She came to Texas to disappear. He’s the cowboy who refused to let her.

Olivia Langford had everything she’d ever worked for — a thriving Manhattan dessert bar, a five-star reputation, and a life she’d built entirely from scratch. Then she catered the wrong party. Watched the wrong man pull a trigger. And in one devastating moment, everything she’d built became everything she had to leave behind.

Now she’s Liv Ramsey. Fake name. Burner phone. One-way ticket to nowhere in particular. She lands in remote West Texas as the new pastry chef at a dusty dude ranch, trading a Manhattan skyline for wide open silence. All she needs is somewhere quiet enough to vanish.

She didn’t count on Mike Watkins.

A former Marine combat medic turned ranch cook, Mike has spent years learning to feed people instead of patch them up. He traded battlefields for biscuits and never looked back. The dust-covered city girl who stepped off a Greyhound bus with a rolling suitcase and enough nerve to argue biscuit recipes with him on day one was supposed to be a seasonal hire.

She was not supposed to matter.

But Liv has a way of slipping past defenses Mike didn’t even know he’d built. She’s brave and bruised and trying so hard to hold herself together — and something in him recognizes that. Something in him refuses to look away.

Meanwhile, shadows are tightening around Watkins Ranch. A mafia boss has one loose end left, and she’s standing in his kitchen rolling pie crust like her life doesn’t depend on it.

It does.

And four ex-military brothers who never leave their own behind are about to find out exactly what they’ll burn down to protect her.

She came to Bear Valley to hide. She’s about to find out what it feels like to finally be found.

COWBOY ELITE: MIKE — Book Two in Mindy Neff’s heart-stealing series of small towns, big secrets, and the kind of love that takes a bullet for you.