In her secret heart, sheltered Lydia Beker yearned for more—a sea of sensation, a husband to be tender with. Surely such longings couldn't be wrong? And then came Jakob Neubauer, an outsider who promised her a world of passion... One simple dream sustained Jakob: to work his land and build a life with the perfect woman at his side. Lydia Beker, unaffected and so serenely beautiful, seemed the embodiment of his every desire. But would he prove himself a man worthy of such a precious gift?

Raised by the Lakota Sioux and having traveled with the Wild West Show for many years, Rain Shadow is unprepared for a forced stay at the home of Anton Neubauer while her son recuperates. He is a rock, a man who has lived on and farmed the same several hundred acres since he was young. Anton needs a mother for his son, but he needs someone domestic and ladylike, not the Smith & Wesson toting female who sets up her teepee in his front yard and whose target practice wakes him at the crack of dawn. But fate, two little boys and two old men conspire to keep them together, and it’s too late to deny their passion once love is part of the equation.