When Rome Pierce moved to Bear Bottom, Texas, it was his intention to lay low. To find a way to heal his body and soul - as well as his son's. Nobody would know by looking at him that he used to play professional football. Not with the Bear Bottom MC cut covering his back. Nobody knows what drove him to leave the game he loved - nobody but her. She's the one person who has helped him make it through the dark days and even darker nights. She's the bright and shining star in his pitch-black sky. And he doesn't even know her name. 

All Birdee Calvert wanted was to be normal. She wanted the parents who didn’t divorce when she was a kid and make her life a living nightmare. She wanted the sisters who actually liked her. She wanted to live in a town where everyone loved her and didn’t have a single bad thing to say about her. That was not the life Birdee was given. She had the exact opposite life. The kind of life where she slunk through the grocery store with a hoodie on so no one would recognize her. The kind of life where men like Creed Daugherty didn’t give her a second look.

Imogen is a smart girl. A girl who doesn't always make the best decisions. Her heart is in the right place when she walks into that prison, but it doesn't take long for her to realize that her heart shouldn't have had any say so in the matter. Especially when one wrong move lands her in the arms of a scarred man that looks frightening enough to scare any sane woman away.

Evander Lennox doesn't do anything he doesn't want to do. At least, that is, until he's sent to prison. The four years he's incarcerated, he's had no choice but to do the things he's asked to do. And now, if he doesn't, it will mean a one-way ticket straight back to hell. Once he's free, it takes him 24 hours to get his old job back, his dog at home where he belongs, and an understanding that people aren't as forgiving as he once thought them to be. He's just about given up hope of ever integrating back into society when a woman slams into his heart, literally and figuratively.

She was enraptured by the man they called Romeo the moment that he turned those butterscotch-colored eyes her way. What wasn’t to love about a big, burly, plaid-wearing lumberjack? He was tall, gorgeous, and knew how to wield a chainsaw better than Leatherface. He could fell a tree in seconds, had thighs that were as thick as said trees, filled out a pair of Wranglers better than any cowboy ever, and didn’t care that she could operate heavy machinery better than him. He was everything a girl like Mable could ask for. The caveat?