Having survived the attack in the war that permanently disfigured his face, Broc KinKaid often wondered why. Good friends had given him the will to go on and over the years he’d come to expect, if not accept, that people would recoil from him. But sometimes, he couldn’t let go the cruel remarks. That had got him in a fight and before a judge who, perhaps in sympathy, had given him the task of collecting a debt rather than jail. Riding into the small ranch, finding out the rancher was dead and had left a disabled wife, an arrogant son and a beautiful daughter, made his chore all the more difficult. Particularly since, given his looks, he hadn’t had much practice lately in dealing with lovely ladies. And this one had brains and moxie, a lethal combination—to his heart.

Amanda Liscomb resents being beautiful. All it has gotten her is a trail of suitors that can’t see beyond her beauty. She has a ranch to keep afloat seeing as her brother wants nothing to do with cattle and would rather spend his time working at their old saloon, now in the hands of her father’s slippery partner. When Broc Kinkaid shows up, it’s not his tortured face that concerns her—in fact she thinks it’s a testament to his character and courage. No, it is the news about a debt that she finds hard to swallow.

Is Broc Kinkaid trying to swindle them or is he really the heroic person she wants him to be? The key to answering that question resides in the details of this mysterious debt. But with the ranch to run and lost cattle to find and no men who want to work for her family, how will she get to the bottom of it? When Broc offers to help, she’s not sure whether to trust him or not. Her head is saying one thing, her heart quite another.

The characters in this novel leap off the page in typical Leigh Greenwood fashion. A take on the beauty and the beast tale, Broc Kinkaid has a hero’s heart, if not his face. Amanda is no saint, but she’s pragmatic and smart and genuinely suspicious of Broc’s intentions but her strength is that she judges him as a man—not a tortured soul. She hardly sees his disfigurement, she sees the person he is. Watching them fall in love is a delight in this warm and enjoyable story of love, loss and redemption.