Steel Horses, Leather RoadsA Southern love story about regret, reckoning, and the one love that never loosened its grip. Cara Mackey didn't just leave Lily, Georgia-she escaped it. She built a dazzling life in Paris, surrounded by beauty, control, and distance. Distance from the town that raised her. Distance from the heartbreak that almost destroyed her. Distance from the man she loved so deeply she had to run to survive it. She never planned to come back. Until a death calls her home-and puts her face-to-face with Corian Demetrie. Corian stayed. He stayed for the ranch. For his family. For the responsibilities that demanded everything from him and left no room for the woman he loved most. Choosing duty cost him Cara. Losing her cost him peace. Now fate forces them together again, bound by a will and a community project to restore an old cotton gin-a place heavy with memory, legacy, and everything they never said. Every conversation cuts close. Every shared glance reminds them that time didn't heal what they buried. It only taught them how to live without it. Set in the rich, evocative world of modern Black cowboy culture, Steel Horses, Leather Roads is a slow-burn, second-chance romance about unfinished love, grown-folks desire, and the terrifying question of whether the love that broke you once might still be the love worth choosing. They've lived whole lives apart-made other choices, carried other scars. But some loves don't fade. They wait. And they demand answers. Perfect for readers who crave Black Southern romance, Cowboy Carter energy, emotionally layered storytelling, and love stories that understand: the past doesn't stay buried-it rides alongside you.