Texas Trouble

Hot cowboys, a dash of suspense and a lot of southern humor are the perfect recipe for Trouble.

The Texas Trouble Series is a contemporary cowboy/western romantic suspense series containing twelve books which can be read as standalone novels, but some characters cross over, so the read is enriched if the series is read in order.

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My Kind of Trouble (#1, Texas Trouble)

Cassie Bellamy swore she’d never go back to her hometown when she left Bowie, Texas ten years prior. In that time she’d all but forgotten about the man who sent her running to Phoenix in the first place, bad boy Luke Matthews. She had built a new life in Arizona, which included a successful real estate business and a new fiancé. The last thing she needed was to dredge up old memories by seeing him again. But her daddy was hurt and needed her help at the ranch. Her plan was to get her daddy on his feet as quickly as possible and avoid Luke Matthews like the plague.

That plan went to hell fast when, on a nostalgic whim, she decided to drive her old pickup back to Bowie, instead of her BMW. Bessie gave up the ghost five miles outside of Bowie, and the one person she wanted to avoid became her knight in brown khaki. Cassie knew right then she was in big trouble. The reformed bad boy was the Sheriff of Bowie now, and not only was he still hotter than the Texas sun, his anger toward her was too.

Luke Matthews had worked damned hard to change the way people of Bowie thought of him. He was no longer known as the bad boy son of the town’s drunk, they called him Sheriff now. For ten years, Luke had been living on the right side of the law. Although he was discreet about it, he also played hard to forget about the woman who’d given him the determination to better himself by leaving him ten years prior without a word.

His strategy had worked perfectly until he came across a beat up pickup on the side of the road and decided to play good Samaritan. That charitable act led him to the uncharitable owner of the illegally long legs sticking out from under the hood. Cassie Bellamy was back in town and the beautiful blonde was just as sassy and stubborn as she always had been. At first he’s pissed, but then realizes he’s just been presented with the prime opportunity to finally settle his mind and move on. Luke is determined before he sees her beautiful backside on the way out of town, he will have his answers, even if it takes hogtieing her to get them.

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The Trouble With Love (#2, Texas Trouble)

After her adrenaline junkie husband is killed in the line of duty as a police officer, Sabrina Roberts becomes a reclusive workaholic. On the verge of burning out, when Sabrina gets a call from a friend who asks her to stand in a wedding she grabs the opportunity with both hands. She vows to use the time off to reevaluate her life and make some important decisions about her future. But almost from the first minute her feet touch Texas soil, Sabrina realizes this trip will be anything but a vacation. Between the call she receives from her estranged brother telling her he’s in trouble and the stalker who seems determined to keep the bride from making it to make it to the altar, Sabrina has more action in the small Texas town than she ever had back in Phoenix. The action she’d really like to find before she left town though, was with the oh-so-handsome, but sexist small town Sheriff.

Cole Jackson is frustrated and overwhelmed when he takes over as Sheriff of his hometown after his best friend resigns from the job. He has enough on his hands learning the job and getting the department settled down, without the trouble sexy Sabrina Roberts brings to town. Suddenly, his peaceful little hometown, where the most he had to look forward to was the rollover of a chicken truck on the highway, becomes a hotbed of trouble, and Sabrina Roberts seems to be at the heart of it all, or always in the middle trying to help him. Cole needs to his focus to do his job, and the sexy Phoneix detective was definitely making that difficult for him in more ways than one. When she is added to his list of protectees, along with her brother, Cole has no choice but to put her up at his house. Protective custody becomes so much better than it had ever been before when Sabrina takes over his kitchen and he discovers that she bakes better biscuits than his famous biscuit-baking mother. The way to Cole’s heart was definitely through his stomach, and it was love at first bite. Before long, Cole wants to sample everything on Sabrina’s menu, in the bedroom and the kitchen, but first he has to convince her that it’s worth taking a chance at love with another lawman in the middle of risking his life to save her brother and his best friend.

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Double The Trouble (#3, Texas Trouble)

Professional rodeo roper, Karlie Upton, is done with arrogant testosterone-soaked cowboys, and she’s done with the rodeo. Worn out from traveling and battling with the abusive bull rider she’d just broken up with, Karlie heads to her old friend’s ranch to lick her wounds and hide out. Karlie knows her ex will come looking for her, because not only did she leave him, she took his meal ticket with her, a fifty-pound slack-jawed bulldog named Sarge, who he got five-thousand dollars a month to care for from his crazy grandpa’s estate.

Karlie’s plans go to hell though when the first person she meets is the Cheif Deputy of Bowie, Texas because she wasn’t paying attention to how fast ‘Freddie” her hot rod Lincoln was going. The handsome deputy not only gave her a lecture, he gave her a ticket she definitely couldn’t afford, so Karlie tried bartering her services to get out of the ticket. The deputy misunderstood and arrested her. If that wasn’t bad enough, he threatened to send Sarge to the pound, and Karlie knew she had to do something fast. The hot lawman quickly found out why she was known as the ‘Wild Child’ in the pro rodeo circuit.

Bowie’s Chief Deputy, Gabe Kelley, had never encountered a woman like the red hot redhead he stopped for speeding while filling in for his patrolman on traffic duty. Sitting at the city limit sign, minding his own business, almost dozing off, because he was so bored, Gabe was jolted out of his lethargy when a black Lincoln went past him doing at least one ten. When he finally caught up to the sassy redhead, she gave him lip, and he gave her a hefty ticket. She propositioned him, and Gabe arrested her and her ugly dog. Or he tried to–but the hellion had other ideas. Before he knew it, he was on his stomach hog-tied at the side of the road, and she was fleeing in her hot rod Lincoln. At that moment, Gabe swore if it was the last thing he did he would find that bratty woman and make her pay. But when he locates her at a local ranch, he finds out he’ll have to get in line because her surly ex and angry twin sister were there first.

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Looking For Trouble (#4, Texas Trouble)

Country singer, Jess Sparks, is finally watching her star rise after she sheds her thieving, no-account manager and puts in lots of hard work. At a wedding gig, she notices a good looking cowboy staring her down while she performs. After she finishes her best friend challenges her to give herself a break and talk to him. Jess talks to him, one thing leads to another and she and the cowboy blaze a trail to the bedroom for an uncharacteristic one-night stand. That one-night turns into a lifetime commitment for Jess though when she gets back to Dallas and realizes she’s a member of the elite two-percent condom-failure club. Jess is pregnant and because sugar and darlin’ seemed to work just fine that night she doesn’t even know the cowboy’s name.

Jess decides that’s for the better because the man was a rodeo rider, a rambler, and she hardly expected him to want to become a father. After a while she decides she doesn’t want the complication of having him in her life anyway. Angel was hers, and she could raise her daughter just the way she wanted without interference. But then she gets another wedding gig, and wouldn’t you know she’d run into him there?

Professional rodeo rider, Wade Roberts never expected his career to end with a fall from a wild horse he pulled in his last rodeo, but that’s exactly what happened. Luck was on his side though when he found out the manager of the Double B Ranch in Bowie, Texas was retiring, and they hired him as a replacement. Shortly after his arrival at the ranch, the owners decide to hold a wedding there. And wouldn’t you know they’d hired the beautiful country singer he’d had a fling with a year prior to entertain?

Wade thought he and Jess Sparks had parted on good terms, so he couldn’t figure out why she was giving him the icy shoulder–until he sees a child’s toys in the back of her van and the gorgeous dark-haired baby in the blonde’s front seat. He knew one thing right then, he wasn’t letting her get away until he found out if that baby was his. If Angel was his, Wade was going to do the right thing and be a father to her, whether Jess Sparks liked it or not. Wade hadn’t intended on caring about the mother, but that happens quickly, and when Jess falls prey to some county-music industry vultures he has to figure out how to keep his little family alive. He hadn’t gone looking for love or for trouble, but with a one-night stand, it looked like he’d found both. But the question was, could Wade keep that trouble alive long enough to tell her he loved her?

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twd-cover-art-newTrouble In Dixie (#5, Texas Trouble)

Professional rodeo team roper, Katie Upton, is tired of being called the “Mild Child” in relation to her less inhibited idential twin sister. She’s spent a lifetime cleaning up her sister’s messes, the last of which landed her working for the handsome, but standoffish, owner of the Rockin’ D ranch in Amarillo. Katie whips the ranch into shape in no time but gets crossways with her new boss when she tries to corral his spoiled little princess daughter. Dixie tells her father that Katie is boring, and he seems to agree which makes Katie determined to redefine herself to show the hot, widowed rancher just how un-boring she could be.

For ten years, Tommy Tucker has kept his nose to the grindstone working his ranch and raising his motherless daughter. That kept him on the right side of his interfering mother-in-law who seemed determined he was never going to remarry because Tommy had made the unthinkable decision to save his baby instead of his wife, her deceased daughter. When Tommy makes the mistake of hiring a sexy redheaded horse trainer with a smart mouth, she not only puts him on his mother-in-law’s radar again, she causes nothing but grief for his daughter too so he fires her to keep the peace. But then Tommy finds out more about her situation and feels guilty, so he tracks Katie down to hire her again.  The woman he finds though isn’t the one who briefly worked at his ranch. This tattooed blond bombshell is hotter than habaneros in July and Tommy can’t resist sampling her heat. When they get back to the ranch though, he quickly realizes that decision could ultimately cost him his daughter, because his well-connected mother-in-law is on the warpath and she has friends in low places.

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aft-cover-art-newAsking For Trouble (#6, Texas Trouble)

Jazzie Ramos is at a crossroads in her life. Her best friend has just gotten married and doesn’t need her help anymore. Since Jazzie has always taken care of Jess, she really doesn’t know what to do with herself now. The band she plays fiddle for is finally successful, they even have a platinum record to their credit, so Jazzie wonders why she isn’t happier about her new found fame and fortune. Even while playing in paradise at a friend’s wedding in Tahiti, she has a hard time appreciating the beauty around her. Until she reconnects with Beau Bowman, a hotter-than-hell Texas Ranger she’d met the year before.

Things definitely heat up then, but a frantic call from her mother telling her that her that her younger brother is in trouble cuts her time in Paradise short. When she gets home to Dallas, Jazzie realizes that Beau has followed her home. He tells her that her brother is involved with some very shady people, and there is no way he’s going to let her go it alone. Jazzie knows she needs Beau’s help but also knows she is she just asking for trouble by accepting it. To help her, Beau would have to meet her family, including her five, overprotective older brothers who watched her like pit bulls. How would she hide that she’d spent a week in paradise in the green-eyed lawman’s arms? Or the fact that she’d given him what her brothers had been protecting like seasoned soldiers for twenty-six years? But the biggest question of all was how could she not accept the help of the one man who could save her brother?

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chasing-trouble-cover-art-newChasing Trouble (#7, Texas Trouble)

Dr. Jenny Anderson doesn’t have time for men or the complications they bring to her life, but when sexy wildcat oilman Chase Rhodes is brought into her ER for treatment, she quickly reconsiders. The man looked like a male model, had a smile that could melt her panties at fifty paces. But she had a firm rule about not getting cozy with patients, and he needed her help not her ogling. After he asks her out when he’s discharged, Jenny turns him down and Chase leaves the hospital. She thinks she’ll never see him again, but then gets a note from his mother personally inviting her to a party to thank her for saving her baby boy’s life. Jenny wants nothing to do with a thirty-year-old mama’s boy, so she politely declines.

She thinks that’s the end of it, but then Chase shows up on her doorstep in person–not to ask her out again, but to offer her a job at his drilling company! When she is resistant, Chase throws a staggering salary figure at her. A number that could help her pay off her mountainous student loans. But Jenny was suspicious, she had a feeling that Chase Rhodes expected a lot more for his money than a Health and Safety Officer, so before she accepted she made it perfectly clear there would be no fringe benefits included. That left the only problem being how she would convince herself not to offer them to him.

Fighting her attraction to Chase Rhodes soon becomes the least of her problems though. An arsonist seems to have it in for Rhodes Drilling, and maybe even Chase and his family. Jenny is caught right in the middle and soon more than the wells fires are burning between she and the handsome oilman. But would they survive long enough to find the saboteur and save his company so they had an opportunity to explore that love?

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here-comes-trouble-cover-art-newHere Comes Trouble (#8, Texas Trouble)

Trauma Nurse Terri Cassidy’s life went to hell after her best friend and boss moved to Amarillo.  Her new boss, a male doctor, has wandering hands and he thinks Terri has to put up with it. She files a complaint against him, but, unbelievably, the hospital board suspends her instead of Dr. Feel Good. Terri decides she needs a fresh start, so she heads to Amarillo to see her friend and find another job. What she finds is her friend’s new brother-in-law, and her one-night fling, sexy attorney-turned-dude-rancher Joel Rhodes who offers her a job as a medic at his ranch. She might consider it if she didn’t know the man in a biblical way or know how raw the jaded rancher was from divorcing his nasty, cheating ex-wife. He’d basically told her that night that she would be the first of many flavors he sampled, and that was fine then. But now? Terri was well over her own divorce and wasn’t looking for temporary. Taking that job would bring nothing but trouble because Terri knew it would be tough for her to say no to putting her boots under his bed again. But what choice did she have?

Joel Rhodes swore he’d never put himself in the position of trusting another woman. After his wife cheated on him with his ex-law partner, and all but bankrupted him, he learned. Remembering the peace he’d felt ranching with his grandfather, Joel hangs up his sheepskin and scrapes up what’s left of his life to buy a ranch which he converts to a spa getaway for burned out professionals–a dude ranch. Things are going well until he visits his parents and runs into the first woman he slept with after his divorce. His rebound lover, Terri Cassidy, who is jobless and homeless now. Joel doesn’t want to feel bad for her, he doesn’t want to care. She was nothing to him but a band-aid to his broken ego.

But after he hears her story he can’t help but want to help her, so against his better judgment he offers the beautiful brunette a job at his ranch, but swears he will keep his distance. It definitely doesn’t take long for Joel to realize his error in judgment when she is on his two-yard-line, in his face, twenty-four hours a day, reminding him with her tight body and incredible scent why he needs to have her again. The longer she’s at the ranch, the more he realizes that he needs her in his life, not just in his bed. But he is terrified to go there again. When his ex-wife shows up on his doorstep out of the blue, begging for his help, Joel has more trouble than he can shake a stick at with both women. When his ex-wife winds up dead in his bunkhouse, that escalates into a fight for his life–a fight that only Terri Cassidy can help him win.

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Worth The Trouble (#9, Texas Trouble)

Horse trainer and female ranch hand Roxanne Baker’s daddy had warned her about smooth-talking city boys at sixteen, and she had always heeded that advice–until the day she met urban firefighter Ethan Cassidy. There was just a magnetism about the sexy firefighter, who was her best friend’s brother, that made her forget her own name. That became worse when he saved his sister from a flooded creek and she developed a serious case of hero worship. But then Ethan left the R & R Ranch and Rockie thought she’d never see him again.

Out of the blue, he shows up at the ranch again, but Rockie almost doesn’t recognize him. Gone is the charismatic, confident man he was, what remained was a hard, bitter and cynical shell of a man. Rockie finds out he’s had an accident that ended his career. To her, it looked like Ethan believed that ended his life. Rockie tries to convince, coax and goad him into wanting to get better, but Ethan wants no part of it–or her. Until she mentions an equine search and rescue team a friend asked her to join. That got Ethan’s attention, but the problem was he didn’t ride. To join, Ethan would have to learn to ride, and Rockie had done research and knew that riding would help him find his balance too. Her greatest hope was though, that it would help him find his purpose in life again.

Rockie is pleased to see Ethan get better by the day, but he isn’t quite there yet when a child goes missing in Palo Duro Canyon. The search and rescue team is activated, and Ethan insists on helping. At the search base camp, Ethan seems happy when he finds a lot of his old friends there until one of his friends tells Ethan his ‘accident’ may not have been accidental, so he needs to watch his back. He and Rockie are paired up for the search, but when hinky things start happening on the remote trail, it quickly becomes apparent that one of his old friends may not want them making it out of the Canyon alive.

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royal-trouble-cover-art-newRoyal Trouble (#10, Texas Trouble)

Former Miss Texas Leigh Ann Baker knows she is more than a beauty queen, but there is no convincing her overbearing mother of that. What she won’t do though is give in and marry one of the rich old farts her mother is trying to force her to marry. She’d rather be broke first. When things get to their boiling point with her mother, Leigh Ann runs to Amarillo to talk to her older sister about dealing with their mother. Five weeks later when she is almost broke, Leigh Ann takes a job that her sister arranges for her with a local veterinarian friend as his assistant. She knows she’s doomed to get fired, because, even though she loves animals, they hate her. But when she meets her sexy new boss, Leigh Ann thinks making peace with the animals to make this job work might just be worth it.

When Wes Jepson’s new blonde bombshell assistant strolls into his office looking like she stepped off of the pages of a fashion magazine and he is instantly attracted, he is freaked out. His ex-wife had taught him well the perils of letting himself get attached to a beautiful man magnet, and this beauty queen had royal trouble written all over her, so he was determined to get her out of his office immediately. But he couldn’t fire her, he’d hired her as a favor to her sister who he owed big time. The only way he could deal with the situation was to be as mean and grumpy as he could and hope she quit. But no matter how nasty he was, she smiled and took it. It was frustrating as hell because not only was she beautiful, she was a terrible assistant who his animal patients had no rapport with.

Wes discovers Leigh Ann was good at one thing though, collecting on the mountain of bad debts owed to him by his patients. But when she takes her honey-tongued Chihuahua act on the road to visit the client who owed him the most, a shady ranch in the area known for its dirty dealings, Leigh Ann collects more than she bargained for at the ranch–enough trouble to last her and Wes a lifetime, which wouldn’t be long if the bad guys caught up to them.

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trouble-w-law-cover-art-fancy-large-prTrouble With The Law (#11, Texas Trouble)

Criminal defense attorney Veronica Winters always wondered what it would be like with sexy former detective Trace Rooks. Even though he’s an ex-convict now, because of her, she still wonders. Ronnie has always felt damned guilty for recommending a plea deal that sent an innocent man to jail. When she finds out he’s back in jail she’s determined to set things right with him. At the jail though, Ronnie finds a changed man she almost doesn’t recognize. The scars on the outside are nothing compared to the scars he bears inside. Instead of the charming, easy going man she represented four years prior, his attitude is now as hard as his body. But she finds out the new, edgier Trace Rooks turns her on even more than the man she knew before.

When Ronnie Winters shows up at the jail where Trace Rooks is being held, supposedly to help him get free to make amends, he wants nothing more than to put his hands around her long, thin neck and squeeze. He definitely owed her that and more, but at the moment, he had other priorities. Like figuring out how to get out of the hole he’d dug for himself and the feds, which landed him in jail again. Ronnie wants answers, but Trace isn’t giving her anything except a hard time because he thinks she’s there snooping for his dirty father, a Texas Senator. Trace was a man who learned for his mistakes, and he wasn’t falling for her tricks this time. Trusting Ronnie Winters had been the biggest of his life and Trace would never be that stupid again. But maybe the mouthy, leggy redhead could do something for him–like give him the answers he needed to take down his corrupt father.

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trouble-w-law-cover-art-fancyBorrowing Trouble (#12, Texas Trouble)

Dylan Thomas, a cowboy with a tough childhood, is as settled as the bucking bulls he used to ride for a living. His lifelong mode of operation has been to avoid attachments and only take care of himself because nobody else was going to.  After an almost career-ending injury, he’s been stuck at the R & R Ranch teaching snobby rich guys to ride bulls until he can get back to the rodeo. He’s restless and ready to get back on the road until a new guest shows up at the ranch. A sad-eyed widow named Carrie Collins who smells like sugar cookies and kisses like an angel. Dylan doesn’t do relationships, but he has a weakness for sugar cookies, and for Carrie Collins.

Worn out widow Carrie Collins is at the end of her rope, and hanging on by a thread. She’s up to her eyeballs in bills, and her two children are out of control. So what does her dead husband’s best friend think is the perfect solution to her problems? A visit to a Texas dude ranch, masquerading as a spa for the rich and famous. Carrie thinks he’s lost his mind, but goes. When she meets handsome ranch hand, Dylan Thomas, at the ranch she doesn’t think it’s quite so bad an idea after all. Dylan suggests they take a ride to the lake, and Carrie jumps in with both feet. It’s been three years since her husband died, and she figures it’s about time she got back in the saddle of life…and other things.

With his doctor’s release in hand, Dylan has nothing holding him back from reclaiming his former life, except the trouble Carrie’s son Chris has borrowed by getting in with the wrong crowd. When things heat up, and Carrie is in trouble too, does he save the girl or save himself?

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EXTRAS

Watch the video trailer for the Texas Trouble series:

Video review of Here Comes Trouble (#8, Texas Trouble) by Steamy Romance Reads

17 thoughts on “Texas Trouble”

  1. Love your writing, the Texas Trouble covered so many areas of interest I’m very impressed with your research. And my fav thing is the continuing characters. So glad to hear there will be a spin off. Thanks for all the wonderful hours, you make me laugh out loud and even cry.

    Reply

    • Aww thank you so much ❤ I'm very glad you enjoyed the Texas Trouble series. I definitely loved writing it, and hated to see it end. I'm thinking about possibly doing a spinoff trilogy next year for Dylan's brothers. My new romantic suspense series, Deep Six Security, is actually a spinoff from the Trouble series. Dave Logan and his men (books 10 – 12 in Texas Trouble) have their own adventures and cases now in that series. I hope you'll check it out, even though it's not cowboy. 😀 Right now, it includes one book TILL DEATH and a side novella SEALed Fate that crosses over into Cat Johnson's Hot SEALs Kindle World (sort of like fan fic with her characters and mine included in the story). TWISTED HONOR (#2, Deep Six Security) is set to release on 9/15 and it's up for pre-order right now. Thank you for reading ❤

      Reply

    • Trouble With the Law started at the 3/4 point of Royal Trouble (#10, Texas Trouble), which was Leigh Ann and Wes’s story. Trace appeared in Royal Trouble to save her from the bad guys, the FBI had her in hiding, and Trace was arrested for kidnapping her to try and salvage his undercover mission. That is the point where Trouble With the Law (#11, Texas Trouble) began. Thank you for the question and I hope that explains things. ❤

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    • Hi, Debbie. Thanks so much for your question. Texas Trouble, Book #13, won’t be released until the second quarter of 2015 most likely. The third book in the Cowboy Way series, TOO HOT TO TROT (Heather and Zack’s story) will probably be out in the first quarter of 2015. In the interim, I am working on launching a new western romantic suspense (non-cowboy) series featuring Dave Logan (secondary character from TT series) and his men called Logan’s Lonestar Heroes. The first installment in the series will be a novella called HELL BENT to be released on October 15th as part of the Red Hot Treats collection. The first book in the series TILL DEATH (#1, Logan’s Lonestar Heroes), which is Dave and Susan Whitmore’s book, will be released on November 10th.

      Reply

      • As an update — There won’t be any other books in the Trouble series. It was a difficult decision, but I decided to focus on the new series that I’ve started. I am thinking of doing a trilogy with Dylan’s brothers though, and possibly a Trouble update novella or two for the series.

    • Debbie, it was a tough decision, but there won’t be a book 13 in the Trouble series. I’ve decided to focus instead on the new series that I’ve started. HOWEVER, I am considering doing a trilogy later for Dylan’s brothers, and maybe a couple of update novellas for the Trouble series. ❤

      Reply

  7. Need to know where i can download your series for my nook. Amazon kindles format wont work with B&N nooks. Please help..

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