When Mahogany Marsh, nightside editor at the Desire Daily Democrat, loses a promised promotion, she knows it's time for a change. But the newspaper business is bleeding red ink, and jobs are scarcer than rain in drought-ridden West Texas. Her solution: dump her sorry-ass TV news boyfriend and finish that novel she started years ago-the one with only the first and the last sentence written. The one that will make her Texas's answer to Jane Austen. With the prestigious Piece of My Heart contest deadline looming, Mahogany cranks out pages at night, while by day she's forced to work side-by-side with Bran Barker, the damn Yankee who stole her promotion. When she realizes he's perfect hero-fodder for "Roving Ranch Hands," her novel-in-progress, things start to heat up-for her fictional hero and heroine and for Bran and Mahogany. But a relationship with Bran is as doomed as a cow in a feedlot. Though he's hotter than a chile relleño, he's also her boss. Dating him could get her fired quicker than she could say yee-haw. Besides, she already has a creepy funeral director threatening her, a passel of dependent, hard-up relatives, a missing 198-pound mastiff named Carl, and a back-stabbing colleague out to get her job. Does Mahogany even have time for a real-life romance?