Review: Alone in a Dark Love
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 22, 2013
Aspen O'Hare hasn't had an easy life, but she's comfortable with what she's created from nothing.  She has a job she's good at, and she's almost over the heartbreak her only love, the leaving kind of cowboy, put her through.Working as a waitress at a rowdy western-themed steakhouse in Arizona has prepared to deal with almost any man she encounters--but her world is turned upside down by a dour man eating alone, who professes to be a friend of her father and the family lawyer. The father she didn't ever know, the one she thought long gone, wants to meet her?  Before his death?To silence a friend's dismay that she wouldn't at least look into this unknown father, Aspen heads for tiny  Escalante, Colorado, too late to meet her father, but reluctantly ready to stay until after his funeral to find out a little more about him and why he apparently wanted nothing to do with Aspen or her mother.Cordero Ybarra took a job on Benson McCall's ranch when he moved to Colorado from Texas.  Young, a hard worker, and a good man, Cord quickly endeared himself to Benson, winning the foreman's job other local men wanted, and helping Benson endure the last few days of his life.  Cord expected nothing, and Benson's death devastated him--he had no friends in Escalante.Cordero and Aspen are thrown together after the town bullies show up to `welcome' Aspen, but their instant attraction could be deadly.  Escalante is a town gripped by a  social plague not discussed openly in much of the country, let alone small towns--Cord's Hispanic blood opens him up to the bigotry and hatred of many who know him, hatred directed toward any woman who might fight prejudice to love him.Vaquero is erotic romance, and the love scenes won't disappoint.  Their hot and explicit.Ms.Lindum etches Colorado into the hearts of readers; her description made me long to go there, and I'd never particularly wanted to.  Her characters are memorable, from the disgustingly evil Royal Riker and his daughter Skayla to the Scotsmen mining their claims on McCall property.Downsides to Vaquero?  None, unless you, like me, sometimes can't thinking about a book when you read it and understanding that it's a little more than just an extremely engaging love story.Cord and Aspen are alone in love through much of Vaquero--and nobody should be that alone for those reasons.