After finding enjoying several books in the Superromance line, I requested to review Ms. Stockham’s latest. With the feisty heroine and overprotective hero, the book has a strong beginning, but my enjoyment was impacted as the conflict in the story becomes more internal. This book is the beginning of a new series, although in the foreword, Ms. Stockham does say that the characters are introduced in her earlier books, Montana Secrets and Montana Skies.

Carly Taggert’s father is just a mite overprotective and doesn’t seem to realize that she is a grown woman. She tries to cut him some slack, since as the town’s sheriff he is exposed to more bad than good. And he grew even more sheltering after her mother ran off, abandoning them. But just because her dad is on vacation doesn’t mean she requires a watchdog. She handled her date gone bad, and simply because she limping home doesn’t mean she needs Liam McKenna to get in her business.

Liam gets a sick feeling in his stomach as soon as he recognizes that the woman walking down the obscure Montana road is not a prostitute or a druggie, but the sheriff’s daughter. Since he saw her Rav 4 in her driveway twenty minutes earlier, he knows that she not out here on foot because of car problems. He has always had a thing for her, especially after she went out of her way to be nice to him in high school, but lately it has been getting harder and harder to remember that she is off limits.

Carly is a sweetheart with a lot of common sense. Rather than go off to a larger university she figures out early on that she wants to be her own boss. After getting her two-year associate degree in business locally, she opens a single person business office, acting as girl Friday to her tenants. Her career is running smoothly but she has one dating disaster after another, and while she is attracted to Liam after exposure to her father’s “cop qualities” she is definitely not looking for those characteristics in a boyfriend. Still she wants to get married, and maybe have children, once she feels confident that she not like her mother.

So Carly signs up to be a foster parent because of her concerns about parenthood – what if she is like her mother, and can’t cut it? After she receives custody of her first child, Liam goes crazy, especially after he finds out that her dad disapproved of her plans too. Liam, as a foster child, knows that every child has a history, and none of it good, causing the children to turn their anger on the foster parent. Plus Carly is just too soft. She will get attached and then get her heart broken. However, she gives her heart wholeheartedly to the children in her care, even though she knows protecting her heart is the wise thing to do.

After being moved from one foster family to another, and finally to a youth home, then adopted, Liam has definite issues with trust. He never felt he deserved to be adopted by Zane McKenna, and still feels that if Zane knew the true him, he would find him contemptible. Liam is judgmental, partly because of his job, but also because he is so hard on himself. He tends to have a narrow view of right and wrong. Ultimately, his critical attitude did impact my enjoyment of the book. I wanted the Liam I was introduced to in the beginning of the book. However, readers who like tortured heroes might enjoy him more than I did.

While not a perfect book, I did enjoy most of it, especially the banter in the beginning as the heroine asserts her independence, the heroine’s realistic submersion in child care, and the sweet ending.