When Jamie Cantrell fled the small southern Oregon ranching community of McClintock, her reputation was in shreds, the result of a good deed gone awry. Now that she is back, after a five-year absence, to take over the family ranch after her parents are killed in a plane crash, she is determined to ignore the gossip and snide remarks she knows will be forthcoming. After a traumatic childhood and adolescence, which included being sent to reform school for a crime he didn't commit, neighboring rancher Cole Wyatt wants only to be left alone. But despite his lone wolf tendencies, he finds himself in the role of Jamie's "defender" on more than one occasion. He is dismayed to realize that he is letting down the barriers he has erected around his heart. Can these two, who have both been victims of unjust accusations, put aside past hurts and learn to love again?

A midwesterner by birth, Charlene Bowen now resides in Tacoma, Washington, with her husband, Chuck, a retired Air Force Sergeant. Although Charlene felt from the time she was small that she was destined to become a writer, she didn't seriously pursue a writing career until the youngest of her four children was almost grown. "Before that, I'd always felt a little like that proverbial 'square peg,'" she says, "and then all at once, I knew this was what I'd been waiting to do all my life."