She believes she's made a good marriage-but she never experiences the happiness and joy she'd expected... Her harsh, forbidding husband makes Amanda Bradshaw feel more like a brood mare than a wife, and she never experiences the happiness or joy she expected. Though she's nine-months pregnant with her second child, he orders her to have a boy this time and leaves to go on a cattle-buying trip. Her labor begins, her small daughter is in danger, and Amanda prays desperately for help. When a dusty, trail-worn stranger rides up, she sees the kindness in his eyes and faces the fact that he's all she has. But will he stay to help? He's an escaped convict-and her only hope... Reed Twining spent several years playing cowboy until wrongly convicted of murder and sent to Yuma Prison. In 1893, he escapes and heads north to safety, until he finds a dying man who begs him to tell his wife he was robbed and murdered. A man who is honor bound to do the right thing, Reed rides in to find Amanda in trouble. Many men would turn and run-but not Reed. Still, when Amanda finds out who and what he is, will she order him to go?