Unfortunately, all the good sense in the world could not stop Emily from falling in love with Professor Renier Jurres-Romeijn.The professor barely seemed to notice her, though. He was too busy making plans for a winter wedding. But who exactly was his intended bride?

    So if her best friend's forbidding older brother rubbed her the wrong way, how come she'd chosen his ranch to recover from a broken heart? She knew the dangers that her foe posed . . . yet every time she crossed paths with the hard-edged cattle rancher, her pulse would race out of control. Maggie secretly dreamed of awakening to womanhood in Clint's powerful embrace . . . but did these sweet enemies have a shot at becoming lifelong lovers?

    And soon she found herself embarked on a journey to a strange and alien land....

    Lifted from the gutter by her own bold desires - to the gilded mansions of old Nob Hill.Luke Harmon -- He was San Francisco's Bootlegger King, a handsome adventurer restlessly driven by a thirst for danger - and a talent for power.From the moment they met, he knew he must have her; as she knew she must one day surrender....And in the dim-lit speakeasies along the Barbary Coast, heady witth champagne and lust...through Chinatown's underground dens of white slaves and opium dreams...amid the easy and bogus morals of the glittering haut monde...their hidden passion flared....While again and again, in torment, in pride, they were forced to flee from the promise of sweet, burning desire and the feverish, fated love that would never set them free....