At her dying mother's insistence, dime-novel fan Libby Ann Parminter escapes St. Louis to avoid a forced marriage to a vile older man. Her destination: the ranch of her biological father, Jackson Butterman, in Montana, where she clashes with his arrogant and "mean" young foreman, Garrett Winslow. Libby takes a job as housekeeper on the Butterman ranch, not telling anyone she is the patriarch's daughter or that her abusive stepfather and non-fiancé are most likely pursuing her. She need only survive for three weeks, when she turns 21 and her massive dowry will be hers. In those three weeks, she suffers a concussion from a bucking horse, a sprained ankle and life-threatening infection and is kidnapped, and Garrett is shot. When the evil non-fiancé shows up planning to take a weakened Libby back to St. Louis to marry, Garrett does the only thing he and Jackson (who now knows he is her father) can think of to take the target off her back: he marries her. After they consummate the marriage and Libby realizes she has fallen in love with Garrett, he backs off, certain the city girl will leave Montana as her mother did. As she tries to show him the error of his ways, new threats abound, from the non-fiancé, her equally evil stepfather and the voluptuous Cindy Lou, Garrett's former town hook-up.
