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Summoned to a Wyoming ranch by his former step-mother, Rachel, Chase Summers is stunned to find the boyishly-garbed, hostile young woman he met on the range is Rachel's daughter and heir to the ranch. Jessica Blair is no more pleased by Chase's arrival than she was by her estranged mother's arrival upon her father's death. Raised by Thomas Blair to be a punishment to his wife, Jessie displays none of the refinement or civility of a lady, although she longs to, but feeling the same animosity toward her mother, she continues to act the part. Her only escape from the outsiders on her ranch is to the Indian village where she spent her only happy days of childhood; a place where she is free to be herself. Bound by duty to Rachel, Chase vows to help Jessie with her problems with local tough, Laton Bowdre, even if Jessie only wants him to leave. The friction between the two finally erupts in passion, leaving Chase feeling guilty, and Rachel demanding marriage, but with Jessie's refusal, Rachel has no choice but to ask Chase to leave. Chase makes it as far as Cheyenne, where he looses himself in drinking, trying to get Jessie off his mind. Upon the discovery of her pregnancy, Jessie arrives in Cheyenne to retrieve Chase and force him to marry her at gunpoint, but instead chances upon him stabbed in the back in a whore's room, and drags him back to the ranch, her mind changed. Upon his own discovery of her pregnancy, Chase forces Jessie to marry him at gun point. Problems resolved, Rachel leaves the ranch, prompting a reconciliation, but Jessie's happiness is short-lived as trouble still haunts the ranch, and her husband leaves for Spain. When Jessie and Chase are finally reunited in Spain, differences and problems resolved, they are ready to start a new life with their new son.
Published 1984
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