Certain he's fated to meet his bride on his thirtieth birthday, Texas rancher Jon Marc O'Brien arranges for the perfect woman to arrive on that day. He's never set eyes on sweet Beth Buchanan, a cattle buyer's daughter from Kansas, but after a two-year romance-by-correspondence, he knows she'll be the ideal wife-pure of heart, body, and soul.

The glossy-haired beauty who steps from the coach is not Beth Buchanan, who died on the journey. She's a runaway named Bethany who's so hungry for the respectable life she's willing to steal a dead woman's identity-and her betrothed. It's a desperate gamble that will throw Bethany and Jon Marc into a white-hot firestorm of passion and embroil them in a Texas-sized range war with deadly outlaw Hoot Todd, but Todd's wrath will be nothing compared to the fury of Jon Marc O'Brien should he ever discover his new bride's true identity...