Margaret was determined never to relinquish her freewill again. Shedding her somber clothes and stifling marriage, she took her inheritance and opened the first beauty salon in Cascade Wyoming. Max Keatcher was not a man respectable women associated with. A gambling philanderer, Margaret endured him as best man in her sister's wedding last fall. He went back to Alaska afterward, and she put the disagreeable association behind her. For Max, opening a gambling house in Cascade became his obsession, as did the teasing memory of Margaret. So he sold The Blue Eyed Lady Saloon in Nome, moved to Cascade, and that summer, broke ground on his new venture. The incompatible entrepreneurs were thrown together by circumstances and family. Margaret was unnerved around Max, and despite his confident swagger, Max opened a Pandora's Box of emotions for himself with his flirtations - and a stolen kiss. As the story unfolds, and the people of Canyon Creek Ranch meet life's challenges, Margaret encounters a shadow from her past with brave defiance. But the situation takes an unexpected turn, threatening more than her independence. Quick actions and a fast gun could mean the difference between life, and death.