Lucas’s Lady by Josephine West, Caroline Lee

He's desperate for a wife. Lucas Ryan has a problem with rustling and land-grabbing on his ranch, which his mother promised would go away as soon as he got married and produced an heir. So he’s sent off for a mail-order bride who won’t ask questions and wants a baby as much as he does. He just doesn’t expect to fall for her. She's desperate to be loved. Shannon Montgomery has spent her life knowing she’s ugly, thanks to the large strawberry birthmark on her face. Becoming a mail-order bride to a man who’s never seen her seemed the ideal solution, but she’s eaten up with guilt for not confessing her imperfection to him ahead of time. See, she didn’t expect to arrive at Sunset Valley and give her heart to her husband quite so soon. They might be out of luck. But Lucas’s problem doesn’t go away with his marriage; if anything, it gets worse. Now Shannon is in danger too, and Lucas learns he’s willing to do anything to protect her. But Verrick, the notorious gunslinger Lucas hires, is nothing like he seems, and turns Lucas’s world on its head in more ways than one. Between Shannon and Verrick, Lucas needs to learn how to open his heart to his past…and his future. *** Heat level 1.5/5: contains violence, minor cursing, and intimacy behind closed doors