***A lovely debutante seeking to escape an arranged marriage, the hotheaded deputy who waylays her carriage, and their accidental attraction that everyone warns will never lead to a happily-ever-after.* ** The newest deputy of Christmas Mountain, Jesse Hawling, is determined to impress the socks off the townsfolk. He sure as blazes isn’t ever going back to the asylum, where he was housed a year earlier for temporary insanity due to the accidental ingestion of an herb that causes hallucinations. Lauded as the loveliest debutante of the season by New York’s social elite, Iris Hildebrand has always obeyed her family’s wishes, right up to the point where her cruel guardian tries to force her to marry against her will. Her refusal earns her a one-way ticket to a remote asylum out west, a move that subsequently strips the heiress of all rights to her vast fortune. When a highway holdup delays her captivity, she finds herself facing a cocky cowboy from her past that she never expected to see again—someone she has no choice but to trust with her safety, though she knows better than to trust him (or any other man) with her heart! ***Welcome to Christmas Mountain, a white-capped paradise that entices a collection of wealthy gentlemen, gritty pioneers, and cowboy misfits to give everything they have to carve out a life and settle there—including their hearts!* **