Juliette Kendal has vowed to protect her siblings from their abusive step-father after their mother’s death. When she finds him attacking her younger sister, Annie, she accidentally kills him. With no way to prove her innocence she fears her brothers and sister will be taken to an orphanage if she’s arrested. Jake Gresham is known as a fun-loving, careless cowboy, as good at finding trouble as he is roping cattle. So far, he’s managed to avoid God and decent women. But on a scouting trip for his boss, he steps in a bear trap in a South Georgia swamp. Facing certain death changes his outlook, and Juliette, who fights tenaciously to save his life, changes his opinion of women. When Jake asks Juliette to marry him and take her family with him when he returns to his Nebraska ranch, she sees it as an escape. But she can’t marry Jake without confessing to him and God the secret buried in her backyard.