As summer gives way to fall in Rustlers Gulch, widow Maddie McLendon begins to have second thoughts about uprooting her life to move there with her son and grandson. Contractors have yet to break ground on their new house, leaving them--along with four horses, three dogs, and six cats--to live in a makeshift camp of trailers, tents, and sheds, while a brutal Montana winter looms on the horizon... Millionaire rancher Sam Conacher doesn't take kindly to his foolish new neighbors, but then he hasn't taken kindly to anyone since his wife died six years earlier. He's content to wallow in his grief alone, while keeping a tight rein on his twenty-six-year-old daughter. But now Sam's daughter has gone and fallen in love with Maddie's no-good son... Though drawn together by their love-struck kids, Maddie and Sam never see eye to eye on anything, until a near-tragedy gives them a true glimpse into each other's souls. And as the first snowflakes begin to fall, they'll discover the secrets and slipups that have brought each of them to this point in their lives--to when an open heart is the biggest gift of all...