"You want me to be a mail-order bride to a total stranger?" Abby Mills knew she had to leave her home, but to go and live with a total stranger-for life? Sheltered for eighteen years, Abby makes a promise to her dying mother, the madam of The Red Dog Saloon, to leave the only home she had ever known. The saloon wasn't a safe place for a beautiful young girl to live without the protection of her mother. With the help of an old friend of her mama's, Abby finds herself having to make a crucial decision about her future. The offer of a new home with wide-open spaces, fresh air and freedom were too much to resist, but to marry a stranger might be asking the unthinkable. After Mason Waters and his uncle struck it rich in 1851, Mason's uncle opened a bank in San Francisco, but that wasn't the ideal life Mason had in mind. Feeling smothered and unhappy in San Francisco, Mason bought a ranch in northern California. After several years of hard work, Mason had everything he needed and wanted on his ranch-but a wife. After requesting that his uncle choose him a mail-order bride-one who was of good character, hardworking and easy on the eyes, he patiently waited for her arrival. Before his bride-to-be showed up, several men spread indecent rumors about his new bride's past. Uncertain of the truth, upon meeting Abby, Mason made several offensive remarks to her. How and why he would believe those remarks about her, she wasn't sure. But one thing was clear to Abby. Her new husband didn't trust her to be of good character, having believed the lies that she worked upstairs in the Red Dog Saloon. Abby knew the truth, but she wasn't about to force it on him, so she accepted her fate. For better or worse, she was here to stay as his mail-order bride, but would Mason ever fully accept her as his wife?