Angela is grateful for the chance to leave her painful past behind and has no wish to face it again.
When former Mountie Carson offers a marriage of convenience, a partnership rather than a romance, she accepts because the bargain means she need not tell him everything.
She still longs for love, but she is certain the truth of her past makes that impossible.
Carson dreams of a home and a family, though he has long wondered whether the rejection he has known came from his mentally challenged brother or from himself.
He believes he and Angela will do well as partners, and that love is too risky to want.
Their arrangement promises safety, yet her silence and his caution leave both of them unwilling to trust what marriage might ask of them.
