Horse trainer Roxanne Baker's daddy had warned her about smooth-talking city boys at sixteen. She'd always heeded that advice--until the day she met urban firefighter Ethan Cassidy at a wedding. It didn't take long for him to talk her out of her chaps in the barn, even knowing the next day he'd be gone. When Ethan shows up again out of the blue at the ranch, Rockie almost doesn't recognize him and he acts like he doesn't know her. Gone is the charismatic, confident man and in his place is a sullen, bitter and cynical shell of his former self. When she finds out why, an accident has ended the career he loved and he may be in a wheelchair forever, Rockie is determined to help him. But the man was stubborn as a mule and didn't want her help so Rockie had to get creative. She teased him with talk of an Equine Search and Rescue Team that was forming, knowing he didn't ride. He begged her to teach him and she used the lessons as equine therapy to help him regain his mobility and balance. Day by day he gets better, but he still has a long way to go when the search and rescue team is activated to locate a missing child in Palo Duro Canyon. Ethan insists on going, actually comes alive when he sees a lot of his friends at the camp, but then hinky things begin to happen during the search that seem directed at him. The deeper he and Rocky ride into the canyon, the more Ethan suspects that one of his friends might not want them to make it back to camp. That leads him to conclude that his accident at work may not have been accidental at all, but they'd have to stay alive for him to find out.