Ruth Cardello was born the youngest of eleven children in a small city in northern Rhode Island. She lived in Boston, Paris, Orlando, and New York before coming full circle and moving back to Rhode Island, where she lives with her husband and three children. Before turning her attention to writing, Ruth was an educator for twenty years, eleven of which she spent as a kindergarten teacher. She is the author of seven previous novels including Bedding the Billionaire, which was a New York Times and USA Today bestseller. Taken, Not Spurred is the debut book in the Lone Star Burn series.