Wild Sage Ranch — A 5-Book Contemporary Western Romance Series

WILD SAGE RANCH

A Contemporary Western Romance Series

5 Short Reads • Alternating First Person • HEA per Book + Series Arc

Five Hayes brothers raised apart. One Montana ranch. A fifty-three-year-old secret that walks up the porch steps in Book Five.

The Series

Hank Hayes died on a February morning in the back pasture of the only land his family had ever owned. He left five sons by five different mothers, none of whom knew the others existed. He left a working ranch in the Beartooth foothills of southwest Montana, an empty grave on the rise behind the main house, five sealed letters in his lawyer’s office, and a clause for each son: ninety days, one task, one chance to keep a fifth of the land he had run alone for sixty years. What he did not leave — what no one in Whitetail Crossing was supposed to know — was the truth about the woman he buried in 1973 and loved every day of his life after.

Written in alternating dual POV, the Wild Sage Ranch books deliver instalove the way the Montana wind does it — fast, hot, and impossible to walk back from. The heroes are obsessed and communicative; the heroines arrive with their own histories and their own work. The series-wide secret accumulates one breadcrumb at a time across the five books and pays off when Eleanor Marsh-Vance walks up the porch steps fifty-three years after she was supposed to have died.

Five connected standalones. Five HEAs. One ranch kept whole. Eleanor, at last, returned.

What’s Included in This Package

The Five Books

Book One — Jesse (Lia & Jesse)

“He inherited a ranch he never wanted. She’s the only person who knows how to run it.”

Jesse · Lia & Jesse

JESSE HAYES blew out his knee on the rodeo circuit at twenty-five and never let himself land anywhere since. When the father he never knew dies and leaves him one-fifth of a Montana ranch — if he can run a full breeding season in ninety days — he expects to fail loudly and walk away clean. He doesn’t expect Lily-Anne “Lia” Cavanaugh. Lia has been running Wild Sage for three years. She knows every brood cow by her walk. She has cattle fluid up to her elbow when she shakes Jesse’s hand for the first time, and she dares him with her eyes to be too soft for it. He isn’t.

Ninety days. Forty-one head left to breed. A neighbour named Dalt Carmody with a clean black hat and an offer that gets louder every week. A photograph in Hank’s study of a young man with a girl no one is supposed to know about. A locked leather journal Jesse will not, yet, open. And a missed breeding window that puts the whole clause in jeopardy at day sixty. Jesse calls in a favour from a rodeo connection he hasn’t spoken to in eight years. He drives all night with Lia asleep against his shoulder. He decides, somewhere on the way back, that he is not leaving on day ninety-one.

Recognition instalove at its slowest and most certain — a cowboy who knows in the first four minutes that he is not going anywhere, and a woman who has run a ranch alone long enough to know that the only thing harder than doing it alone is letting someone help.

Featured hooks · Instalove · Obsessed Cowboy Hero · Boss/Employee Inversion · Ninety-Day Clock · Grumpy/Sunshine Inverted · Ranch Romance · Calving & Working Cattle On-Page · Series-Secret Seeded

Book Two — Cole (Margot & Cole)

“The pilot brother came for ninety days. She came mapping the same land for someone who wants it gone.”

Cole · Margot & Cole

COLE HAYES has spent ten years flying bush out of Anchorage and ten more telling himself solitude is a religion. He inherits one-fifth of a Montana ranch from a father he never knew, a Cessna in a hangar that turns out to have been his father’s, and a clause that requires him to fly the east section daily for ninety days. He plans to leave on day ninety-one. Margot Reyes is on Wild Sage on a state survey contract — and a second contract she hasn’t told anyone about, with a mineral concern named ChromaWest that wants Wild Sage’s water rights. Cole reads the second folder in her truck inside ninety seconds of meeting her. He waits two months for her to tell him herself.

Ninety days. Two contracts. A topographic map showing a stream divergence Cole sees from the air that confirms exactly what ChromaWest is after. A return-to-sender letter from a woman signed only E.M. that Hank refused to open in 2001. An ex-husband framing a manipulative apology the day Margot is doxxed and sued. And a pair of pilot’s wings with the name Henry Hayes on a card dated 1989 — the year Hank flew the route in Alaska that crossed Cole’s mother.

Adversarial-collaboration instalove with a man who said mine aloud, in the dark, to a woman who put her hand against his mouth as if to seal the word inside him.

Featured hooks · Instalove with Sustained-Attention Mechanics · Pilot Cowboy Hero · Secret-Keeper Heroine · Forced Collaboration · Economic Antagonist (ChromaWest) · Father’s Hidden History · Found Family · The Unopened E.M. Envelope

Book Three — Reid (Hollis & Reid)

“Reid Hayes was raised to believe his father was dead. He was wrong.”

Reid · Hollis & Reid

REID HAYES was raised by a librarian in Eugene, Oregon, who told him his father had died in a training accident when he was four. He learned at her funeral that Hank Hayes had been alive his whole life. Eight months later, Hank died. He arrives on a frigid November morning to four vehicles under tarps, a fifth in worse shape than anything he has ever pulled a cover off, and the appraiser the estate hired — Hollis Tatum, in soft leather oxfords, a federal-witness past she discloses before she shakes anyone’s hand, and the wrong shoes for a ranch.

Ninety days. Five trucks to restore. A road trip to a Miles City parts auction with one queen bed. A hidden compartment under the bench seat of a 1955 Apache containing a marriage license, forty-one letters, and a wedding ring that proves Hank had been married once before, in 1972, to a woman named Eleanor Marsh — and a 1956 Chevy with a steel box welded under the dashboard containing the platinum band Hank took off in 1973 and the note he left for the son who could put it back together.

Grief-instalove rendered in mechanic’s inventory — a man who counted three hundred forty-one looks at a woman in his shop on day one, and a woman whose name was poison in three states and is, in Whitetail Crossing, finally just her name.

Featured hooks · Instalove with Recognition Mechanics · Mechanic Cowboy Hero · Federal-Witness Heroine · Only One Bed · Father’s Deliberate Sabotage · Hidden-Compartment Reveal · Found-Family Expansion · Sister-by-Everything-but-Paper Friendship

Book Four — Wade (Jamie & Wade)

“He came for the horse. She came for the program. Neither came to fall.”

Wade · Jamie & Wade

WADE HAYES makes his living training other people’s show horses and his life on the road. He has spent thirty years proving he is not, like the father his mother told him about, a man who couldn’t stay. He arrives at Wild Sage with an empty horse trailer and a list of three reasons he’s leaving. Jamie Whitlock runs Cottonwood Ranch, the equine therapy program next door. She came through the program at fourteen, came back as an adult, and now runs it with debt she cannot, in twelve months, math her way out of. She has been working with Wade’s rescue mare for two years on a fence she was not invited to cross.

Ninety days. One red roan mare with a fear-response problem and a bloodline that traces, by an old farrier named Doc Pritchard, to a black bay Ellie used to ride. A snowy March afternoon in the tack room. A foreclosure notice Jamie has not told anyone about. And Bill Cavanaugh walking into the kitchen with a story about a woman who came through Cottonwood in 1992, got clean, named her daughter for the matriarch who saved her, and died before she got around to telling that daughter why.

The quietest book in the series and its most emotionally generous — a horse trainer who learns to slow down from a woman five foot four with her hand on a fear-response mare’s neck, and a foreman’s revelation that gives Jamie back the mother she never knew.

Featured hooks · Instalove with Patient-Presence Mechanics · Horse-Trainer Cowboy Hero · Neighbours Who Never Met · Animal Bonding · Second-Generation Chosen Family · Foreclosure Solved by Partnership · Series Secret Confirmed · Four Brothers’ Hands Stacked

Book Five — Sawyer (Eden & Sawyer) · Series Capstone

“He came home to ride. She came to find a ghost. They found each other instead.”

Sawyer · Eden & Sawyer

SAWYER HAYES is the youngest — the bull rider, the only one of Hank’s five sons Hank ever showed up for. He arrives at Wild Sage with broken ribs three weeks healed and his mother’s initials on the inside of his left wrist. Eden Marsh works sports medicine on the Northern Pro Bull Riders circuit. She has taped Sawyer’s ribs three times in two years and never, until a Saturday at noon in his father’s south pasture, given him her last name. Her grandmother — Eleanor Marsh-Vance — was buried on paper in 2024. In a shoebox in the back of her grandmother’s closet, Eden found a wedding ring, a marriage certificate dated 1972, and the name Henry Edward Hayes, Wild Sage Ranch. She has been driving toward this porch for two years.

A bull called Cathedral with a left-spin halfway out of the chute. A grandmother who is, by a phone call on a Sunday afternoon, alive and waiting. A sixth envelope containing Hank’s last confession — he learned Eleanor was alive in 2001 and stayed for the five sons he had by then. Dalt Carmody in the bleachers, finally understanding the answer he has refused to accept for fifty-three years. And a vote on the floor of the dais that will keep the ranch whole or split it for good.

The finale and the series’s emotional pay-off. There is no blood between them. There is family. The ranch stays whole. Eleanor comes home — and asks, at last, to be buried beside him when it’s time. As his wife. The first.

Featured hooks · Instalove with Retrospective Recognition · Bull-Rider Cowboy Hero · Sports-Medicine Heroine · Long-Lost Grandmother Arrives · Family-Reunion + Final-Vote Climax · No-Blood-Relation Reveal · Empty Grave Claimed · Antagonist Closure

Series Tropes

Series Details

Heat Level

Content Notes

Comp Title Shelf

What You Get

Five reads away from your next binge-launch series. ❤