Ava Bennett has seventy-two hours blocked in her calendar for this. Fly in, assess the property, list it, leave. Her late uncle's sheep ranch in the middle of nowhere was never part of her plan, and neither was staying. Then the will surfaces. Both half-owners must live on the property for ninety days before any sale can proceed. The other half-owner: Cade Mercer, a cowboy who looks at her like she's a problem he didn't ask for and trusts his Border Collie considerably more than he trusts most people. The farmhouse is small. The tension is immediate. Ava's used to glass offices and back-to-back meetings, not shared kitchens that smell like coffee and woodsmoke at six in the morning. Cade's used to quiet, and she's not particularly quiet. Then there's Duke. The dog is black-and-white, brilliant, and completely uninterested in the boundaries both of them are trying to maintain. He herds Ava into Cade's path with the cheerful persistence of an animal who has already assessed the situation and made his decision. Working the land together does something neither of them planned for. The ranch starts making sense to Ava in a way she didn't expect. Cade starts watching her differently. Days stack into weeks, and the lucrative buyer waiting on her call starts feeling less urgent than it did on arrival. Their worlds are still pointed in opposite directions. The ninety days will end. A choice is coming regardless. Duke's done his part. The rest is up to them. *** If you loved this couple, there’s more romance waiting in the world of Collie Hearts. Border Collies don't wait for permission. They see what needs doing and they do it, usually at a speed that gives their owners no time to object. The dogs in these stories are exactly like that. Smart, quick, and completely unbothered by the chaos they cause. Collie Hearts is a series of standalone romances, each one sparked by a black-and-white dog with an agenda. The settings shift: a windswept sheep ranch, a competitive agility arena, a neighborhood park on a Tuesday morning, a veterinary clinic running two patients behind schedule. The couples are different every time. What stays the same is the collie in the middle of it, working the situation with the focused energy of a dog who has already decided how this ends. The heat is real. So is the humor. Each story wraps with a happily ever after, earned through the specific mess that one brilliant, meddling dog helped create. These aren't slow burns built on coincidence. They're full-speed collisions engineered by an animal who spotted the right two people and saw absolutely no reason to wait. If you've ever been outsmarted by a dog, you already understand how this works. The fastest route to forever, it turns out, runs on four legs.