Bride of the Badlands

David Ashcroft has spent his life training on Tempest Peak under a master who turns out to have one very specific weakness: he needs three million for renovations and isn't above bending the truth to get it. Conned off the mountain and broke, David answers what looks like a generous job listing and finds himself face to face with Aria Blackwood, a CEO who has just invented something powerful enough that foreign interests have put a bounty on her head. David neutralises the first assassination attempt almost by accident. He's hired on the spot. When a rival moves in under the pretense of romance to steal her technology, David dismantles the scheme in public.The rival is not gracious about it.