Good intentions tore them apart. Murder brought them back together. Small-town deputy Charity Bishop's run for sheriff is complicated by a dicey past and a family of crooks determined to punish her for having ambitions. When the sister of Charity's high school sweetheart confesses to a brutal murder, Charity accepts that solving the crime-and having any hope of winning the election-means partnering with the man who threatens everything she's ever worked for. The man who left town twelve years earlier, taking her heart with him. That man is Grady West, a struggling single father who finds it hard to forgive his former lover for arresting his sister. But while Grady fights to prove his sister's innocence and Charity fights to keep both him and his son at arm's length, Grady and Charity find themselves falling in love all over again-while a desperate killer plots to boost the body count.