Publisher's Synopsis
If there's one thing Declan Mitchell learned from watching his mama almost die from the heartbreak of losing his daddy to a war nineteen years ago, it was that a great and powerful love delivered an equally devastating heartbreak and suffering-the kind he had every intention of avoiding like the bubonic plague. And until traveling west to Idaho Territory and coming face to face with the mismatch-eyed, auburn-haired beauty, Wren McCrawdon, he believed he might succeed in carrying out his plans of never marrying.
Molded by her traumatic journey west when she was twelve, twenty-four-year-old, accident-prone Wren McCrawdon's life on her family's ranch in Falcon Ridge, Idaho, is full of back-breaking work, beginning as dawn's first rays peek across the mountains and ending long after the sun sets when she can barely drag her weary bones up the stairs to her bedroom. But from the morning Declan Mitchell and his family arrive, her miserable existence becomes more bearable until tragedy strikes when all she sees are the harsh realities of loss and suffering.
Concerned for Wren's safety and remembering how bitter the edge of misery was after his daddy died-Declan discovers he's willing to do anything he can to take it away from her... even if it means a marriage of convenience is the only suitable solution. There are only two problems: first, it's already apparent he's following in his mama's footsteps toward eventual heartbreak, and second he somehow has to convince Wren to agree.