Lawless

Lawless is a romance novel by the American writer Diana Palmer, published by Mira in 2003.

Judd Dunn works as a Texas Ranger, and five years before the novel opens he was responsible for sending Christabel Gaines's father to prison, where he belonged. Judd did not then leave the family alone. The ranch he and Crissy own together was close to failing, so he married her in an arrangement that was never meant to be a marriage, on the understanding that it would protect the land and that neither of them would act on anything else. Now he has decided that she is old enough to be released from it, and at the same moment an enemy of his has decided to use her as the way to reach him.

Judd is twelve years older than his wife, and the difference is part of what makes the arrangement awkward.