Ever since the day her father sold her dearest friend (and half-sister) away from their home in Louisiana, Meredith Seaton has sworn to do whatever she can to find her and help others on the road to freedom. Her pose as an empty-headed, flirtatious belle, is the perfect masquerade for a courier. The last thing she needs is her unwanted attraction to a Mississippi steamboat scalawag and slave owner. Quinn Devereaux, river boat captain who endured ten years of captivity after being betrayed by a woman, has sworn never to lose his heart again. He can’t understand his attraction to the silly and vain Meredith who travels on his boat as a passenger. Yet for some odd reason, he is drawn to a woman who represents everything he despises. Worse, any relationship might jeopardize his work with the Underground Railroad and the people who’d become his salvation. And yet . . .