For her entire adult existence Juliet Driscoll has remained locked within herself. Orphaned as a toddler and abused as a young girl, she maintains a precarious emotional balance while working as a bar waitress. She dreams someday of obtaining an engineering degree, all the while unaware that she and her brother are the rightful heirs to a silver-mining fortune. She partially succeeds in tamping down her defensive personality when Nicholas Olsen re-enters her life. He is not the same person whose high school kisses she rejected. He's been away from Sherwood for a long while: first the army and college, then almost four years in medical school brought to an abrupt halt by the death of his parents. Now he's an almost-doctor playing sheriff for real, and as he treats a deep lacerated wound in Juliet's hand, he begins to suspect that something is terribly wrong in her past In a twisting path of mortal danger, Juliet confronts the legacy of her birthright, and in the process finally awakens to the astonishing power of a first love.