Lydia McQuire's courage had never wavered during the bloodiest days of the Civil War. A year later, the pretty former Union Army nurse was alone, three thousand miles from home, gamely scraping out an honest living. But now, as she said yes to marrying a stranger, her knees gave way with fear. Mr. Devon Quade had seemed polite and handsome when she answered his ad for a wife. Only after Lydia had set sail for his family's settlement in Washington did she learn the truth: her bridegroom wasn't the sweet Devon Quade, but his older brother Brigham, a widower with shoulders a yard wide, hands as strong as steel, and an arrogant belief that he was lord and master of his lumber empire, the town Quade's Harbor, and the woman he married. Lydia's dilike of him was both ardent and instantaneous...yet she also wanted him to kiss her until he took her breath away. And when Brigham wrapped her in his strong embrace, he awakened in her a white-hot passion, and a firm resolve: before she would share his bed, tough, hard-headed Brigham Quade would have to surrender himself, heart and soul, to love....