She’s in a white dress that dances around her ankles, and her hair tumbles in a long sheet of curls down her back. A veil covers her beautiful eyes, and she smiles directly at him. Janie is everything Rafe’s ever imagined she would be on her wedding day. 

Breathtaking. Gorgeous. Perfect.

The moment he sees her walking down the aisle towards him, he knows that she’s the one.

Then she passes him, making her way to the man she’s to marry.

A man that wasn’t him.

A man that he knows with one hundred percent certainty isn’t good enough for her.

It seems that her father isn’t the only one who’s having a hard time giving her away. Rafe only wishes he knew why.

Everything about Janie sparks protective instincts he doesn’t feel for anyone, not even his own fiancé.

What he feels for the bride, however, isn’t merely a simple attraction. He knows that something is there just beneath the surface…if only he could reach it.

It has to be something huge, too, otherwise he wouldn’t be drinking whiskey straight from the flask in a church pew and wondering how many years he would do in prison if he shot the groom in front of about a hundred witnesses—half of those being cops.

He was good…but not that good.

A near-death experience cost Rafe almost six months of his memory, but right now he can’t help but feel like a huge mistake is being made on both of their parts. One that’s going to cost him everything.

Then she says I do.

Kinda Don’t Care (Simple Man, #1) by Lani Lynn Vale
Rosa’s rating: 5 of 5 iScream Cones

“He was everything that I shouldn’t want, and the one thing that I really needed all rolled into a perfect ball of badass.”

I was excited to see that Lani was starting this new Simple Man series, and even more excited once I started reading and realized I’d already met Rafe in the Hail Raisers series. He was all broody and distant and I was really hoping he would get a book of his own so I could find out what his story was, and he did!

I really love how the author intertwines her characters in multiple series. It feels like a family reunion when I get to attend a party at the Dixie Warden clubhouse or when Freebirds business crosses over into another series. Rafe has several jobs going at once, including being a Hail wrecker driver and some side work with Freebirds when he’s not being commissioned for the top-secret stuff. He’s got a lot on his plate and he likes it that way. Being busy keeps him focused on things other than…her.  He’s made a point to avoid her for years, but it’s not working anymore.

Janie is too cute to handle. She’s sweet and funny and smarter than anyone realizes. So smart that she doesn’t even bother trying to convince her father to let her work with the Freebird cases, she just works her magic behind the scenes. She’s also managed to keep her feelings for Rafe hidden, which wasn’t so difficult considering he’s been avoiding her for years. She’s taken to spying on him from afar to get her fix.

What fun it was for me to be inside the heads of both characters, knowing how they felt about each other when neither of them knew themselves. Of course, I was doing some serious mental matchmaking. Yeah, I had my work cut out for me considering she was getting married and he had a fiance’, right?

Throw in some bad guys, some pampered pets and some crazy support characters with a neverending supply of witty banter and you can expect hours of non-stop entertainment. I’ve come to realize that’s what I can expect with every Lani Lynn Vale book, including some call-the-fire-department-hot-sexy-time to seal the deal. I’m so thrilled that this is just the beginning of another amazing series and I have more to look forward to. The line forms here…