Nick Harding had seen enough of life's darker side...and bore the scars—inside and out—to prove it. Plus, years of tracking reprobates had hardly improved his opinion of his fellow man. Yet some spark of hope remained in him, he suspected. Why else would he have agreed to settle down in Thunder Canyon as a sheriff whose man job was seeing that the saloons remained respectable? But the quiet life proved elusive whenever he and Lily Divine crossed paths, for the feisty owner of The Shady Lady seemed hell-bent on stepping out a woman's "proper" place...and into his wounded heart!