Newly arrived Harvey Girl, Mattie Wainwright, financially obligated to her mother and siblings, and man-shy, given her parents' broken marriage, runs from the unwanted attentions of a male fellow train passenger toward a sheriff on the train platform. Crashing into the lawman before she gets stopped to plead her case, she impulsively kisses him, hoping to conclusively demonstrate to her nemesis she isn't open to his attentions. How she's going to convince the sheriff of it, she doesn't know; and hopes she isn't going to get arrested for disturbing his peace trying to gain her own. Unprepared for how good he tastes and the way he makes her world spin and her heart race, she wonders if she can trust in love any more than her mother? Sheriff Kade Wilcox, observing arriving train passengers in case their business might involve his at some point, is unprepared for Mattie throwing her arms around his neck, and her soft lips settling on his in a kiss he could only have otherwise dreamed about at the moment. He doesn't know her, and doesn't intend to encourage her in it. Yet, he isn't of a mind to discourage her, either, finding her a real temptation the way she can kiss a man's socks off. In a dangerous job, not caring whether he lives or dies after the loss of his wife and baby in childbirth, he is loath to get involved again in a high stakes relationship and maybe lose everything a second time. However, Mattie, like a sudden rain on the desert floor, revives things he'd thought long dead.

Is woman fever enough to put his marital past behind, care whether he lives or dies, and remarry? And, can he breach Mattie's new found freedom, love of travel, and distrust of men and marriage, when his job can leave her abandoned, albeit in a different way, like her father?.