twists and turns and smokin’ hot sexytimes. It is Book 1 of the “Dirty Players” series, formerly titled THE PRINCE & THE PLAYER. No cheating, but you do have to keep reading… Let the games begin!)

The Agreement


S.E. Lund - 2013
    When she decides to write an article about BDSM in popular culture, she tells herself it's just research and nothing personal for she can't afford to become the target of gossip or scandal. She hopes that the carefully worded agreement she writes up will keep her relationship with the Dominant she will interview strictly professional. Then 'Master D' - Drake Morgan - walks into the interview and Kate is mortified for not only is he gorgeous, he's the son of her father's best and oldest friend… Drake Morgan, MD, bass player, philanthropist – Dominant. Known as Master 'D' in Manhattan's BDSM Community, Drake must keep the kinky side of his life secret to protect his very successful career as a neurosurgeon. After a heartbreaking divorce, Drake doesn't do girlfriends, he doesn’t do sleepovers, and he certainly doesn't do breakfast in bed the morning after. He keeps everything in his well-ordered life separate and under his firm control. Then Kate McDermott crosses his path and screws everything up. Now, nothing is neat and tidy anymore, and no longer under control for Drake is smitten and things are going to get messy… From Amazon Bestselling Romance author S. E. Lund comes a story of two people who find themselves in each other's arms. The Agreement will stay with you long after you read the final page. 18+ only for mature content.

When We Left


Elena Aitken
    He needs her to see how he’s changed. Can time really heal everything and make a second chance at love possible? Reeling from a painful divorce, and with a teenager in town, Cam’s returned to her hometown to heal. Not only is Timber Creek the only place that’s ever felt like home, her best friends are there...and the first boy she ever really loved. Evan has only ever loved one woman. Sixteen years ago he knew he wasn’t good enough for her, but now she’s back, and time has a way of changing things.Cam’s got her hands full trying to come to grips with her new life. The last thing she needs is to get involved with Evan again. But their attraction is impossible to ignore, and the connection that existed between them so many years ago is still very much alive.This could be the second chance they’ve always wanted, but there are years of hurt and misunderstandings between them. Never mind the truth of the past and the reality of the present that could once again threaten to pull them apart. This time for good.

Light My Fire


Christie Ridgway - 2014
    Cilla Maddox—who in the years since their last meeting has turned sexy as hell. But she deserves more than a man hardened by long nights, dark roads, and too many faceless women.One night will change her world…Cilla Maddox not once imagined she’d see the bad boy of her dreams again. But then he’s sharing her air, her home, her bed. Though he claims he has no heart, she wants it to be hers. Can she convince him that the flames that leap between them might signify forever?