Rugged Jackson Reese had a heartful of scars to prove you shouldn't trust a society princess. So his troubled daughter's latest 'sitter' was worse than merely a thorn in his side - pampered, privileged Bentley Cunningham was the whole damn rose...complete with perfumed petals and a darkly rooted determination to succeed where others had failed. She might work magic on a pouty preteen, but only a miracle worker would convince Jackson she was woman enough for him... THAT SPECIAL WOMAN!

All his life, Rush Cousins had been haunted by the mystery of his shadowed past. His search for his roots led him at last to Ashland Plantation, an elegant, decaying estate deep in the Mississippu Delta, where he presented himself as nothing more than a handyman in need of work... The disguise brought him closer to Ashland's long-buried secrets...But it also meant he had to find some way to distance himself from his sudden, stunning passion for the plantation's beautiful, embittered mistress, Annabelle Ames-a woman whose lonely obsession with the past strangely seemed to mirror his own...