Lydia McQuire's courage had never wavered during the bloodiest days of the Civil War. A year later, the pretty former Union Army nurse is 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 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, and the woman he married.

Lydia's dislike of him is both ardent and instantaneous...yet she also wants him to kiss her until he takes her breath away. And when Brigham wraps her in his strong embrace, he awakens in her a white-hot passion, and a firm resolve: before she shares his bed, tough, hard-headed Brigham Quade has to surrender himself, heart and soul, to love.