For five years now, Ethan Shuff has watched the love of his life plan her future with another man, a man not even close to worthy of her. Ethan had helped Ruby fight for her siblings. He’d driven her back and forth to med school, then to her residency. He’d only held off on telling her his feelings because she was so determined to have the perfect life, a life he wasn’t sure he could give her as a cowboy working with underprivileged kids on the side. He’d only come to her wedding to close that unrequited chapter of his life for good. But perhaps it wasn’t as unrequited as he thought.

Bridgett Rawlings is known in her small town of Prairie Rose, Iowa as The Bad Luck Widow. She just lost her father. Before that it was her second husband, and before that, her first. Every man Bridgett has ever loved has been killed on her family farm, but it is all she owns and the basis of her livelihood. It seems there is no escaping the curse laid upon her. So, when Shawn Barclay, the son of an old friend of her father’s, shows up to help on the farm, Bridgett tries to deter him. She explains the curse and how the town has shunned her. She tells him to go back to Arkansas, where he came from. But Shawn doesn’t believe in curses.