Every Inch of Open Ground

He has spent three years carrying everything alone. She has spent her life making sure no one has 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.Until his mare goes down with colic in the dark.At 11:47 on a Wednesday night, Cade 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 stays until the sun comes up.Six weeks later, Cade's carefully ordered life is threatened when the owner calls to say he is exploring his options. Which means the Bar M is going to a developer, a fund out of Omaha, or anyone at all who is not Cade McCord.Cade has one shot to save the place. No money. No easy answers. And a lifetime of deciding everything alone.Tessa has a legal pad, a sharp pencil, and an unshakable conviction that Cade is not going to do this by himself.But Cade has spent three years proving he does not need anyone.Tessa is about to find out just how hard it is to love a man who would rather carry the whole world on his shoulders than admit he needs someone beside him.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.For the first time, Cade may have to let someone carry him.And for the first time, he may have to find his way home.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.